NERD – New Experimental Research in Design 9783035617429, 9783035616804

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
On Design, Research and Pudding: An Essayistic Introduction
Some Additional Remarks on Rigour and/or Relevance in Design Research
Situating Design in the Confluence of Playfulness, Ageing, and Social Transformation
Means of Digital Images
Freedom to Make: Radical Mundanity and its Anarchic Undertones in Female Making Practice
Following the Elephant-Nosed Fish: Making Things More Complicated as a Form of Resistance
The Epistemic Potential of Architectural Design: Investigating the Complex Problem of Urban Sustainability Through Spatial Practice
Co.Making – Design Participation in Transformation? An Experimental-Programmatic Research
Don’t Take out the Trash: Research Through Conceptual Designs in Design Education
Exceptional Futures vs. Exceptions to the Future: A Pataphysical Approach to Design Fiction
Utopia and Uchronia: A New Experimental Approach in Thinking about Time
Performative Dynamics in Designerly Economics
Cultural Stereotypes in Letter Forms in Public Space
Authors

Citation preview

NERD – New Experimental Research in Design

Board of International Research in Design, BIRD

Members: Michelle Christensen Michael Erlhoff Sandra Groll Wolfgang Jonas Gesche Joost Ralf Michel Marc Pfaff

Advisory Board: Lena Berglin Cees de Bont Elena Caratti Michal Eitan Bill Gaver Orit Halpern Denisa Kera Keith Russell Doreen Toutikian Michael Wolf John Wood

Michael Erlhoff Wolfgang Jonas (Eds.)

NERD – New Experimental Research in Design Positions and Perspectives

Birkhäuser Basel

CONTENTS On Design, Research and Pudding: An Essayistic Introduction

007

Some Additional Remarks on Rigour and/or Relevance in Design Research

012

Situating Design in the Confluence of Playfulness, Ageing, and Social Transformation

017

Means of Digital Images

038

Freedom to Make: Radical Mundanity and its Anarchic Undertones in Female Making Practice

055

Following the Elephant-Nosed Fish: Making Things More Complicated as a Form of Resistance

082

The Epistemic Potential of Architectural Design: Investigating the Complex Problem of Urban Sustainability Through Spatial Practice

097

Co.Making – Design Participation in Transformation? An Experimental-Programmatic Research

112

Michael Erlhoff

Wolfgang Jonas

Sajith Gopinath

Max Pietro Hoffmann

Melanie Levick-Parkin

Shintaro Miyazaki and Susanna Hertrich

Otto Paans

Laura Popplow

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Don’t Take out the Trash: Research Through Conceptual Designs in Design Education

131

Exceptional Futures vs. Exceptions to the Future: A Pataphysical Approach to Design Fiction

145

Utopia and Uchronia: A New Experimental Approach in Thinking about Time

171

Performative Dynamics in Designerly Economics

187

Cultural Stereotypes in Letter Forms in Public Space

206

Authors

235

Susanne Ritzmann

Søren Rosenbak

Helga Schmid

Kakee Scott

Irmi Wachendorff

CONTENTS 005

ON DESIGN, RESEARCH AND PUDDING: AN ESSAYISTIC INTRODUCTION Michael Erlhoff

1 A few Background Thoughts on NERD Let’s start from the back: 1.1 Design When talking about design, we have to be aware of its complexities. Everything is designed or at least affected by design. Every vehicle, every piece of clothing, traffic signs, our laptops, digital media, books, magazines and newspapers, our food, packaging, advertising, all forms of communication, the trees and parks in our cities, landscapes, services and so on, including sound, smell, taste and touch. One cannot escape design. This is also true for relationships, behaviours, ways of living and acting, for organisations, etc. because all of these are based on, or are fundamentally affected by, design. In other words: everything we regard as ‘normal’ is designed, is the result of design or is part of the design process. Any attempts to get away from this, for example by asking questions like ‘what is behind or beneath the surface’ are doomed to fail and will end up in the trap of academic banality. Only intensive experience and precise analysis of normality will open up the horizon of real understanding. And: design is a priori social because it has to be used and only exists when it is used. Design is, however, not always able to control or prescribe the ways in which people will use it. As design is only real when it is used, and as by using it, people will change it, design is neither a given nor something one simply has to accept. What is designed is open to all kinds of changes. The question is not that you live, run, work, or travel. The question is how you do these things. The relevant aspects here are the form, the conditions of work, of living, and of running: these conditions are designed.

1.2 Research The category of research describes exactly what it means: ‘re-search’. Indeed, the inevitable prospect of any research is that it will demand permanent searching, or,

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while searching, one must always be aware of the possibility that each result could also be different. You have to research again and again, changing the methods, criticising your inputs, being aware of fruitful contradictions. This includes avoiding the ideology of definitions, which are ideological because nobody knows about the end of anything (de finis means ‘from the end’). It also includes avoiding the nonsense of linear logical structures (from A to B, etc.) because, when establishing those, you need to know what the beginning was, and that there was a beginning in the first place (only religions can believe and describe this). Only when design research and research by design is inspired by a fundamental critique of those dogmatic mistakes mentioned above, can they sincerely rely on the social and emphatic dimension of design because design is deeply involved in social processes and can never escape from this. This includes that design research is always aware of the fact that it is part of other research and that it is not able to stand outside, to comment from an external standpoint. But, because this is so, design is much more capable of doing research and of staying away from ideologies.

1.3 Experimental Again, it might be helpful to remember the Latin origin of this category. You could translate it as: the brain, or just the competence of understanding and thinking, derives from perishing or even from catastrophe. It is the experience-based emancipation from any beliefs, from the misconception of assuming that we live in a harmonious world governed by mathematical rules: this means being aware of the necessity to take risks, of interventions and of somersaults in order to gain something like insights into what is happening and why it is happening. The advanced quality of experimentation is based on the fact that experimentation always changes situations, correlations, and conditions. Experimentation never takes anything as a given fact, rather, anything is open to change. That is: experimentation is both confusing and normal. Experimentation does not accept that rules and regulations are fixed. And experimentation is able to see mistakes and misunderstandings as potential qualities for innovation and for developing new perspectives.

1.4 New When trying to describe what is new, we venture into a very wide horizon. Sometimes we have the feeling that something is new, or we want something to be new – but we are never sure. Especially because you could say that everything we regard as new is, in some ways, the result of historical developments and you can always try

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to find out the rules for what is called new. The combination of evolution and revolution offers heavy turbulences. Even worse: the very moment at which something new arrives, it is no longer new (similar to the category of ‘now’ that never exists, although we like to think that something is happening now and that we have to grasp the ‘now’). On the other hand, the demand for something new is a strong challenge to gain something different, to get rid of traditional concepts and of simplified concepts of history and future. Therefore you need to ask for something new.

2 Some Reasons Behind the NERD Initiative Explicit design research (including all the debates about research by design, research through design or research on design) is quite young: it has only been happening for some 20 or 30 years (there might have been various types of design research before, but they were not explicitly called ‘design research’). Therefore, it is understandable that design research is still trying to find its identity, its particular competences as design research and the self-confidence to do research as design research. At the beginning, design research very much tried to imitate in particular the kind of research done in the natural sciences and in cultural studies. To put it even more precisely: at that time, design research followed, and it partly still does so today, an image of those sciences as doctrines constructed by design itself. Some of those involved in design research are still preaching the necessity of adopting those imagined attitudes of research in the natural sciences. These people ignore the fact that some natural scientists also used a certain playfulness, that some even produced fakes (similar to the category ‘to trump up’). In this context, it is both evident and problematic that design research tends to circle around the question of what it actually is or should be, which leads to boring and redundant meta-discussions. This is symptomatic of a lack of self-confidence because it only offers several dimensions of justifications (‘yes, we are allowed to do research in design – at least as long as we imitate the research in the natural sciences’) and many ideological statements (e.g. abstract declarations of being important), walking around very banal phrases of common conversations that claim attitudes of importance. Also symptomatic of the attempt of wanting to be important are narratives (teller machines) – these authoritarian ways to avoid discussions and criticism, and instead using buzzwords that reproduce academic fashions. This is also supported by believing in unique methods rather than using all the qualities of diverse methodological approaches. There is no real discourse, there is no understanding of social problems or of what is social and what is political.

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That is: those still-existing examples of design research just fall into the banality of deepness. They are totally irrelevant. Let’s change perspective for a moment: in the last few years, more and more people from the social and cultural sciences have started to recognise the growing importance of design (also in relation to finding a job). For this reason, these people tried to move into design research. This has partly been beneficial as it opened up the debates about design research and introduced different questions and probably a greater recognition of empirical methods. On the other hand, this development has brought up the problem that many of the people coming to design research from other fields do not really understand the complexity and competences of design and instead still follow very old-fashioned ideas of what design is and therefore fail to seriously work in design research. Even more complicated is the fact that at least some of these people are not aware, or don’t want to be aware, of their misunderstandings and lack of insight with regard to design – the most stupid ones even behave arrogantly towards design (although they would love to earn money by design). Maybe it will take some more years and serious experiences and discourses to change this and to involve the best aspects and people from all the other sciences to work in design research. There is hope.

3 The NERD Publication On the basis of the aforementioned considerations and equipped with both the necessary optimism and experience of what young researchers at international universities are working on and thinking about, BIRD decided, after thorough discussion, to publish a call for papers for a conference on new insights in design research to be held at the Braunschweig University of Art. The CfP was met with an overwhelming response: researchers from many different countries on all five continents submitted proposals for presentations. The majority of papers contained such excellent reflections that it was not easy for BIRD to select the final twelve. Only after the conference, in consideration of the outstanding quality of the presentations, the decision was taken to publish this book because, altogether, the contributions have fulfilled our hopes of showing new, truly open, experimental, and intelligent prospects of design research. The work presented in this book reflects the true complexity and diversity of design, as well as the different ways in which design influences societal, and also explicitly theoretical, realities and in which design research impacts on design itself. Furthermore, the work also shows an openness in the use of methods and analytical approaches, which is so urgently needed, while, where applicable, also intelligently accepting the necessity to deal with and to acknowledge blurriness and controversies. The researchers have been able to largely avoid any meta-theoretical banalities and instead seem to have comprehended what Johann

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Wolfgang von Goethe referred to when he stated: ‘While compliments you’re turning – idle stuff! Some useful thing might come to view.’ (Faust I). This may, at times, seem provocative, but what it actually attests to is the quality of open discourse, of serious playfulness and of an empirical mind. There is no beating about the bush: in this book, normality is the explicit object of analysis. ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating.’

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SOME ADDITIONAL REMARKS ON RIGOUR AND/ OR RELEVANCE IN DESIGN RESEARCH1 Wolfgang Jonas

Even if Michael Erlhoff has already left behind unpleasant things like ‘the ideology of definitions’ or ‘the nonsense of linear structures’ in favour of ‘the social and emphatic dimension of design’, I will come back to one of these supposedly out-dated questions: the ‘dilemma of rigour and relevance’. This is not a ‘lack of self-confidence’, but a serious concern. In inter- and transdisciplinary research settings, for example with engineers, medical doctors, or scientists, we are permanently confronted with this issue when arguing for the richness, the uniqueness, and the independence of design research approaches. Design research explores the ‘swampy lowlands’ of banal everyday problems. Approaches cover the wide range between what some call ‘artistic research’ on the one hand and ‘proper’ scientific design research on the other hand. The former often being a work of art (or design) plus some more or less related learned treatise. The latter being (for example) a sociological inquiry into some specific designrelated topic following rigorous scientific standards, which are not always appropriate for design. In consequence, the outcomes are sometimes disappointingly trivial. We are interested in the designerly tightrope walk between these two poles. ‘Project-based research’ is within this range, also ‘research through design’, and probably – certainly much more. One essential characteristic is the assertion that the social activity of design is the central medium of knowing and knowledge generation.

