Week 1
Overall& Mission Statement
This is our first week for unit 2, the future of work. To be honest, everything is confusing at current stage, however, the reading group helps me clarify timetable and reading list luckily. We have 6 books. They are all related our project, future while the focuses are diverse: discursive design, future inventing, 3D additivist cookbook , 2 speculative-related writing and Sci-fi-based reflection. I am allocated to read the book, speculative everything(Dunne& Raby 2013) and through the introduction and abstract reading, make a summary and then share with my group members.
We also meet our tutor group on Wednesday and through the fruit group meeting, I understand the task and brief for our unit 2 projects. Here are two final deliverable missions: 1000-word reflective writing for whole learning process and a group presentation to exhibit all of group cooperation. The reflective writing is individual work while presentation should be cooperated with all group members. Moreover, our group works also require a week-by-week process demonstration and weekly outputs. For this first week, our group mainly target on brainstorming and theme decision making. We use Miro to share all ideas and pick the most interest topic for our further concentrating.
Book Reflection
The book, Speculative Everything is written by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. According to the abstract, this book offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, expectations and approaches. Dune and Raby point that as tools, some kind of designs can create not only things but ideas. They make many researches and references including their own design and teaching and also from other projects like fine art, design, architecture, cinema, photography, futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology and literary fiction. Authors contend that increasing speculation for everything can help reality becoming more malleable. Speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.
To conclude, this book is basically a provocative survey of “speculative design”. It mainly talks about the world of possible and plausible desired futures. Design products are regarded as metaphor for exists today’s critiquing, provoking and reflection.
Gasworks
In order to make deep understanding of terms: speculation, design and future. I come to visit Gasworks gallery. Gasworks displays the first London solo exhibition by Ingela Ihrman, a Malmo-based artist.
Giant snake and Oilbird play the main character for this exhibition, which links to invasive weeds, intestinal flora, extinct amphibians and nocturnal birds. From the Green Paradise(2019), Anaconda Faeces, Oilbird with Nestling(2021) to background music, Nocturne, Ingela aims to explore the interconnected coexistence mundane life forms through those performance, sculpture and video. Her work contains empathy, tenderness and sense of wonder for all living creatures, regarding each of them as a part of wider ecology.
In summary, this is a great exhibition which gives a strong inspiration for our future design works: associating current stuffs, phenomenons or even problems with one or several affections organically( it can be a feeling to change or sometimes only for catharsis), its demonstration or consequence, at some extents, is the new design work in itself.