The Public Design Workshop

Speculative Design Track @ EASST 2010

Carl — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:23:23 +0000

Together with Tobie Kerridge and Alex Wilkie from Goldsmiths, I am beginning to prepare for a very exciting track on Speculative Design that we are organizing at the 2010 European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, in Trento, Italy. The theme of the conference itself is Practicing Science and Technology, Performing the Social, and there are a number of excellent design related tracks. As the date for the conference gets closer, I’ll provide updates with links to the program and abstracts. For now, you can read the track description below.

Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience: Possibilities and Critical Perspectives

Over the past decade there has been an increasing engagement between design and STS. One emerging and novel area of exchange is concerned with exploring the ways in which practices of ’speculative design’ and STS concerns of publics, participation, politics as well as expectations come together to inform one another, to critique one another, and to collaborate in developing new modes of co-production of contemporary technoscience. Although such associations are promising, they are nascent and in need of articulation and critical examination. Our proposed track is intended to provide the beginnings of such articulation and critical examination, by soliciting participation from STS scholars, design researchers and from practicing designers.

By speculative design we refer to a set of design practices and outcomes that are moving away from common notions of design as “problem-solving” or “styling”, towards framing design as a means for surfacing and materializing issues and contributing to the formation of publics and futures. In this move, design is increasingly cast as a possible mode of intervention into technoscience, thereby establishing renewed associations with STS. With speculative design the performativity of the object comes to the fore as a concern for both designers and theorists, as its objects and outcomes are often brought into being to, and interpreted as, materially and discursively enacting values, identities, agendas and beliefs. A challenge for STS then is to describe and characterize the performativity of the objects of speculative design in new ways that avoid recourse to the familiar positions and debates concerning ‘the political of artefacts’.’

growBot garden

Carl — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:25:17 +0000

Concept developed at first growBot garden symposium, May 3, 2010

Over the past 100 years, the practices of agriculture have been radically altered in Western societies, spurred by development and application of a host of technologies designed to automate and monitor food production. Recently, however, many have called attention to the shortcomings of mainstream massive farming endeavors — large-scale agri-business may be producing more food, but the food itself is lacking in nutrition and the environment is suffering from these very farming practices. What is needed is a return to local and small-scale agriculture for both environmental and personal health concerns.

Engineering and design played a role in advancing the culture and practices of agri-business by producing products, systems, and services to advance and support large-scale corporate farming. The question we ask is, Can design and engineering now play a role in shifting us towards more sustainable modes of agriculture? What kinds of products, services and systems would need to be designed and engineered to enable that subversion and shift? How will technologies of automation and monitoring need to be refigured for these contexts – if indeed they are still at all useful? The growBot garden project explores these questions by bringing together designers, artists, farmers and other food producers to ask: How might robotics and sensing technologies be used in support of local small-scale agriculture?

The growBot garden project is structured around a series of public and participatory workshops that bring together diverse constituencies to critically think about, discuss and debate, and re-make our near-term future. The workshops draw equally from practices of participatory design, critical design, social practice art, tactical media and hacking. More than a discursive platform, the workshops are design platforms: opportunities to collectively make speculative representations and prototypes of possible futures. These representations and prototypes are documented and shared through public forums to provoke consideration of new assemblages that might emerge at the intersection of technology and agriculture.

Events to Date
growBot garden symposium, 3 May, 2010

Upcoming Events
We will be participating in the Out the Garage program at the San Jose 01 Festival, September 4-19, 2010

Interview with Temporary Services on Rhizome

Carl — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:49:20 +0000

Over on Rhizome, there is an interview with the amazing collective, Temporary Services. The interview does a good job of providing an overview of their work, so I won’t repeat the information here.

I’ve long been impressed by their work – it’s provocative and compelling and engages politics and the political in an astute manner. Moreover, their work raises interesting questions for design, and public design specifically. Much of their work could be taken as design – to be sure they design objects and systems, and they regularly make use of existing design objects and systems for social critique and action. But they contextualize their work as art, and it’s within art world (or at least certain circles of the art world) that their work is recognized, discussed, and exhibited.

Its curious that we don’t see more work like this in design. Why is that? Where is that line drawn between such forms of collective / social practice / critical arts and design? Who draws that line and why? Does it serve a purpose, if so, what purpose? Can and should we erase that line of demarcation, or at lest smudge it?

As a starting point, see their project on Prisoners Inventions. Not only does it reveal a world of products (as both inventions and hacks) that escapes design and design studies, but their engagement with the prison population and with the politics of prisons and working with the incarcerated is insightful and notable.