1 The Streetlight Effect2 There is a story that anyone interested in human knowing ought to know. It comes in many forms. Here is a version formulated as a joke: A policeman sees a drunken man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, ‘this is where the light is’.

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Noam Chomsky (Barsky 1997, 95) has a characteristically dry and precise version of the story: Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.

Bernstein first introduced the ‘dilemma of rigour or relevance’: Among philosophers of science no one wants any longer to be called a Positivist, and there is a rebirth of interest in the ancient topics of craft, artistry, and myth – topics whose fate Positivism once claimed to have sealed. It seems clear, however, that the dilemma, which afflicts the professions hinges not on science per se but on the Positivist view of science. From this perspective, we tend to see science, after the fact, as a body of established propositions derived from research. When we recognise their limited utility in practice, we experience the dilemma of rigour or relevance. But we may also consider science before the fact as a process in which scientists grapple with uncertainties and display arts of inquiry akin to the uncertainties and arts of practice. (Bernstein 1976, 48–49)

These reflections are not really new in design.

2 The Swampy Ground Donald Schön (1983) argues that […] professional knowledge is mismatched to the changing character of the situations of practice – the complexity, uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflicts which are increasingly perceived as central to the world of professional practice. In such fields as medicine, management, and engineering, for example, leading professionals speak of a new awareness of complexity, which resists the skills and techniques of traditional expertise. (12)

And he introduces the wonderful metaphor of the ‘swampy lowlands’ (Schön): The dilemma of ‘rigor or relevance’ arises more acutely in some areas of practice than in others. In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground where practitioners can make effective use of research-based theory and technique, and there is a swampy lowland where situations are confusing ‘messes’ incapable of technical solutions. The difficulty is that the problems of the high ground, however great

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their technical interest, are relatively unimportant to clients or to the larger society, while in the swamp are the problems of greatest human concern. […] There are those who choose the swampy lowlands. They deliberately involve themselves in messy but crucially important problems and, when asked to describe their methods of inquiry, they speak of experience, trial and error, intuition, and muddling through. Other professionals opt for the high ground. Hungry for technical rigour, devoted to an image of solid professional competence, or fearful of entering a world in which they feel they do not know what they are doing, they choose to confine themselves to narrowly technical practice. (42–43)

Dirk Baecker adds to the argument (2000)3: Design as a practice of not-knowing may be read in reference to diverse interfaces, but the interfaces between technology, body, psyche and communication are probably dominant. If these ‘worlds’, each described by a more or less elaborate knowledge, are brought into a relationship of difference, this knowledge disappears and makes room for experiments, which are the experiments of design. […] Not to take anything for granted here anymore, but to see potential of dissolution and recombination everywhere, becomes the playground of a design that eventually reaches into pedagogy, therapy, and medicine. (163)

Science starts to learn these lessons and presents concepts of experiential, practice-based learning such as ‘Transformative science’ (Schneidewind, Singer-Brodowski 2014) that are well known in design. The most radical position describes science as a form of design.

3 Science as a Subset of Design Ranulph Glanville (no year) argues, that (Scientific) research (whether experiment or theory) is a design activity. We design experiments, but we also act as designers in how we act in these experiments. We design the experiences and objects we find through experiment by finding commonalities (simplification): and we design how we assemble them into patterns (explanatory principles, theories). Looking at these patterns, we make further patterns from them – the theories of our theories. Thus, in doing science, we learn. The manner in which we do this is circular – conversational (in Pask’s sense): we act iteratively, until reaching self-re-inforcing stability or misfit. We test, until we arrive at something satisfying our desires – for stability/recognisability/repeatability/etc. Thus we arrive at our understandings. We test and test again, repeat with refinement and

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extend, and when driving to extremes we find our patterns no longer hold, we rejig them or start again from scratch. We adumbrate the special within the more general, coming to resting points where we say (as in design) ‘this is ok, I can get no further just now’. It is we who do it: we act. The role of observer-as-participant, in making knowledge, abstracting it to theory, theorising about theory; and in constructing the way we obtain this knowledge, then obtaining it accordingly, is central/essential/unavoidable/inevitable, and completely desirable. Without the active participation of this actor, there would be nothing that we would know. At every step, in every action, the observer/participant is actively designing. There is nothing passive, automatic, or without person (agent, scientist, designer), here. No matter how regrettable or distasteful this may appear to traditional scientists and others drilled in the convention (the distortion) of presentation by which science puts forward its discoveries and the claims it makes for them, it is a consequence of this examination of how we do science and what we do with what we learn from doing it. (Scientific) research is a branch of design, in which the designer is central, and through which we construct the world of (and according to) the scientific knowledge we design. So the act of design, as we understand and value it, has much to offer as an example of how science and scientific research might be in a new era: an era that designer-readers will recognise as their contemporary paradigm and which is how scientists, when we talk to them, recognise and characterise their own activity. Design, being the more general case, satisfies Occam’s razor for simplicity: as Einstein is to Newton, design is to science and scientific research.

4 Rigour as an Expression of Honesty The incompatible dualism of rigour or relevance is dissolving. The relationship between rigour and relevance is a symbiosis rather than a conflict. Theoretical rigour and practical relevance are complementary. It is Ranulph Glanville again, who aptly characterises rigour as the expression of honesty in design and in science (Glanville 2004): I was a member of a panel at a conference on ‘Reflective Practice’. We were asked how to handle rigour in reflexive research. The response was shocking: I was howled down by the larger part of the audience because, I was told, humans are not honest – which I had suggested was the key. (Whether or not we are honest has little to do with most arguments proposing honesty as a criterion for evaluation.) However, by the end of the session, almost everyone was talking about the need for honesty. Only a few die-hards found they could not see the central importance of honesty, their horizons limited by the overriding obsession that honesty is something humans don’t always do very well. In the end my argument had the appealing side-effect that, in winning over the vast majority of

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the audience, a shift from the knee-jerk reaction that promoted what I think of as the unattractive view of humans-as-bad became possible.

A wonderful perspective, not only for design research …

1 2 3

See Donald Schön (1983). See Yohan John (2016). Translation by the author.

References Baecker, Dirk (2000). ‘Wie steht es mit dem Willen Allahs?’ In: Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie 21, 1 (2000), pp. 145–176. Barsky, Robert F. (1997). Noam Chomsky. A life of dissent. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Bernstein, Richard J. (1976). The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Glanville, Ranulph (no year). ‘Re-searching Design and Designing Research’, developed from an earlier paper: ‘Why Design Research’, in Jacques, R. and Powell, J. (1980) (eds.). Design: Science: Method. Guildford: Westbury House. Glanville, Ranulph (2004). ‘Desirable Ethics’. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 11(2): 77–88. Retrieved from http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/archive/fulltexts/3457.html. John, Yohan (2016). ‘The “Streetlight Effect”: a metaphor for knowledge and ignorance’. https://axispraxis. wordpress.com/2016/03/24/the-streetlight-effect-a-metaphor-for-knowledge-and-ignorance/, last accessed 22 February, 2018. Schneidewind, Uwe and Singer-Brodowsky, Mandy (2014). Transformative Wissenschaft: Klimawandel im deutschen Wissenschafts- und Hochschulsystem. Weimar b. Marburg: Metropolis. Schön, Donald (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

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SITUATING DESIGN IN THE CONFLUENCE OF PLAYFULNESS, AGEING, AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Sajith Gopinath

Situating Social Transformation Design According to Michael Erlhoff (2016), Transformation Design is a tautology whose practice results in evolutionary and at times revolutionary shifts in perspectives and actions, which in turn transforms the nature of a given situation, object, agenda, etc. It could also be a deliberate act on the context and a situation sensitive approach aiming at piecemeal changes, retaining communication and connection to the context under study, as discussed by Nicolas Beucker (2016). British Design Council (2004) looks at Transformation Design as a human-centred interdisciplinary participatory design process intended to produce sustainable and desirable systemic changes, especially in the social areas. But, interestingly the above-mentioned perspectives exist in a contemporary society, which is primarily innovation based. There exists a strong bias of viewing innovation through the narrow lens of science and technology, with a clear dominance of information and computer disciplines. These fast-paced techno-scientific developments are being propagated as a panacea for most of the current maladies of our society, especially in dealing with the social. The evolution of systems thinking from a general systems theory, which is a status-quo-favouring, equilibrium-oriented process to the study of non-linear dynamic systems, which incorporates disequilibrium, self-organisation, unpredictability and emergence have given a whole new conceptual framework. If the potential of design, according to Simon (1969), is to help transfer an existing situation into a preferred one, what could be a possible methodology in this engagement with the social? Jonas (2016) tries to employ the Research Through Design (RTD) paradigm situated in an epistemic democracy as a possible model for creating change/transformation in a social situation. Yet changes, especially dealing with unpredictability, progression through a yet evolving or changing structure of commands is challenging even for the experienced designers, who can claim to be trained in dealing with uncertainties. This calls for the creation of spaces for experimentation, like a lab situation, for evolving a mature discussion, an idea or a product, which could then be released into a broader society. One here is then reminded of Rittel’s ten distinctions of a wicked problem (Rittel and Webber 1972) where especially two of them: 1. ‘Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false, but better or worse’ and 2. ‘The planner has

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no right to be wrong’ complicate a lot of perspectives. Thus in such a transformative engagement with the social, what is the space? Who are the players? And understanding of which parameters could help negotiate this situation in a more communicating manner thus linking the various agents in this system? I am proposing the creation of a playful social design interface as a way forward, which could act as a space that initiates this dialogue with the social, which we will arrive at in the later part of this paper.

Spaces of Influence: Creation of a Social Design Interface Simon (1969) refers to an artefact as an intersection of an internal environment, which constitutes the substance as well as the organisation of the artefact itself, and the outer environment or the surroundings in which it will operate. The purposefulness of an artefact can be ascertained by the appropriateness between these two environments. According to Jonas (2016), in social transformation design the artefact is considered as both designing (the actors involved) and at the same time being designed (the resulting form/interface/boundary). With more and more designers showing inclinations to work in more complex aspects of social concerns, Jones and van Patter (2009) advocate four distinct design domains, advancing from simple to complex with varying learning and skill stages in this progression. The four domains are described as Design 1.0 to Design 4.0, and the design process is contextualised as follows: • Design 1.0 – Artefacts and communication / Design as making / Traditional design practices. • Design 2.0 – Products and services / Design as value creation / Service design, user experience, design innovation, etc. • Design 3.0 – Complex, yet bound situations / Organisational transformation / Complex business or organisational strategies, Design of work practices, and • Design 4.0 – Complex, yet unbound social situations / Design of social systems, policy design, etc. The transition from a cause-effect based Newtonian scientific thinking to the complexity paradigm of non-linear science, with its focus on the understanding of dynamic interrelationships and interactions, explained by order through fluctuations principle of evolution of both physical as well as biological systems (Jantsch 1975) is worth remembering. It was subsequently extended onto the human, social, and cultural systems by Goldstein (2011).

