Design, space and imagination beyond terrestrEality
(This is an extended version of Pechakucha talk by Nerdy Coon aka Yulya Besplemennova)
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Hello, I am Yulya and I am an Interstellar Raccoon. I know it might be a bit of a hard concept to perceive as I appear in the human body, but I hope after I explain better what we do and how you will get how being a raccoon can bring quite an advantage=)
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Interstellar Raccoons is a microcollective with interstellar goals in design and space, and one thing about our approach on which I wanna focus the most is the role of imagination when dealing with complex future issues or co-design process.
Why talk about imagination when it seems obvious topic for creative professionals? Because it appears that even they are not actually aware of its full capacity or on the contrary afraid of how wild it can get becoming non applicable to real design issues, while it is a very important and interdisciplinary human power.
It becomes especially crucial in the new “hybrid” state of the space that we inhabit now. It is physical and tangible and also physical intagible (hertzian space of electromagnetic waves), digital and virtual, everything is hybrid and hyper nowadays. The role of digital cyberspace is growing and we spend more and more time there by means of our devices which now have just screens, but soon can bring truly immersive virtual experiences.
But in this mediated environment we never know anymore what is real and what is fictional, and often it doesn’t even matter that much, we’re glad to enjoy the experience anyway. And this is a super interesting terrain for designers to work in as any project starts in a fictional world before it becomes implemented, so we can use advantages of the new hyper-state.
In fact the hybrid state of space is not a new thing at all, it became more complex with new media and technology, but it’s been since a long time that humans are capable of being present in one space physically and another mentally (Lascaux cave below for example is already quite a hybrid space bringing together two dimension). That’s exactly what happened to us when we got cognitive abilities to remember well the past and therefore imagine the future, which made us conscious, but also very complex =)
Then imagination is so far (till we have invented some reliable telepathic technologies) always stays in a personal dimension, and we need the media to share the products of it. Stories help us bringing it to others creating a collective narrative experience.
And here is an important point about the work of designers (and architects) — that we normally operate with the visual language to share our visions, but it might be a controversial tool. From one point of view it makes it more easy to communicate our concepts to others, but on the other hand fixing our own idea too much in a visual form is not letting others to build on it. So here the old world of stories comes back at our hands.
First ones to understand the power of stories for the complex future issues which already need attention in the present were the sci-fi writers. They managed to create lots of discussion of the present, human nature and technology. Radical architecture had also a good attempt in it and then design fiction became a new thing dealing with future.
Design fiction makes far future problems more tangible and accessible to people through creation of artifacts that trigger our imagination about new unusual behaviors.
There are few approaches to it, for example keeping it “blurry” and letting the audience to investigate what exactly is going on. This is how Dunne and Raby approach the issue. Their Faraday chair aimed to protect us from electromagnetic waves is not even a chair and doesn’t tell anything about technology involved in it, but is an embodiment of a new ritual instead, it triggers imagination and raises a lot of questions.
On the contrary Rayfish Footwear project worked in an opposite way — it was a huge transmedial campaign of a fictional shoe company manufacturing products from the genetically modified rayfish to produce unique patterns ordered by customers. It created a huge impact online as being put through the media filter you could never understand well whether it was fake or real and many people wanted to buy shoes, while others on the contrary got on the protection of animals rights side. This is a good demonstration of how powerful is media now in fictional realm. (As it was actually already with the first reading of the Wells’s The War of the Worlds on radio)
It might seem that making fake objects and creating new realities is a simple thing, eventually we all do that in our lives while daydreaming, but good design fiction is not that simple. Many designers turn to be not that familiar with how their own imagination and public perception really work. We have experienced it with the students when making Ceramic Futures workshops for 3 years in Politecnico di Milano.
It turned out that there were 2 main points of difficulty: first triggering imagination and then guiding it in the “right” direction.
The big problem is in the nonsense/fairy-tale risk. Where nonsense stands for build up real and fictional facts, which however don’t combine into a consistent story. Fairy-tales on the other side can be very consistent and enjoyable, but are just too far from our current situation. Both these worlds have their place and exist in minds or in media and we enjoy them a lot, but they’re not suitable territories for a good convincing design fiction as there are too few elements to which public can relate.
In order to avoid this risky ground we have created some special tools, also to help students from different backgrounds find the way to operate on the same level. They included future maps for structured research approach, a simple template for scenario building, design patterns to explain main approaches that designers can have when they try to affect future scenarios with their concepts, introduction to ritual as opposed to more used term of user experience, etc. All put together in one final publication for anyone to use.
But not just far away future connected to some advanced technology development can be complex. Actually it turns out that any change can be difficult for the society. For example if one day city administration closes for traffic one of central squares (which never was a real square before, but more of a busy street) and proposes to transform it into a pedestrian space, it generates local conflict and controversies not smaller than some future genetic engineering debate.
That’s exactly what happened with our last project — #nevicata14 for Castello square in Milan.
The biggest difficulty in the process was overcoming the idea, the stuck perception in heads of people, about this space being not suitable for nothing else but car passage. So we started with a story of a huge fictional snowfall which happened in July of 2014 in Milan and covered piazza Castello erasing all traces of previous automotive use and turning it into a space open for everyone.
This initial concept opened up the process of co-design where imagination triggering and guidance were also crucial issues. We used some specially designed tools once again instead of regular post-its so much abused in design processes. There were special postcards for everyone to contribute, lo-fi augmented reality where people could draw directly on the transparent wall looking at the square, special missions and visionaries workshop, etc. All the contributions by citizens were then shared online for anyone to use.
When we presented the story instead of regular slides (though together with models and boards) one comment from the audience was that it’s a poesy, not architecture. Well, it turns out that we were right about #formfollowsfiction as almost every word of that story eventually did come true. #nevicata14 had been successfully built and used by hundreds thousands people.
Most importantly it was a square built from collective dream which kept all the visionary promises that we told in our stories and its mood.
#nevicata14 became an example of how fictional and shared narrative approach smoothly transforms into serious design strategy on the urban level and how much value it brings to the process. Initial story did determine all the identity of this new place as well as general approach to it — flexible and open, welcoming, playful, listening to the needs of participants. We couldn’t cover the square with snow for real, but we did manage to reconstruct the promises of snowfall through a hybrid physical-digital architecture-service approach and curation of the activities during all its lifetime period.
These are just some examples of how we can and why we should push forward the power of imagination and narrative buildings with it in design. The biggest issue is to overcome the perception of designer as “just” a present time problem solver, bring it beyond — to be able to imagine things in the future and guide some decisions in the present which will make us solve less problems later.
I’d like to close with completely different scale — real outer space. This year we celebrate 55th anniversary of first human flight to space and at the same time it appears that the new second age is here with all the public attention to SpaceX achievements as well as many other initiatives. So it appears that we have to think again not only about complex futures of Earth in all the hybrid hyper spaces, but also the bigger outer one. And this is a condition where we should definitely become more familiar with power of imagination and process of dealing with it to envision better future in shared space of stories.
This all is exactly what being Interstellar Raccoons is about — it’s not just a funny name of a collective, but a performed approach to design in a new space beyond terrestrEality.