Initial Explorations into Local Farming – Experiments Public Design Research

Carl — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:23:29 +0000

As part of the growBots project, our project studio has been immersing themselves in the local farming community and its practices. To date, this has included visiting Decimal Place goat farm (at 7am on a Saturday morning no less) to milk goats and learn about those farming practices; hosting a video evening at which we curated an hours worth of videos clips on the future of farming; and attending the annual Georgia Organics conference.

Each of these was a significant undertaking and experience, and in the near future, I’ll post about each of them individually.

What stands out about each of these, is how they figure into the practice of public design and public design research. These are not research endeavors in the common sense – at least not in the common sense to design research. Rather, these activities all fall into methods and modes of research more akin “deep hanging-out” or “studying-up” to learn about the culture and practices of a given field.

If public design is about serious engagements with and commitments to issues and publics, then this is precisely the kind of research we need to be engaging in. Not only does it inform us about the cultures and practices of publics, it also serves to build trust and respect. At this early stage, its not entirely clear what precisely we are learning from these activities. But it is clear that these experiments into the modes and methods of public design research are a necessary first step in establishing engagements and commitments.

Design Revolution Roadshow and The Social Design Event

Carl — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:48:02 +0000

There certainly is a proliferation of “social design” projects underway, and this is generally a good thing.

The Design Revolution Road Show stands out because of its format. As they describe it, it’s “a traveling exhibition and lecture series bringing “product design that empowers” to 25 high schools and university design programs across the nation in the Spring of 2010.”

More than an traveling exhibition of social design (which itself is a great idea) the road show also includes an educational presentation component, through which the staff will share and discuss their design toolkit.

This idea of bringing an educational/workshop component to social design, is, I believe, suggestive of a transformation underway in design, from objects to events.

Now, before anyone thinks I am heralding some “death of the object” – I’m not. In fact, I am deeply committed to objects and believe they are central to design.

At the same time, “the event” is emerging as an important design form, particularly in social design and practices of participatory design. The idea of the event is not new to design, and there are important precedents in art and urban planning. But we seem to be beginning to see a renewed interest in the design event, particularly in regards to socially-conscious projects.

This presents a spate of opportunities, and too challenges. In regards to opportunities, the event is, almost by definition, a situation of engagement, in which the designer takes an active role with publics. This transforms the role of the designer ever more towards an active social agent. In regards to challenges , we are prompted to ask: What precisely is this design form?; What are its qualities?; and from the perspective of theory and criticism: How do we describe, analyze and judge the event as design form and practice?

Future of Farming Screening – Feb 11th

Carl — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:35:50 +0000

What will the farm of the future look like?

Georgia Tech’s growbotgarden.com presents an evening of curated clips that envision the farms of the future. Dystopian sci-fi fantasies, marvels of engineering, and organic small scale solutions all share space in this exploration.

Join your fellow food-loving Atlantans for a provocative evening at ParkGrounds Coffee. Learn more about the growBot project. Be the future?

RSVP HERE FOR FREE SNACKS: http://growbotfuturefarm.eventbrite.com/

“What If?” Exhibition, and the Museum as Site for Critical and Speculative Design

Carl — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:18:25 +0000

This is not new, but I want to call attention to the “What If” exhibition at the Science Gallery in Dublin.

The exhibition features the work of Dunne and Raby, Tobie Kerridge and the Material Beliefs project, and many other students from the RCA and Goldsmiths. Some of the work I had not seen before, and it is always exciting to discover new examples of critical and speculative design.

In addition to providing new examples of work, the museum site itself is worth noting and considering.

Can we, and should we, consider the science museum as a (if not “the”) principal site for speculative and critical design? Certainly the museum as institution aligns with many of the central themes of critical and speculative design. It provides a space and context for exploration. Dunne and Raby’s installation Is This Your Future? at the Science Museum of London was an early example of critical design in the context of the science museum. In addition to providing an interesting institutional site for speculative and critical design, the museum can also provide the organizational and resource scaffolding for such endeavors, primarily through their educational and outreach programs. The Material Beliefs project provides an initial example for how critical and speculative design might be integrated with existing museum programs.

The question is, Why are we not seeing even more of this?

And how might critical and speculative design expand from the science museum to the natural history or history museum?

Winter 2010 Update

Carl — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:03:54 +0000

The Winter/Spring 2010 semester is in full swing. In fact, we are almost a quarter of the way through the semester. Hard to believe. Already, the Public Design Workshop is off to a smashing start for the new year.

In our Project Studio this semester we are developing the growBots project: exploring the possible uses of sensing and robotics in the context of local small-scale agriculture. This is an extension of our work last semester on Speculative Robotics, with a particular focus on agriculture and the addition of participatory and public design methods.