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Following Ilya Prigogine, whose work in the area of physical chemistry resulted in the concept of dissipative structures, many social, network and system scientists could show how an order is created and retained in an open system, where matter and energy are exchanged between the system and its environments. Many works in the areas of mathematics, chemistry, and economics have gone on to give clear indications about the concept of a world, where non-linear dynamic systems act creating order and emergence rather than systems run down leading to deterioration and break up. Based on studies on the qualities of Complex Systems and Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), Nijs (2014), gives us clear indications as to the criticality of smaller happenings/influences as well as the importance of initial conditions on the possible evolution of the system over a period. Non-linear dynamic systems act on four basic assumptions (Nijs 2014, 79) as 1. Change is constant; rather than being stable, complexly ordered systems operate in extreme dynamic state. 2. Emergent systems are not reducible to their parts; their emergent behaviour cannot be understood by analysing the elemental parts. 3. Organising is a mutually interdependent process; in complex systems, there does not exist an actionreaction linear logic. Each element is interdependent and depends on another element for its identity and functioning. 4. The actions and outcomes in such a system are non-proportional. Design has been gaining attention as a candidate to deal with and give alternatives/directions to many complex social questions of varying dimension. Various design methods in turn act as spaces to formulate, test-out, recalibrate, and eventually put forth the authenticity of a design direction for a given context. In dealing with the social, I am proposing the creation of a particular interface, a space, which at this moment, one could call a social design interface. This exists neither completely within the designer’s domain of knowledge, skill or awareness nor in the capabilities of the social system, which is under study. As neither parties have a complete awareness regarding the exactness of the results coming out of the (design) process, this social design interface could act as the space initially getting transformed. This also can have certain benefits as well. Given with the fairly large time span, dialogues and commitments required for a transformation process, it could act as a space, removed from the immediate personal/groups agendas and pressures. A social design exercise usually involves multiple agents as well as agendas situated within, and at times, across the boundaries of the system, as discussed by Mouffe (2013) in reference to the current world order and the creation of a political order based on democratic agonism. Here the outcome, though arrived through consensus, is temporary, until a newer, hopefully, a better version, is negotiated. It is usually not easy to lay bare all the undercurrents and hidden agendas, still, it is important that one analyse the various factors that may influence the creation of such a systemic space, a living lab.

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The mapping of following aspects into this space could help construct it with trust, openness, effectiveness, and transparency. 1.

Situating the actors: This is a very broad mapping of all the agents who are getting involved in this activity, directly or indirectly. Their roles, abilities or lack of some, position, standings in the society, affiliations, skills, potential influences, etc. are registered. One of the ways this could be done is by creating a representative metaphor or a character that represents these qualities, like an Avatar. This is a challenging step considering multiple roles people play in a social setup and probably biases resulting out of certain interactions dominating the mapping. Also, there could be issues related to subjective projection of certain relationships rather than being able to arrive at objective qualities. 2. Sensing the interactions: Once the characters are defined, this stage is about defining the space of action, more like a playground occupied with players, spectators, officials, communicators/broadcasters, higher officials, casual observers, and possible troublemakers. This interlinking of characters and abilities with their agendas could give a lot of clarity to the obvious relations but also regarding the undercurrents and the surprises. Even for a basic, closed system, such a mapping can be very large. If this moves on to accommodate social qualities, such mapping of interactions could be way too complex. It could be of interest to investigate a designerly way of representing the data, relationships, actors, and processes. Akrich (1997, 208) talks about creating a specific script, like a movie script, about the interaction of a designed object and the actors while it operates in the social. Mattelmäki (2006) discusses the interesting possibility of using design probes in generating meaningful information, which is personal in nature through a self-documentation process. Many of these techniques are already applied in design education, in a controlled environment of a classroom with a trained instructor and students. The need for discussion and deliberation within the group through an accessible and democratic communication channel is significant in collating only the critical interactions. 3. Mapping the precedents: This understanding of history, actions and occurrences of the past will be a valuable library of information (factual and otherwise) to help construct a more

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reflective (not concrete) picture regarding the area, its strengths, complexities, diversities, underlying myths, structures, and facts. Here one could be reminded about Ackoff’s (1981) four orientations to planning (i.e. reactive, inactive, preactive, proactive), especially about preactivists (planners who are unsatisfied with past as well as the present conditions and seek change) and interactive planners (future subjected to creation through stakeholder discussion) with the second one being more preferred with a correction of their stance than seeking the past for looking into the future. 4. Mapping the flux factors: These are tangible qualities yet acquiring very intangible propositions due to the nature, position and interaction within the system. They have very strong leverage point in the course of action so that any transformation of these tangible factors into the intangibles results in repercussions of strong magnitude, both positive and otherwise. Probably this could be a critical factor influencing the dynamics of a non-linear system. One way of looking at this flux factor is the uncertainty or unruliness in the system, premeditated or otherwise e.g. sociopolitical movements in a stable system, a certain electoral mandate in a democratic system pushing the system to uncertainty. It can also be an individual with a very specific mandate, working for or against the forward direction of a process, influencing its outcome. But another way of looking at these flux factors is the presence of agents capable of creative or innovative thinking and problem-solving. Such thought agents are capable of initiating grass-root movements using already existing resources within the system e.g. playwrights or authors, using local languages and stories to make critical observations on the conduct and progress of a social system. Hence flux factors represent an element of uncertainty, which works with the system to give unpredictable results. It can be a strong player with a huge local clout but can also be an irrelevant trickster who can derail the process for an extremely self-serving, disruptive reason. 5. Situating quality vs. quantity debate: Here quality stands for a more complex set of attributes incorporating diversity, uniqueness, flexibility, etc. leading to a certain value perception encompassing the look, feel, handling, sensitivity etc. In social situations, due to the influence of multiplicity of factors with each having their own strong rationale; uniformity

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and conformity are challenging to achieve and may not be desired. This can also be an alternate concept against a mechanistic way of production and distribution (where subsequent stages of a process create the value i.e. value as a progression) where the value is generated through co creation and sharing (value as a part of an intrinsic process). The space in that way accommodates for existing as well as novel possibilities of thinking and acting. 6. Connecting science and senses: The debate on the superiority of an easy, discernible, predictive logic of a mechanistic Newtonian systemic view is slowly getting challenged by the complexity science principles leading to the acceptance of emergence and synergy as outcome directions. There is still a lot of challenges ahead because of the difficulty to evaluate and quantify the outcome directions from a qualitative initiative. Still, this space need not be one, which proves the dominance of one way of thinking over the other. There is a need to be logical, analytical, and projective at the same time not losing on the intangible, intuitive, effervescing, and serendipitous.

Exploring Possibilities with Playfulness How should one define play? Is it an activity? Or a set of activities? Or a certain momentary act, e.g. like hiding and surprising someone? Is it only about fun? Is it about any specific age group? Is it regulated by a space, e.g. playground? Or as in belief systems, the play of fate? Is it about the play of words as employed by a writer or existing in the technical terms of a mechanic i.e. play between the gears in a machine? Play, unfortunately, is a concept widely associated with a certain type of player, i.e. children. Then animals also play, adults, probably less evident than children. Having an object and its manipulation as in the case of a toy is a play. But isn’t daydreaming also a play, a play of a pseudo-realistic set of events. Reading out loud can be considered as play when it is done from a children’s book sitting in a relaxed corner of one’s school, at the same time it will be considered as a nuisance and will attract reprimand if the same is done while sitting in a classroom. Even challenging an authority, through a subversive act is considered playful if it doesn’t involve hurting or doing undue harm. Is there a serious play and a casual play? Is there a play in the rough and tumble act of young puppies, where one will be biting a body part of another leading to a howl, yet there is no blood. So was it a real bite? Or was it a pretend? So when can one consider it is a play and when not? There can be multiple

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such instances where one can easily believe on both sides of a story as true, yet not able to arrive at a specific conclusion about the exact nature of play. This ambiguity of play has troubled not only the casual seekers of play but also experts in equal amounts. Though with the spread of gaming related studies and scholarly discussions, the definition has become much broader and inclusive. There exists now a wide range of scholarship about the play, majorly due to the advent of digital gaming and interaction design. Interestingly, play is also studied as an anthropological as well as strategy and planning activity, especially in warfare. It is also widely studied to understand the concept of cooperation and competition (as zero-sum games as well as cooperative games) in business and society, thanks to game theory. Johan Huizinga (1971) discusses of play as one of the critical formative elements in human culture. For him, play is utterly absorbing, yet not a serious activity, happening in an area separated from daily life and having its own specific qualities of time and space. This aspect was later extended into a concept of the Magic Circle, a temporary world within actual world acting as a transformative space made of special rules. Definition of play and classification of games by Roger Caillois (1961), a French sociologist, talks about features like free/voluntary (playing as a non-obligatory quality), uncertain (neither the process nor the end can be predicted), rule-based (consisting of specific rules) and make belief possibility (a space created for another reality). The ambiguity in defining play due to the varying nature of players, play forms, play scholarships by Smith (1997) is a critical reference in the study of play. Smith arrived at seven sets of rhetorics involving progress, imaginary, self, fate, identity, power, and frivolous to situate the aspects involving play. It can be briefly captured as follows: As progress For children; European enlightenment and ensuing social progress. Rational human being as the torchbearer of this progress. Children and their healthy childhood as the initiator or building block of this future. Importance of nurturing innate qualities of childhood e.g. explore, dream, dramatise, construct, repeat, optimise, etc. 2. For adults; to keep fit, tide over cognitive decline, maintenance, etc. 3. For animal play; about training, practising, perfecting, optimising, etc. for survival, growth, and evolution.

1.

1.

As imaginary Imagination as an intellectual pursuit in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and its influence in arts, literature, and thoughts. Languages (Shakespearean writing)

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and symbolism (surrealism) starting to engage with a more expanded meaning base. 2. Imaginary as a freedom provider co-existing with imaginary as a binding agent (advertisement, propaganda, moving images of a dominating type, e.g. Hollywood). As selfhood As a subjective experience, an attitude, an opposition to the tight regimentation of work, as freedom, as an expression. 2. Ludic self as a post Renaissance creation, capable of being in contrary positions to understand the self, investigation of the real self through psychoanalytic traditions, socio‑cultural and political movements with a focus on exploring the self (countercultural movements of the nineteen-sixties). 3. Self-mastery, the exciting concept of a free individual who is imaginative, energetic, and freely intending.

1.

As fate As luck and chance (lottery, matches), unpredictability and chaos bringing phenomenon working alongside a rational self. 2. God or an unknown hand defining life’s happenings and at times, the future.

1.

As identity A sense of community or a group sharing a common concern or agenda, collective behaviour. 2. Can be an old tradition (caste, ethnic group) with timehonoured rituals or a new collectives (Facebook group, club membership) with unique expressions, festive gatherings.

1.

As power 1. A sense of community and collectivity, representation of a conflict as a play and careful cultivation of the status of such players, the creation of a hero myth. 2. Creation of stars or heroes in sports, athletics, competitions, etc.

1.

As frivolous Activities of the idle or the fooling around quality, contrary to the modern day work ethics.

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2. From an ancient perspective the role of court jester as a careful yet intelligent critique of the happenings in the society controlled by an absolute monarch. Kane (2011) classifies Smith’s rhetoric into a modern and a traditional perspective. The modern vision consisting of progress, imagination, and selfhood sees the players as the ultimate embodiment of human freedom. They move through the world with imagination, passion and confidence. Players are constantly dreaming of new possibilities, in the midst of constraint and routine, and they have the energy to make some of them, at least, a reality and traditional vision consisting of fate, power and identity sees them as determined by forces largely beyond their control. They are caught up in games of chance and contest, which they must respond to as best as they can. They must play their part in collective rituals and festivities. And they must play simply for the sake of playing – whether they be shamans, fools or tricksters. (39)

The paradoxical perspectives dealing with freedom and determinism on one side and necessity and chance on the other provided us with an idea of the range of existence possible for a player, choosing one of the above sectors or ideally coexisting in this paradox, negotiating them on a daily basis to evolve as an ethical player (Kane 2011). These approaches are quite broad and non-directive. The quintessential widely used definition is that of play as progress, looking at play as a psychological and developmental quality, seen amongst animals and young children as proposed by Brown (2009).

Regarding Playfulness According to Sicart (2017), with the advent of novel technological devices into the daily living, the concept of initiating an emotional connection with the user started taking effect in order to make the devices feel more approachable and less intimidating. This is widely visible in the way an aspect of play is added to the operation of an interface in a mobile or a laptop e.g. the animated closure of a tab or animations while streaming content. This layering of an otherwise functional objective with a more engaging activity is what can be called as playfulness. This is not limited to a technology-centric approach, but also in society, business or communication. One doesn’t want to play in all the given situations, yet wants the qualities of play to be made available. In other words, if play can be considered as an activity, then playfulness becomes the attitude, which is driving the play act to sustain and connect with an object or a situation. My own classifications (Gopinath 2013) of various elements that may constitute playfulness are as below. The basic idea (a version extended from 2013) is to identify

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certain unique qualities if mapped effectively and with a broader standpoint, could help us appreciate play in its fullness: a)

b)

c)

d)

Flexibility: The possibility of being agile, modular, capable of creating multiple options within an existing scenario. It is a constantly malleable yet non-breakable quality to transform and rearrange. It can be a physical as well as a cognitive quality. It is a concept of framing, wherein a unique final frame evolves from the collage of diverse frames. This evolved frame is still a work in progress, acquiring a transient quality and may remain so. And there can never be a possible correct or final frame from the bricolage of impressions or options. This can be an extremely challenging space as constancy and permanence are knowingly challenged at intervals. Immersion: It is about creating spaces and situations, which are accessible and endearing providing intrinsically motivated experiences to the user or a group of users. It is about the quality of an unabated attention and being lost in a process without being worried about the final outcome. This indicates a drawing-in quality, which has to be accommodating at the same time probing. Hence one needs to create an atmosphere that encompasses a certain tension, which motivates, challenges, nurtures, and propels the entrants. Curiosity: The readiness to find answers to situations. It can be both an intrinsic or a taught quality speaking about a gradual/constant questioning and transition. But, it also is an affordance by the situation where, on seeking, answers could be found. It depends on the power equations already existing in a given situation, which permit or promote a questioning attitude. This, in turn, influences the environment to be explored as it is or creation of newer attributes through external influences, which are again brought out for further analysis. Surprise: The possibilities to transform structures with a sudden change of situation, yet capable of being brought back to normality and continuity. In itself, this could be a one-time phenomenon in a controlled environment. It then calls for a change in attributes of a specific situation to re-explore the phenomenon effectively. This works against constancy and long-term extrapolation as it does not favour pattern formation of a certain kind. It builds in a sense of expectation prior to an event (of surprise) and even afterwards, creating an expectation of a similar nature as either few (element of power)

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e)

f)

g)

h)

or none (element of fate) have the idea about the future phenomenon (of surprises). Sensorial quality: Involves the use and manipulation of all or some senses. It can be a way of training/learning, by collecting information about an environment. But it also can be providing back to the environment with more elements, which could again be sensed, perceived and mapped. As perception has a subjective at the same time cultural and semiotic quality, this reflexive quality makes it a suitable condition for evolutionary processing given to the constant exchange with the environment of the system. Relativity: Deals with the creation of a state of being open, accommodating, and inclusive. It talks about sharing, caring, and co-creation where the synergy of the whole is replacing the individual and the specific. This does tend to be utopian in its conception but has far-reaching impact in the actual operational situation. The ability to create and sustain groups (with divergent qualities) and manage their internal dynamics is feasible due to the strong foundation of an empathetic viewpoint within this outlook. Challenges: Talks about the ability to be stretched, yet within the limits of breaking is important in sustaining play. Csikszentmihalyi (1996) explains the concept of flow as a unique state of mind wherein a person performing an activity is fully immersed with a dedicated focus, concentration and a great involvement without being aware of the transition of space and time. This zone of flow happens when the challenges a person undertakes are directly in proportion to their abilities to undertake the task. The person may lose interest while engaging with too difficult (overwhelmed) or too easy challenges (boredom). Yet challenges have to be investigated from a motivational and contextual perspective by assessing the strength, reach, and impact on the intended audience. Communication: The ability to initiate, transmit, share, and transfer information, creating feedback loops for planned, emergent, and autopoietic improvements. A fundamental quality for sustaining a play system is the regular transfer of information between the components in a dialogical manner rather than being autocratic. Creation of spaces for communication, storing, and retrieving the information, contextspecific content generation, manipulation, and redistribution of content (keeping in mind scope for propaganda and

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i)

j)

subversion) and accommodation of negative feedbacks are necessary for long-term survival of the system. Prolong redundancy: This refers to the possibility to create long-lasting values and decipherable meaning in a given context involving physical as well as conceptual factors. Here it will be important to consider the nature of interactions and the constituent structures present in the area. For example for a linear progressive activity, the values created are of an additive logical quality, whereas a more complex activity leads to emergent or co-created values and surprise evolutions. There is a chance of arriving at a unique meaning or a co-creation of meaning based on the specific conditions. With play, there is a chance of accommodating even the conditionality of a meaning (changing meanings). The concept of a collective truth or a myth is as important as a subjective truth. The need for planning of an activity, educating the actors, and providing space for accommodating multiple meanings has to be done prior during the planning phase to create long-lasting value. Customisation: It primarily looks into selfhood and means of engaging with it. It is a meaning-making process employing elements either self-generated or having an external origin carefully placed into an existing scenario. It can be in the form of a small inexpensive figurine placed inside an automobile or an expensive entire custom-built automobile. The object onto which customisation is done is able to accommodate this new addition and the eventual outcome could be an awareness, a social statement, an ego booster, a ludic fun, or a mockery. The chances of value generated to be more intrinsic in cases where the fabrication of the object and the process of addition is done by the eventual user. For example children repairing their cloth dolls with stop-gap rudimentary stitching techniques, yet associating a greater longing once the same toy is misplaced or destroyed. The interaction is more intimate because of the emotional connection generated as a result of a process having its own challenges and fulfilment.

The possibilities of playfulness can be explored by either the presence of only one of these elements or may be a multiple of them, working in unison. A very interesting concept of the transformative power of play, where the rigid structures in a scenario or system are influenced and altered by the free movement of play possibilities giving rise to emergent and unpredictable results is discussed by Zimmerman and Salen (2004). Hence, one feels, there exists a possibility to look at transforming

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the above discussed social design interface through a play design based methodology to create self-motivated, intrinsic, meaningful interactions, which are socially created and directed.

Placing Playfulness in the Social Context of Active Ageing: Creation of a Playful Social Design Interface The active ageing policy framework (2002) addresses the aspects of health, participation, and security to enhance the quality of life of an ageing population across the countries. Active ageing applies to both individuals and population groups. It allows people to realise their potential for physical, social, and mental wellbeing throughout the life course and to participate in society according to their needs, desires, and capacities while providing them with adequate protection, security, and care when they require assistance. Active here indicates a continued participation in the social, economic, spiritual, cultural, and civic affairs and not just to be physically active or participate in the labour force. There is an emphasis on independence, interdependence as well as in intergenerational linkage (Holstein et al. 2010). The key deter­ minants of the concept of active ageing are social (social support, absence of violence and abuse, education and literacy), economical (income, social protection, work), health and social services (health promotion and disease prevention, curative services, long-term care, mental healthcare), behavioural (tobacco, physical activity, healthy eating, oral health, medications, adherence, etc.), personal (biology and genetics, psychological factors) and physical (physical environments, safe housing, falls, clean water, air, food, etc.) aspects governed by cross cutting determinants of culture and gender. UN has proposed a policy response based on UN principles for old people guided by independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment, and dignity. The decisions are based on understanding the determinants of active ageing formed on three basic pillars of health, security, and participation. By situating the context of ageing in the social design interface, one takes a more encompassing perspective. As a social reality, elderly with a storehouse of experiences, awareness, abilities, and information are narrowly drawn into a contemporary rhetoric of burden, inabilities, seclusion, detachment, and greedy consumers. This is extremely one-sided and often overlooks their capabilities. Though Capability Approach of Sen (Nussbaum and Sen 1993) could be a way forward connecting ageing, capabilities, value and wellbeing, the possibility to engage with the design of social interface through the potential of playfulness employing qualities like intrinsic motivation, co-creation, relativity, immersion, customisation, etc. offers a new set of opportunities. Potential of play as a communicative action is not only about creation and consumption, but also the propagation of an activity. In situating ageing in such a context, what could be the methodology? Another question

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is whether this interface could represent a modified form of Magic Circle as described by Huizinga? Based on these aspects I am proposing the formation of a Playful social design interface, a type of playscape, which works by integrating the possibilities and challenges of ageing with the power and potential of playfulness. The following are the factors, which could constitute the creation of such an interface. For the sake of convenience, the interaction to the concept of playfulness can be explained first by establishing an imaginary scenario and thereby linking each of the factors to the scenario leading to possibilities of engagement. Scenario: There exists a flat system having people with intergenerational profiles and abilities. The young families have the couples working until evening and their children go to the playschool till their parents return from work. The elderlies group consists of people with diverse professional experiences, abilities and inclinations. For example a person was working as a teacher, another was a carpenter, someone liked baking and cooking and another person was working in a store and other was good in storytelling. Most of them are in the age group of 60 to 75 years. During one of the society meetings, the elderly expressed their desire to remain active and do something they could for the society and themselves. This resulted in the process of mapping the abilities of interested persons with tasks they were ready to take part in. Hence each of the following three factors makes use of elements of playfulness (which is explained beforehand) to create meaningful and deeper interactions between the society and the aged, considering the abilities of the old and the system they are operating in: 1.