Given the excitement of our group on this topic, its likely this will be a major focus of the Public Design Workshop for the next 12 to 18 months.

You can follow growBots as it progresses at http://www.growbotgarden.com/. At this point we are still in the early stages of research. As the project progresses you can expect the blog content will shift from literature and project reviews to discussions of our own program development.

In addition to growBots we have a spate of other projects, including: continuing research and writing on participatory urban sensing (we hope to have a publication completed for submission by May); organizing a track at the European Association of Science and Technology 2010 conference on Speculation, Design, Public and Participatory Technoscience, produced in collaboration with Alex Wilkie and Tobie Kerridge from Goldsmiths and the Material Beliefs project; a panel at CHI 2010 on “HCI, Communities and Politics”; and 3 of workshop members will be graduating this Spring.

Its going to be busy…

Speculative Robotics

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:46:49 +0000

How might robotics technologies be used in near-future scenarios? And how might we use design to critically examine these futures and explore alternatives?

Drawing from the capabilities and research themes of contemporary engineering and computer science, the Speculative Robotics project uses design to critically explore and express possible future applications, adaptations, and appropriations of robotics technology. The concepts developed project these capabilities and research themes into new contexts, from post-apocalyptic suburbia to urban farms. From this exploration comes future forms and functions for robotics, and just as significantly, critical reflections on our current social and environmental conditions, expressed through design.

BuddhaBot

Amy Cheng, Lead Designer

BuddhaBot is a speculative design project consisting of marketing materials for the BuddhaBot service. The BuddhaBot service addresses the need to escape from two of the most prevalent stressors of city life: noise and crowds. BuddhaBot acts as a hive for a distributed colony of firefly robots (which fly around the city, documenting data concerning noise and crowds) and as a central processor to analyze the data gathered by the fireflies. Places that have minimal noise pollution and little foot traffic are registered as LotusLocations. These LotusLocations are then transmitted to a localized information network called DharmaNet, which can be accessed via a WiFi-enabled device or the Internet. The BuddhaBot service thus provides users with timely information that enables them to find temporary retreats from hostile city environments.

View the BuddhaBot video.
View the BuddhaBot website

Domestibeasts

Cinqué Hicks and Delisha Peterson, Lead Designers

Domestibeasts are modular, mobile, learning social robots that function as nomadic domiciles for human inhabitants in a post-collapse suburban landscape. Domestibeasts carry human inhabitants in herds of 20 to 30 units in search of whatever food, water and other resources the territory can provide. Domestibeasts make use of the remaining suburban infrastructure, in particular commercial signage and existing roads in order to guide the herd’s movement through space.

View the Domestibeasts video
View the Domestibeasts website

Envirodrone

Thomas Barnwell, Lead Designer

The Envirodrone project is a creative rethinking and repurposing of technology currently being used in the production of military surveillance and reconnaissance droids. The project focuses on re-purposing military technologies for community based participatory sensing and community action. The project explores how technology such as this can be used in alternative environments and scenarios other than for military engagement. How can this technology be used for the democratization of information?

View the Envirodrone website
View the Envirodrone video

growBot Symposium

Laura Fries, Lead Designer

The growBot project is an exploratory, moderated conversation space between technologists, roboticists, engineers and small-scale organic farmers. The growBot project asks: What innovations might occur in the conversation space between these parties? Modern agricultural robotics are geared towards large scale industrial production – what new ideas could these conversations cultivate? This moderated discussion, scheduled for Spring and Summer 2010, is equal parts community building and exploration, cross-disciplinary education, and speculative design.

View the growBot Symposium video
View the growBot Symposium website

Huggable Garden

Hye Yeon Nam, Lead Designer

How we can express our love to objects of nature? The Huggable Garden is a speculative design workshop for children and adults to create kinetic, audio, and robotic interfaces from craft materials and hacked toys that allow participants to show their emotions towards plants, trees, rocks and other objects of nature. Currently, there are three prototypes for tree interfaces: a kissable interface that activates motors to make small robots come alive and amuse the tree, a huggable interface to embrace the tree and soothe it with sounds, and an interface to record voice messages to the tree that play back when the wind blows and the tree is feeling lonely.