The concept of the power of local (The snooker perspective): The power and local placement possibilities of each ball on a snooker table are significant in defining a dynamic game like snooker, apart from the skill of a player. Likewise, the strength and possibilities with a focus on the potential of local connections (a network of potential local neighbourhoods) could be of interest while engaging with ageing. The unique abilities of aged could be brought out to function in a social network either working in tandem with the already existing systems or as special standalone objectives. If one extrapolates over the above scenario, the volunteering elderly person(s) could receive the children on arrival from school in a space where children could relax. They could also organise some hobby workshops, gardening, cooking sessions, or helping with home-works. One could devise creative strategies for motivation as well as remuneration for such situations like intergenerational evenings where the young families take elderly for an outing or a point system, which an elderly could accumulate to redeem for getting medical check, buying groceries,

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support in local transport, the young people can teach the elderly to use modern communication devices, etc. Playful social design interface acts in creatively formulating this system on the basis of engagement and customised remuneration for activities, strategies for establishing a connection between the old and the young through communication and relativity, explore topics that are immersive yet suitably challenging to the elderly as well as the children, etc. 2.

The concept of meaning biases (The broken mirror perspective): For a group standing and looking directly onto a huge vertically hung shattered mirror, each one might see their own reflection on the basis of their relative position, the nature of crack, distance, the angle of viewing, etc. Hence each one has a very different relation of themselves with respect to the group, as a result of these ways of seeing. For each viewer, it might lead to the unique meaning outcomes. Similarly in the case of ageing (Ageing: Exploding the myths 1999), due to the lack of awareness of the society about the broad spectrum that the aged occupy (regarding their abilities, inclinations, capacities, interests, etc.), there exists similar meaning biases and aspects pertaining to Ageism (Nelson 2002). Hence there is a need to make aware and even educate about these biases and create platforms where society could interact while engaging with ageing. This communication can take the form of a) locating and informing the self within the social system of the aged (micro), b) situating the interrelations of various agents within the system (meso), c) locating the social system in the larger system (macro).

This could be an empathy building stage, which could use the following factor of playfulness: flexibility, relativity, prolonging redundancy, communication, sensorial quality, and customisation. It can be achieved through role-playing, mapping and defining a fantasy narrative, scenario building, etc. The contents of these narratives could have aspects across the domain concerning the aged; safety, security, connectivity (inter- vs. independence, caring, communicating), relativity (empathy, identity, assistance), valuation (self, shared, co-created). Mapping these interactions on to the scenario gives rise to the following opportunities, e.g. an annual performance where roles are reversed by both aged and young, the creation of a postcard over this theme of role reversal or publishing a yearbook of events where such interactions transpired acting as a documentation and a source of inspiration, etc.

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3.

The dynamic equilibrium concept (The tightrope walker perspective): Being positioned at a height, a tightrope walker adjusts one’s limbs and body positions constantly while moving forward on a single string to successfully complete an act. There is a constant creation of a dynamic equilibrium as a part of this movement. This process takes into account opposites (balance or lack of it) and contradictions (walking on a narrow rope) effectively for its success. Similarly, the area of ageing is also fraught with such contradictions, whether related to informed or ill-informed issues concerning: support, resources, knowledge, health, care benefits, abilities, capacities, gender, substance abuse, dependency, etc. Each of these topics can be fuzzy and complex thus being part of either side of an issue. For example looking at abilities; a person can be less physically abled and forgetful while growing old, but it needn’t affect the basic intellectual abilities to manage the daily living aspects. Many of these issues are ethical as well. The element of playfulness concerning flexibility, immersion, curiosity, surprises, communication, relativity, sensorial quality can be used to find a point of discussion and resolution. Going by the earlier scenario, an elderly person having the skill of a carpenter could be able to create hobby items or small toys or can guide interested children to create an object with a certain amount of complexity, which the elderly person himself won’t be able to manage due to excessive strain on his body. This produces a unique co-creative situation, which looks at abilities from both angles.

Creating a Reflexive Playful Interface The entire system could be thought of as an extension to the Research Through Design (RTD) model involving the wider context, the inquiring system, and the resulting driving force. Following Jonas (2016), in social transformation design, the artefact acquires both designing (the actors involved) as well as the designed (the form, interface, boundary) quality. Here the playful social design interface (Fig. 1) forms like a magic circular space (based on Huizinga’s magic circle) between the system under study (ageing) and the wider context in which the system is placed (society) which is again located in a larger systemic space (culture, region, habits, etc.). A four-stage transformative step will help explain the functioning of the reflexive playful interface.

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1 The reflexive playful interface

1.

2.

Dissolution: In the initial stages of transformation, one can assume this interface to encapsulate the system under study. At this stage, the functioning of the interface needs not be effective or at least efficient. But as time progresses and more productive exchanges happen, this interface starts to dissolve into smaller, manageable, yet self-sustaining units and moves deeper into the context under study. Nucleation: It is ideal to have all the elements of the playful social design interface present inside these self-sustaining units, still, the presence of some of the elements could also

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3.

4.

be helpful in managing the interaction. This can be attributed to the interrelation of the elements in its conception. Further, with time, more fractions could happen, eventually be leading to a local saturation, which can be called a nucleation stage. Stabilisation: This is a state of dynamic equilibrium. With an even spread of the playful interface within the system, constantly exchanging between the wider context and the specific ageing concern, more equilibrium conditions can be possible, but probably with a local flavour. This stage acquires this dynamicity due to the formation of unique self-managed play agents (change agents), capable of managing and carrying forward the activities resulting from the interaction with the playful interface and the local system. These agents can be people, organisation, services, or even narratives. It is assumed or rather expected that the play agents are created as a result of local saturation rather than at the beginning of the process. As contexts and issues are local, though having a broader appeal, it is better that the design solutions are locally generated, tested and stabilised (may be corroborated with other systems or best practices). Re-engagement: Hence, with the passage of time, the larger system will consist of more empathetic and receptive agents (locally aware), capable of proactively tackling a newer situation effectively with the play design logic strongly in place. It is expected that not all self-sustaining units will survive and create play agents as factors previously discussed in the social design interface like the actors, the flux factors, etc. could influence the creation of a local eco-system. Re-engagement of many such local systems with the larger system will result in providing a deeper awareness of local qualities, which at the same time is eclectic in its nature. The possibilities for a social transformation in such scenarios can be assumed to be more sustainable and value-rich as the conditions of reengagement are based on the presence of play agents who are reflexive in nature.

Challenges: Preparing for Play Playfulness in combination with its inherent ambiguity is a challenging concept in itself. To situate playfulness in a social context, one has to overcome the percep-

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tions of play, as trivial, non-productive, done by children, not confining to the work ethics, etc. The following are the critical design factors one has to consider for creating the culture of a playful social interface: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Space (mental/physical). The need for such a space where people are free to explore and find out is one of the fundamental aspects. The openness to try out things without the fear of mistakes, at the same time have possibilities to learn and extrapolate, a form of conceptual Utopia, a Reallabor, should be put in place. The uncertainty of investing in such a space will come from both intellectual and physical dimension. Access. The possibilities to make use of this space by all the concerned and interested parties without any difficulty is to be ascertained. The difficulties could be in the form of gender, social status, place in social hierarchies, proximity to power, bureaucracies, etc. Awareness. The knowledge regarding the presence of such an opportunity through a suitable open mode of communication to the entire social space is expected. It primarily should be a responsibility of the formal structures of the systems (government, bureaucracies, organisations, other networks, etc.) than an individual’s initiative. The use of informal channels could only add on to the spread, but need not be the emphatic one for communication. Abilities/Skills. There is a need to map out and thus com­ municate to the specific skills and abilities of the individual player. There could be the possibility of group formation on the basis of skill sets, which needs to be accommodated. There could also be standalone specially skilled players who might alter the scope of play. There should be opportunities to recognise value-generating skillsets of individuals and groups for effective motivation. Assistance/Training. The possibility for an open transfer of information and thought processes within the system with the help of both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated learning opportunities should be provided for effective functioning. An ideal condition will be a player-organised choice of learning objectives. A transparent network for sharing of information and appraisal will be a significant factor driving the system forward. Environment. This refers to the creation of a recognisable culture of play. A recurring conversation about the potential of

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play within the different areas of the play system with the help of sharing of good examples, best practices, unique experimentations, etc. helps to retain a constant buzz in and around the system. A failure of culture creation could impact the functioning of many of the above-mentioned aspects of playfulness.

Conclusion Play as a design possibility is sparingly employed by conventional design disciplines. Though one can find a lot of current interest about play in the area of gaming studies, there is a lot to learn and imbibe from this fascinating process of seeking and connecting. As an extremely important human quality, play has to reclaim its space within the contemporary rhetoric concerning culture, society, interaction, and reflection in a more emphatic manner. Social design and play design have a lot of commonalities as well. Both exist and even thrive in a non-linear, complex, emergent, adaptive systemic space. It speaks about exploration, understanding, and creation with a context-specific logic from a fundamentally human-centric point of view. The challenges and limitations of a linear, rational, fact-finding, deductive logical systemic inquiry are getting extremely obvious while dealing with complex problems. Playfulness (as a quality and an attitude) even could offer interesting directions in the construction of a second-order cybernetic system with an autopoietic perspective, especially from the source or energy system, which drives the process forward. If adaptation speaks about ability or capacity of a system to respond to changes within a system on a micro scale, evolution speaks about this adaptation on a macro level. McMillan (2008, 65) defines evolution as the survival of the most adaptive rather than survival of the fittest. Glanville (2007) speaks about the ability of design to maintain conversations (self-conversation) in the propagation of second-order cybernetics and about the power of performance, where the observer in the system becomes an active agent in the observation. This is a core concept of immersion in playfulness. Another aspect is regarding the presence of errors, or as per Jonas (2007, 1372) the emergence of essential forms and substances from the accidental, as the driving forces in a second order system. It is a constant movement between limits, which is very similar to the adaptability or flexibility concept of playfulness as explained before. In the case of a self-creative (autopoietic) system, can flexibility along with the other mapped elements of playfulness (the concept of error) be the driving force in sustaining the system, the creator of a deterministic chaos? This needs further investigation and exploration. As one concedes about many social design projects, Designing a playful social design interface will always be a work in progress; evolutionary, open to interpretations and accommodating new perspectives with time.

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References Ackoff, R. L. (1981). Creating the corporate future. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ‘Active Ageing: A policy framework (2002)’. Retrieved 14 December 2017 from: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ hq/2002/WHO_NMH_NPH_02.8.pdf. ‘Ageing: Exploding the myths (1999)’. Retrieved 18 December 2017 from: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1999/ WHO_HSC_AHE_99.1.pdf. Akrich, M. (1997). ‘The Description of Technical Objects’. In: Bijker, W. E., and Law, J. (eds.), Shaping Technologies/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change. The MIT Press, Cambridge/London, 205–224. Beucker, N. (2016). ‘Transformation Design: a piecemeal Situation Change’. In Jonas, W., Zerwas, S., Anshelm, K. (eds.), Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser. Brown, S., and Vaughan, C. (2009). Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination. Penguin NY. Caillois, R. (1961). Man, Play and Games. University of Illinois Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper Collins. Design Council (2004). ‘Red Paper 02. Transformation Design’. Retrieved 15 December 2017 from: https:// www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/document/red-paper-transformation-design.pdf. Erlhoff, M. (2016), ‘Owls to Athens, Or: The Discreet Charm of Transformation Design. An Essay’. In Jonas, W., Zerwas, S., von Anshelm, K. (eds.). Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser. Glanville, R. (2007). ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better: the Cybernetics in Design and the Design in Cyber­ netics’. Kybernetes, Vol. 36, Issue: 9/10, 1173–1206. Goldstein, J. (2011). ‘Emergence in complex systems’, In Allen, P., Maguire, S., and McKelvey, B. (eds.). The Sage Handbook of Complexity and Management. Los Angeles: Sage, 65–78. Gopinath, S. (2013). ‘The analogy of play. The Trellis’, Vol. 2, Issue: 8, 81–84. Holstein, M. B., Parks, J., and Waymack, M. (2010). Ethics, Aging, and Society: The Critical Turn. Springer Publishing Company, 65–82. Huizinga, J. (1971). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Beacon Press. Jantsch, E. (1975). Design for Evolution, Self-organization and planning in the life of Human Systems, George Braziller, New York. Jonas, W. (2007). ‘Research through DESIGN through research: A cybernetic model of designing design foundations’, Kybernetes, Vol. 36, Issue: 9/10, 1362–1380. Jonas, W. (2016). ‘Social Transformation design as a Form of Research Through Design (RTD): Some Histo­ rical, Theoretical and Methodological Remarks’. In Jonas, W., Zerwas, S., von Anshelm, K. (eds.). Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser. Jones, P. H., and Van Patter, G. K. (2009). ‘Design 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0: The Rise of Visual SenseMaking’. In Next­ Design Leadership Institute in NextD Journal. Retrieved 16 December 2017 from: http://humantific. com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/NextD_Design_4.0.pdf. Kane, P. (2011). The Play Ethic: A Manifesto for a Different Way of Living. London: Pan Macmillan. Mattelmäki, T. (2006). Design probes. DA Dissertation. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki. McMillan, E. M. (2008). Complexity, Management and the Dynamics of Change: Challenges for Practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (2013). Agonistics: Thinking The World Politically. London: Verso. Nelson, T. D. (2002). Ageism stereotyping and prejudice against older persons. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Nijs, D. (2014). Imagineering the Butterfly Effect: Complexity and Collective Creativity in Business and Policy: Designing for Organizational Emergence. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 80–83. Nussbaum, M., and Sen, A. (eds.) (1993). The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rittel, H. W. J., and Webber, M. M. (1972). ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning’. Working Paper No. 194, Institute of Urban and Regional Development 194, University of California, Berkley. Sicart, M. (2017). Play Matter: Playful Thinking Series. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Simon, H. A. (1969, 1981,1996). The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smith, B. S. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. Harvard University Press. Zimmerman, E., and Salen, K. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, 305–307.

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MEANS OF DIGITAL IMAGES Max Pietro Hoffmann

With the rise of digital techniques and technology since the 1980s, photography has changed radically. For a long time the medium of photography seemed to be in a crisis. But against all expectations, photo-based images seem more omnipresent than ever before. We encounter them in almost all situations of our daily life and are an integral part of our digital actions and thinking. At no other point in history was there a comparable production and consumption of digital photographic images. The essential difference to their analogue predecessors is not only a change in the digital structure and production, but also the way in which images are distributed. Looking at this resulting new approach and an altered view on photographic images in general, the medium of photography has to be radically rethought. Following this question, the project Means of Digital Images focuses on the inner-picture processes and structures of digital photography. Key questions are the production of digital images, what form of information they transfer and what we believe to see through this new form of images. The project is not to be regarded as a mere theoretical examination, but defines itself as practical, basic research, which investigates the data processing processes of digital photography in the form of five photo-based image series and a computer-generated object. These represent the digital image process from which digital images are created. The traces of the digital image production and distribution itself are the central subject matter of the sixwork series, which formulate a fundamental discussion of our current visual culture and visual practices in connection with photo-based images. The declared aim is to investigate the constructive potential of current digital technologies to create new forms of technical photographic images. These are generated by selected processes and techniques, which, in most cases, are not visible and thus escape the conscious perception of their users. Since its digitalisation the medium of photography has undergone a process of fundamental changes, which can be roughly divided into two sub-aspects, that are mutually dependent. On the one hand, a break of the physical, material structure has taken place and on the other hand a new general perception of photographic images and our way of dealing with them. When a digital photograph is being produced, no exposure of a photosensitive material (on a negative film or photographic paper) is taking place. Exposure and storage of the image take place simultaneously during the digital recording. The production of a digital image requires a CCD chip that translates the light signals into individual electrical impulses inside the camera together with an image

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converter (analogue-digital). The captured light information is then converted into individual electrical charges of 0 and 1 and stored on the hard disk or memory card (cf. Jäger 2015, 23–25). The American media theorist William J. Mitchell describes the structural difference between an analogue and a digital photography as followed: ‘The transformation of analog signals in digital information mark the crucial difference to the traditional recording method of photography. While analog information is infinitely variable and continuous, digital information consists of a limited number of gradations. The change from one digital character to the next is not continuous but erratic. Wherever ordinary photography assumes a direct and continuous transmission of information, the digital image is replaced by a discontinuous transformation’ (Mitchell 1992, 31). This observation also refers to the distinction between the physical structure of analogue and digital images. The basic element of every digital image is the pixel. Compared to the soft-looking analogue photographic grain, the pixels of a digital image are at any time discontinuous, which makes it possible to select each pixel individually. The altered physical structure makes it possible to easily transform and change digital images. They become mathematically calculable. This technical fact leads to a new understanding of the general production, processing, and distribution of images. According to the British cultural scientist Peter Osborne, the digitally produced image is primarily a distributed one. The digital composition of its information structure spreads figuratively heterogeneous elements in a homogeneous manner over a specific place of visualisation. In the digital production of the image, therefore, each pixel is equivalent. The stored information structure of the image is made visible in the pixel. Consequently, a new spatial ontology is created. The photographic image is no longer opposed to the graphic space, but rather part of its system. This circumstance fundamentally changes the accepted meaning of the photographic medium. The digital image is no longer only a photograph, but is yet based on the qualities of its analogue predecessor. Through its digitisation, the photographic image is part of a general digital circulation of images that we use on a daily basis by reshaping and reusing them for our individual needs. Compared to the analogue image, the digitally produced and distributed image one is in a close relationship to the transformations into new images that are created through the globalised image space (cf. Osborne 2015, 79). The posed, staged, often manipulated, transformed, and digitised photo is a reality that we encounter on a daily basis and is the result of a new understanding of the production, editing, and distribution of photo-based images. The American media theorist William J. Mitchell formulates this new understanding by saying: ‘The digital pictorial practice is dramatically changing the rules of the game. As a result, an image producer can choose from many different devices and methods to transfer information from a scene to a monitor or printout in which arbitrary changes in the image construction are easy, but difficult to detect’ (Mitchell 1992, 31).

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The boundaries of the photographic process as a physical enrolment on an image carrier have almost disappeared. The computer and video systems no longer imitate the photographic images, they synthesise and generate these photo-optically and digitally-electronically generated photographs until they can no longer be distinguished from analogue photographs. Imitation, image origin and image processing merge and open the question for the role and significance of the photographic image. In digital imaging, an image is generated by input, which undergoes a machine transformation (in the camera or computer) and then manifests itself in an output that exhibits an indexial-technical transformation. This newly created form of digital concrete photography is constructed solely by the computer’s al­ gorithm. These are photo-like constructions and simulations, which have freed themselves from the model of analogue photography and can be assigned to an independent aesthetic area (cf. Holsing 2015, 32 f.). Digital photographs, therefore, are not photographs in the classical sense of a document to remember a particular moment. They look deceptively real, like photographs without being real photographs. They use the characteristics of the photographic medium, but remain in their structure a digital record of numerical and changeable digits. This is why digital photography cannot be counted as the mere successor of analogue photography. In order to fundamentally understand the digital photographic process and thus define it as an independent medium, the substance of its images must be uncovered. It is no longer what the picture shows, but what it is. The six photography based works of the project Means of Digital Images reflect the digital image process from which they emerge. They are process pictures. Not photographs in a classical sense, but rather related to photography, resulting from an exploration of the photographic process, programmed for reproduction and reflected in the circulation of digital images in a globalised image space, that manifests itself in a completely new way. The digitally produced and distributed image, in contrast to the analogue image, is in close relationship to other images and its transformations into new images within the globalised image space (cf. Osborne 2015, 83). This ties seamlessly to the issues that are being negotiated and dealt with in the current media-theoretical discourse, regarding the digitisation of our society. Considering the fleeting nature of the ever-changing media culture, there are substantial questions about our digital environment. It challenges us to rethink our daily relationship with old and new technology, while looking at the ambiguity of the contemporary digital culture. The medium of photography plays a key role in this context, as we can find it in all areas of society since its digitisation. The experimental project Means of Digital Images, is a basic research of the digital image system, reflecting the currently changing medium of photography, in the interaction of analogue tradition and digital everyday life. The project is set to continue the experimental research of the digital image system, as the omnipresence of digital

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image will grow further in the future and therefore continue to change our perception and acquaintance of a reality, based on images. There is still much undiscovered technology to be included in the research process, as the photographic process will expand further within the next decade. Especially regarding the massively expanding virtual reality technology that will lead to a far more diverse photographic process. This new technology will become part of the medium of photography, because it is primarily based on digital images, in whatever shape or form they appear. This phenomenon will lead inevitably to the ever existing question what images actually mean and what kind of reality we can discover if we take a closer look beneath their surface.

The Sound of Downloading Makes Me Want to Upload The series The Sound of Downloading Makes Me Want to Upload deals with the formal consequences of image compression as used, for example, by the social media platform Facebook. This process is connected to an algorithm that causes an altered digital structure of the uploaded digital images. However, the process is invisible to the user. A one-time execution of the compression does not significantly affect the image. The starting image of the series is a standardised test image that is used to check the screen sharpness. In order to visualise the traces of the compression process, the described starting image is uploaded and downloaded 256 times. The result is a copy of the copy of the copy of the original image. During the process, it can be observed that even after the twentieth repetition, some pixels appear which were not visible in the original. With each additional repetition, the so-called digital artifacts increase. These artifacts represent the traces of a digital process that the image is exposed to. These images show the pure traces of an extended photographic process. The digital structure of the original image, which is unchanged in image composition and image content, begins to change slowly due to the background process of the compression process. The series The Sound of Downloading Makes Me Want to Upload raises the question of the consequences of a newly developed, expanding photographic process which we are confronted with on a daily bases without realising it. This altered digital photographic process changes the structure of digital images and their information. With its experimental and analytical approach, the series follows the internal structures of digital images. The focus is less on the subject matter of the picture than on the visualisation of the changing structure of this new form of digital images, through our everyday dealings with them. By visualising the background process, an exploration of the changing medium of photography and related digital applications is stimulated.