View the Huggable Garden video
View the Huggable Garden website

Mall-E: Inscribing the nomad’s journey of life

Tanyoung Kim, Lead Designer

Mall-E draws the trajectory of nomads’ mobile houses and their sporadic messages on the floors or wall of Futroit Mall. Futroit Mall is no longer a place for shopping. Retail shops are gone. The emerging abandoned spaces are now ready to exhibit art work. The Mall-E system tracks the location of the nomads’ mobile houses. When a change is detected, Mall-E draws the movement with a unique pattern. The visual aesthetics of Mall-E’s drawing borrows from petroglyphs while also appropriating symbols such as brand logos and cartoon characters of the post-industrial age. The interior of the future indoor mall is inscribed with the data obtained from nomads, which depicts a history of their life. Via Mall-E, the abandoned shopping malls will function similarly to the ancient caves on which primitive men inscribed their lives.

View the Mall-E video
View the Mall-E website

POWER Booth

Ethopia Hewitt, Lead Designer

The POWER booth collects the generated energy of its busy urban surroundings. Alternative energy sources are being developed each day with the end goal of producing an affordable, renewable, sustainable source. One such source of energy is the naturally generated mechanical energy created from the vibrations of the city. Using piezoelectronics, the POWER booth absorbs the mechanical energy created from footsteps, traffic, and construction. It then converts it into electricity that citizens can use to power up their electrical devices such as cell phones. As cell phones grew in popularity the phone booth died. Many cities continue to have this unused infrastructure decaying in their busiest sectors. The POWER booth is designed to be installed in these relics and bring new purpose to these booths. They not only solve the new, common problem of dead cell phones, but also educate citizens on alternative energy sources bringing your city into the 21st century.

View the POWER booth video.

Ergosum

Vasudhara Kantroo, Lead Designer

The Ergosum project speculates about the use of dynamic heat sensing and robotics in urban environments to generate power. The intent is to leverage zones of excessive urban heat with the right technology to use this energy in public spaces. Through several design iterations, Ergosum culminated in a scientific/design manifesto about integrating specific technologies to generate energy from urban heat. The manifesto, named ‘Ergosum: A proposal for enabling electrically self-sufficient public spaces in Atlanta’ is aimed to address energy recycling in the city in a multipronged fashion. The Phase-1 deliverable for this project, documents one such way.

Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot: Reusing an abandoned and contaminated site.

Hwajung Hong, Lead Designer

Every modern city has an amazing amount of vacant, unused land in its downtown core—hundreds of acres in most major cities. This category of urban territory is referred to as a brownfield, a piece of industrial or commercial property that is abandoned, idle, or under-used and often environmentally contaminated, especially one considered as a potential site for redevelopment. How do we reclaim the brownfield for neighborhoods in a way that is flexible and contextually appropriate to the site in question? The Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot is a speculative design proposal to use robotics to evaluate brownfields and to transform them into viable and environmentally responsible sites. Through remote sensing, each robot analyzes brownfield sites by collecting data such as Volatile Organic Components (VOCs). The data allows the robot to decide the best remediation plan for the site. The aggregated robot modules then execute possible remediation solutions, which range from building a site separation fence to creating phytoremediation machines.

View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot video
View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot website

Fall 2009 Speculative Robotics Project Studio

Carl — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:33:51 +0000

Our Fall 2009 Project Studio explored Speculative Robotics: using design to critically explore and express possible future applications, adaptations, and appropriations of robotics technology. From this experimentation comes future forms and functions for robotics, and just as significantly, critical reflections on our current social and environmental conditions, expressed through design.

Below are links to the individual projects. You can also read one-paragraph overviews of each on the Speculative Robotics project page.

BuddhaBot, Amy Cheng, Lead Designer
…robots, lotuslocations, solitude, and the city…
View the BuddhaBot video
View the BuddhaBot website

Domestibeasts, Cinque Hicks and Delisha Peterson, Lead Designers
…nomadic robotic structures for living…
View the Domestibeasts video
View the Domestibeasts website

Envirodrone, Thomas Barnwell, Lead Designer
…re-purposing military robotics for environmental monitoring…
View the Envirodrone video
View the Envirodrone website

growBot Symposium, Laura Fries, Lead Designer
…robots, organic farming, and participatory design…
View the growBot Symposium video
View the growBot Symposium website

Huggable Garden Hye Yeon Nam, Lead Designer
…robotic interfaces to objects of nature…
View the Huggable Garden video
View the Huggable Garden website

Mall-E, Tanyoung Kim, Lead Designer
…robot scribes and cave painters…
View the Mall-E video
View the Mall-E website

POWER Booth, Ethiopia Hewitt, Lead Designer
…sensing and vibration as power source…
View the POWER booth video.

Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot, Hwajung Hong, Lead Designer
…robots and urban remediation…
View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot video
View the Urban Brownfield Remediation Robot website