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1 Upload 1

2 Download 256

Simulated Reality The series Simulated Reality results from the investigation of the software Google Earth and shows digital modelling methods and mapping of unreal urban realities. With the help of the software, the user is able to view detailed 3-D renderings of selected cities on a screen. The digital 3-D models are based on countless images taken from the air at a 45 degree angle. They represent a digitally simulated and altered

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3 8°41’35.25° N 58°78’48.91°E (Hamburg)

4 22°58’21.15° S 43°11’05.47° W (Tokyo)

form reality. The algorithm used to calculate the 3-D models responds to the input and uses digital information based on images in order to generate a new digital simulation of reality. The French artist and art critic Edmond Couchot finds a fitting description of the mutual relationship between the images of reality and their digital simulations: ‘The synthetic image does not represent the real, it simulates it. It does not show an optical trace, a record of any thing that has been there, and that is no longer, but creates a logical-mathematical model that less describes the phenomenal side of the real than the laws that govern it. What precedes the picture is not the object, the finished reality, but the obviously incomplete and approximate model of the real, that is, its description formalised by pure symbols. This reverses the

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space in which, so far, the real and the image revolve around each other in order to create a reciprocal attraction for both’ (Couchot 1991, 348). The pictures in the series show greatly enlarged views of the cities of Hamburg, New York, Paris, Rio de Janeiro or Tokyo. One pixel of the simulation corresponds to a ratio of 15 by 15 cm in actual space. The pictorial representation of the respective places plays a subordinate role. Due to the extreme zoom, the digital structure of the simulated views becomes visible. You can see indefinable shapes and the interrelations of the objects of each view blur. The result is a change in digital reality. The series Simulated Reality reveals the processes and structures of the software Google Earth and shows how the programme, which is used by an immense number of users, influences our perception of cities and thus of reality. The images shown do not reflect reality, they are a citation of reality, they are reality-like images that exist virtually and meet us every day in the form of images. They relate to a paradox of digital photography, whose images are always a simulation of a digital number of codes and therefore represent a form of digital fiction.

Phonograms The blurred images of the series Phonograms with their pure black and white remind us of the beginnings of experimental photography, such as the photograms of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, who tried to capture pure light with the means of photography. The series represents a visual offer to question the role of the medium of photography in times of the omnipresence of digital images and to create an awareness of the images we are confronted with on a daily basis. The specific focus is on the materiality of digital images. When taking a digital image, unlike analogue photography, there is no exposure of a physically existing photosensitive material. The information of the image is stored on a memory device in the form of a code. To see a digital image, the stored digital information is visualised on a screen. Many of the digital images circulating are viewed through the screen of a smartphone. The consumption of digital images has become a permanent state. The view is brief. Because of their omnipresence and everydayness, digital images are used rather as short messages and means of communication. There is a shift in the function of photographing. The digital image appears in the form of various formats and is thereby subject to a variety of transformation processes. This contrasts with the singular relevance of the analogue photographic image. The aim of the series Phonograms is to capture the broken glass screens of various smartphones in analogue photograms, which gives them a new form of objectification via the exposure on analogue light-sensitive material.

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5 Phonogram No. 1–4

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The light emitted by the screen of the smartphone forms the light source of the photogram. The light source is placed on the photosensitive photographic paper, turned on and off again after a short exposure time. A photochemical process takes place. The light of the screen and thus the digital image displayed are registered in the photosensitive layer of the photographic paper. The digital image stored on the smartphone is fetched from the circulation of the digital flood of images by an analogue photographic process on photosensitive material. The photographs shown are always blurred and give the vague impression of their formerly digital origin.

In Conversation with Google Another work series based on a Google algorithm is the book In Conversation with Google, which provides sometimes bizarre examples of linked images. Google’s ‘Search by Image’ search function was introduced in June 2011. With the help of the software it is possible to search for visually similar images from an original image without using words as search terms. The ‘Search by Image’ function scans the uploaded digital images with the help of an algorithm and categorises the image information contained, by colours, points, lines, and textures. As a result of this analysis, images are displayed whose pixels match those of the original image. Unlike a dialogue between people who can react to the respective input in terms of content, the algorithm answers purely according to the given input and technical aspects. The starting point of the series is an analogue image taken from a private archive, which is uploaded to the search engine. The search query is answered in the form of a variety of images from the Google database. The first proposed picture is evaluated as an answer. In the next step, another image from the private archive is uploaded to the search engine. The answer to the Google search result is, unlike Google’s search criteria, not based on an algorithm. The respective image interpretation is a subjective interpretation of a human. Depending on the picture, these criteria can be of a substantive nature but can also be decided purely aesthetically. The pictorial relationships reveal the search process of the algorithm and clearly show the analysed pixels, colours, lines, and textures. The result of the series clearly shows the far-reaching possibilities of technical analysis of digital images and how they could be used in the future. It is absolutely essential to promote an even more intensive examination of the inner-picture processes of digital images to get to a more conscious use of digital images.

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6 In Conversation with Google, 64 pages (excerpt)

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7 Light sources

8 3-D model of the light sources

Figures of Light The sculptural work Figures of Light examines the paradigm of photography and its continuation as a trail of light in the digital world: Using 3-D scanners, light rays are recorded and translated into digital forms, which are subsequently 3-D printed. The immateriality of light and how it can be captured in a picture already fascinated artists like Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray at the beginning of the twentieth century. The basic requirement of the medium of photography is pure light. Since its invention, photography has been trying to capture it, tame it, and make it an object. With the help of digital techniques, it is now possible to transform pure light into a physically existing object. In order to achieve this, however, digital information of the light rays must be collected at the beginning, which, in turn, can be in-

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9 3-D printed light fragments

10 3-D printed light fragments (detail)

terpreted by a 3-D programme. For this purpose, three light sources were positioned around a glass ball filled with smoke that helped visualise the light rays in the glass ball. The structure was completely recorded in a 360 degrees radius with a digital camera. The resulting 70 digital images of the scenery could then be uploaded into photo-scanning software, which calculated a 3-D model from the digital information and could then be transferred to a 3-D printer. From the digital models, a physical object could be printed. The traces of the light were not only made visible, but also transformed into a tangible object that could be placed in space. The experimental approach of the figurative work Figures of Light can be read metaphorically, since it is an attempt to examine one of the central questions of the medium of photography from a new perspective. The aim was to arrive at a new

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photographic form with the help of digital techniques. The process described can be considered as a new form of the photographic process, which until now has been associated exclusively with two-dimensional images. The basic prerequisite of the medium of photography will continue to include the exploration of light, but photography can be expanded to three-dimensional objects in regards to its progressive digitisation. (The project was realised together with Moritz Wallasch.)

Text + Image The series Text + Image deals with the possibility of converting images into texts. Digital data is encoded as numbers, which can be transformed into different sensory forms such as graphics, colour, or text. Starting point of the series are the re­ flections of the media theorist Vilem Flusser. In his key work ‘For a Philosophy of Photography’ he describes the connection between images and texts. According to Flusser, there has been a reciprocal relationship between images and text since the invention of linear writing. He describes this as follows: ‘Texts do not mean the world, they mean images that tear them apart. Deciphering texts therefore means discovering the images they mean. The intention of the texts is to explain pictures that make the concepts of conceptions understandable. Texts are therefore a meta-code of images’ (Flusser 1983, 11). His initial reflections on images in general – Flusser calls these traditional images – is expanded in the course of the text to a new form of images. He calls them technical images. Technical images are therefore images that are created by an apparatus. This includes analogue photographs. He traces the difference between technical images and traditional ones back to a different type of production: ‘The technical image is an image produced by apparatus. Since apparatus are themselves products of scientific texts, the technical images are indirect products of scientific texts’ (Flusser 1983, 13). Flusser’s ideas can also be applied to the analysis of digital images. A digital image is calculated according to its proportions in electrical charges of 0 and 1. From these electrical charges, a text-based code is generated which carries the digital information, such as the number of pixels and the respective colour of the pixels. This code allows the simulation of the image on each display device. The text code is not visible. With the help of a text editor, however, the code can be displayed in the form of a text. An alteration of the image with image software has the same effect on the digital code as an alteration on the text code, as it is the same digital information. The information of the image in the form of a code is no longer opposed to the image but rather a central element of its construction. The starting image of the series is a digital image file that shows a pure blue surface. The image file is converted into a text editor to display the code as plain text.

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11 blue.jpg

12 Text code of blue.jpg

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13 Text code of blue.jpg with copied Flusser text

14 Transformed blue.jpg and the zoom view of the copied Flusser text

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15 Transformed blue.jpg and the zoom view of the copied Flusser text changed to black and white

16 Text code of blue.jpg with copied Flusser text after changing the image into black and white

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In order to visualise the changeability of the digital information of the image, a linear text section of the Flusser text described above is inserted into the middle of the code. Information is added to the code. The text file is saved afterwards and displayed again on the screen. The image with the previously pure blue colour surface has changed. In the middle of the image a 2-pixel-wide line can be seen, which represents the text previously inserted by Flusser. Due to the deliberate disruption of the digital code, a red and green colour field has been created above the 2-pixel-wide line. It is no longer the same digital information. In order to demonstrate that the code in the form of a plain text also changes in the case of direct manipulation of the image, the image file is converted into black-and-white in image-editing software. After saving the altered image, the code of the image has also been changed. The previously legible text by Flusser has evolved into an unidentifiable string of characters. The information has been changed, the change affects both the image displayed on the screen and the plain text of the code. The experimental image series Text + Image exemplifies the structure of digital images. It becomes clear that digital images are based on a fundamentally different structure compared to their analogue predecessors. The information contained in the code of digital images makes them changeable and allows their free circulation in the digital graphic image space. The digital image is no longer objective, it no longer needs to be moved physically from one place to another. It is pure digital information that can be sent to any screen to be viewed, modified and duplicated. Vilem Flusser has already anticipated the developments described and has argued for a critical handling of the ‘new’ images: ‘The coding of the technical images happens inside this black box, and consequently any criticism of technical images must be directed to lighten their interior. As long as we do not have such a critique, we remain illiterate in technical images’ (Flusser 1983, 14).

References Couchot, Edmond (1991). ‘Die Spiele des Realen und Virtuellen’. In Rötzer, Florian (ed.), Digitaler Schein. Ästhetik der elektronischen Medien. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Flusser, Vilem (1983). Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie (Edition Flusser, vol. 3). Göttingen: European Photography. Holsing, Henrike (2015). ‘Konkrete Fotografie Analog und Digital’. In Holsing, Henrike & Jäger, Gottfried (eds.), Lichtbild und Datenbild. Heidelberg Berlin: Kehrer. Mitchell, William J. (1992). The reconfigured eye, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Osborne, Peter (2015). ‘Das verteilte Bild’. In Texte zur Kunst, no. 99.

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FREEDOM TO MAKE: RADICAL MUNDANITY AND ITS ANARCHIC UNDERTONES IN FEMALE MAKING PRACTICE Melanie Levick-Parkin

This paper draws on doctoral research titled ‘How Women Make – Exploring female making practice through Design Anthropology’. The term ‘making’ is here used as a deliberate demarcation from the terms design and craft, because the study aimed to be open to any kind of making practice brought forward by the female par­ ticipants. I deemed the term design as being too bound up with professional and economically valued making and the term craft as too narrow to explore the full spectrum of making that women engage with in their everyday lives.

Introduction The benefits of being engaged in creative ‘making’ practices are broadly discussed in scholarly research ranging from studies of design economies and design & craft, to health and well-being research, as well as interdisciplinary studies which span across. Outside of the economic benefits of commercial design practice, most of the attention as to why engagement in creative making practices is beneficial, is primarily assessed within two areas. One focus is on the benefits of creative making to women’s well-being and mental health, the other (and often connected one), is the benefit of participating in politically and socially engaged making activities such as craftivism or maker communities. Here, I am proposing, that in order for making to be either beneficial, radical, or political it does not have to be conceived within these confines. There is a vital core to female making practice that is often not sufficiently conceptualised in these contemporary discussions on the subject – one which should be considered as fundamentally important and no-less political. This is the space and time, in which women use their making as an enactment of temporal resistance to neo-liberal capitalist value structures and ring-fence spaces of autonomy that have the potential to inform ways of modelling new ways to live in the decades to come.

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Methodology The body of research that this piece draws from was conducted within a design anthropological approach. Design Anthropology is a methodology that aims to aid the investigation of peoples’ ability to create, craft and re-shape materials, systems or experiences (Smith 2015, 3). It is an emergent field, by nature interdisciplinary and encompassing Anthropology’s concern with the human condition, whilst also embracing the design disciplines hands on, future-directive approaches (Gunn, Otto and Smith 2013). Contributing to the developing discourse of the field are academics and practitioners from a wide and expanding range of disciplines such as anthropology, art & design, sociology, archaeology, and architecture (Clarke 2011). Julier (2013) points out that design activism’s political drive often gets lost in the questions of implementation. I have previously proposed that the reason why its political drive gets lost in implementation is because most implementation imaginings are primarily conceived within Design’s contemporary ontology (Levick-Parkin 2017). This leads to ontological entrapment, because as Design’s identity is axiologically that entrenched in patriarchal and capitalist conceptions of design, all other potential ways of being in design appear un-natural or impossible to imagine being implemented (Levick-Parkin 2017). I believe that Design anthropology offers us the opportunity to make human making activities visible in ways which facilitates a zooming out from contemporary design ontology, out over space and time, gaining a farther sight of how and why humans make, and what that might mean to our ‘futures yet un-thought’ (Grosz 1999). Research methods included participant observation via co-making, conversations and observations, which were recorded through field notes, photography, and film. Additionally, I recorded informal interviews1, which were transcribed and followed a basic structure in order to surface themes from my research questions: • How do women make within particular material and physical contexts? • How do women conceptualise their making in social-economic contexts? • What do insights gained from women’s making mean in relation to educational and sociopolitical contexts? Data was created with eleven different women, who pursue a range of different making practices and were recruited through social and professional circles. In this paper, I am not describing the women’s individual practices in particular, as there is not enough space to do so, but drawing on insights gained whilst spending time with them and their practices. The guiding concept of this small study was the decision to privilege ordinary knowledge close at hand. It is a feminist approach of ‘why not here, why not now’, focusing on human making that is neither ‘exotic’ nor

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distanced. My analysis was informed by feminist theory on space, time and materialism, as well as critiques of gendered labour. In order to consider the implications of my research and to conclude, I draw on a range of anti-work and post-capitalist theory in order to propose futures of making in space and time.

Background A profound sense of happiness that is linked with being able to make, came across in many parts of the fieldwork, during co-making, conversations and informal interviews. It was also evident during the recalling of childhood making as well as in the women’s conceptualisation of their adult making. Childhood experiences of making were often recalled as natural states of being, like when Kaz said I don’t know, it just attracted me to that, it just was natural. There was never a need to make it was just … or Vicky who recalls: I felt like I didn’t really have to try very hard it just came naturally and that was just what I wanted to do. I never really thought about doing any­ thing else. Toni commented, that she couldn’t even remember a time when she hadn’t been making and that making meant that … I was always happier, give me a cardboard box and a packet of felt tips, I was happy. Adult making is conceptualised in ways which speak of the central importance of the making process in the women’s lives. Like Becky describing her making as being … almost an entity to me. … It’s almost a friend and explaining that she was truly miserable during times where she could not make. This sentiment repeats across the different women’s accounts, again and again. In order to discuss how and why making has a profound impact on an individual’s well-being, we will start by looking at how space and time ‘intra-act’ in female making practice.

The Spaces of Making To have space in which to make is important. Whether this is physical space, mental space or temporal space – space or being able to make space is a pre-requisite to being able to make. Especially for women, claiming spaces to make, can be challenging because the space women have traditionally inhabited domestically are often spaces created in order to make for others – whether that’s the kitchen, nursery, or bedroom (Wayland Barber 1994, Parker and Pollock 1981, Rowbotham 1973 b). Virginia Wolf’s seminal 1928 essay ‘A room of one’s own’, proposed that in order for women to create, they are in need of financial autonomy as well as spatial autonomy ‘the space and time required for intellectual freedom’ (Snaith 2015, xviii). In terms

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of space for making, this would have to include the intellectual and physical space as well as having access to matter with which to make.

Making Spaces Making spaces are part of the process of making. They hold ideas, materials, and temporal calls to ‘making’. All the women remarked in one way or another on the importance of having physical space. Attie commented: ‘I was so lucky to have a work room to be able to do things for myself. I had that from my mother, everyone needs a work room’. During fieldwork, memories of elders making spaces and practices were recalled and discussed in much detail. Seven out of the ten women who participated had a space dedicated to make in, and if they didn’t, the idea of longing for a dedicated space, or difficulties in making, due to lack of space, came up frequently. At the time of my fieldwork, Becky, Bill, Katy, Fotini and Attie had dedicated making spaces within their domestic set-ups. In Bill’s case, this extended across the whole of the domestic setting. Toni and Vicky had professionalised making spaces – studio spaces situated externally from their home and situated within a community of other creative practitioners. Kaz, who’s lack of space had been very obvious, has since also found a space within an external shared creative studio. Eirini, commanded making spaces on an ad-hoc basis, using the family living room and another part of her house, when it wasn’t rented out (which it mostly is). Dedicated domestic spaces in particular, were lovingly curated in terms of materials and tools, and a sense of the importance of these spaces in the women’s lives evident in both the care taken and how they talked about them. The longing for, or the finding of an ideal space and space in time, surfaces in different ways. Often this is time oriented, i.e. ‘if I had more time’, sometimes space oriented ‘if only I had a space’ – or it is both. But both aspects are ultimately also temporal already, in the sense that they are future oriented. When space has been made, there is a sense of absolute love and appreciation that emerges. Like Fotini describing her making in her mosaic room: But the good thing is we have this special room at home, like a, I can work there and we have put everything together. Both space aesthetics and time aesthetics are important – the sensory experience and appreciation is holistic. Fotini, describing her making space and time further: It’s a nice place then to be and doing it, with a lot of light. The light is very important … My favourite way is just hearing my nice classic music and put some stones together and then look if I, whenever I do something then I want to have a look at it from a distance and it’s very nice to do that. Pink (2012) reminds us that ‘… sense can be understood as interconnected, and at the level of perception inseparable’ (Pink 2012, 4), highlighting the importance of attending to ‘the multisensory and embodied ways in which environments

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are experienced and the unspoken, the tacit and ways of knowing and communicating in everyday life and activist practice that are not verbalised’ (ibid., 4). Fotini is not only verbalising her sensory aesthetic experience of light and sound, her bodily experience of the doing, the spatial experience of stepping back and reflecting on what has been made, the visual experience of reflective viewing – she is also evaluating it and judging it to be important. In the domestic sphere making space is often also contested space, whether that is through children needing space or a partner having designs on your space. Becky mentions that her partner keeps asking her to reduce the amount of things she keeps for her making, but she ends up accumulating more, rather than reducing it. Her space functions not just for current making, but is also the incubator of future making: I haven’t done beading in like eight years and I’ve got millions of beads, but I won’t get rid of it because I know at some point I will go back to it. She gives an example of her material resources reminding her to make: … I found two kits that I’d forgotten I’d bought and I can’t wait to start them, but I’ve got a list sort of a mile long of stuff that I can’t wait to start. Yes, so I’m not going to get bored this winter. Here is the temporal aspect again, the future-orientation of making stored physically within the making space as well as a refusal to give up space. Commanding space and material has a particular kind of pleasure attached to it that is akin to play. An almost childlike enjoyment of the material aesthetics of things owned surfaces when Becky says: … because I like organisation, I have labels on boxes but sometimes I just label it ‘cool stuff’ or ‘more really cool stuff’ (laughter). Ideally, successful making spaces, feed the making by providing inspiration, comfort and ready to hand materials, but sometimes the reality of what you think you need and what you are actually making do with, are somewhat lightyears apart. Eirini stated quite vehemently: I think what’s important is to have your space … it’s easier to get back to working when you can identify with a working space. When I responded saying: ‘But you don’t have a space!?’ She elaborated: … I do watercolours on the table, that’s where I do it. I was cutting my stuff, I don’t care. The thing is you have to be at peace with the fact that, because there is, you know, there’s this thing where we’re saying “Oh the day I’m going to have a studio it’s going to be great” and actually, you know what, you can work on your table. Yes it would be great to have a studio and I constructed this to be the studio and now it’s my income because I rent it. And yes, it would be great but sometimes you need to work where you are, you know, you need to just, it’s great to have a desk and it’s great to have, but like today I was cutting the fabrics and I was doing it half on the floor and half on the table because there were Legos on the table and I couldn’t be bothered. So I was like “Okay I’ll just sit on the floor” and then the floor was cold, so I did the long cuts on the floor and then I did the short cuts on the table. But I finished in one morning, I cut all the pieces so it wasn’t that hard. Now they’re all wrapped up. What was the question again? Eirini’s description of her making practice during just one particular morning, shows in quite a nuanced way, how different aspects of the space available

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impact on her body and her making. She highlights that her ‘real’ making space is now fulfilling another role, because it provides an income by being rented out. She needs this in order to have more freedom to make. This freedom is time. Renting out her making space provides her with an income, which gives her time she might otherwise have to use generating income rather than making her work. It appears that whenever compromises have to be reached in relation of making – freeing time is always the deciding factor, it overrides being able to command the ideal space. When there is dedicated space, the ordering and curating of it becomes part of the making, because it essentially re-locates some of the intellectual and emotional effort required to make, into a physical space, which means it frees up inner space. Toni outlines her struggle to stay on top of her very varied and wide-ranging making practice: But yes, there’s so many different threads to it and it’s all connected but I’ve, I’m still waiting for the day, I’m sure it will happen at some point where it will all just go ‘Slot’ and I’ll got ‘Ahaha’ – but at the moment it’s all so overlapping and I see bits and linkages. Talking about the impact that it can have on her: I try and keep it all in my head and it makes you very tired. She tries to ease that intellectual and emotional burden, by organising her thoughts, ideas, and plans with boards full of coloured post-it notes in her studio: I keep the post-it note boards and if something occurs, … This means she can externalise and record parts of her making that she might not need at that present moment, but that may or may not become an essential part of it. She essentially parks part of her making externally, to keep her head clear for tasks at hand. So, the studio space is her making materialised in that sense, allowing her to flow between different modes of making required at different points in time, … I’m a great combination, or I’m an awful combination of wanting to be hyper, hyper, hyper organised and the fact that I work really well in chaos and it’s constantly that, of me struggling to be organised and then chaos. Making spaces can accommodate both order and chaos, and are part of the process of making in two ways: Firstly because they provide the physical space to make and ensure the maker has their resources ready to hand-during the making process, secondly because during their curation, ordering and being in them, they support the makers to ‘mind-make’ in a future-oriented way. Dedicated making spaces also issue temporal ‘calls to action’, which makes it easier for the makers to extract themselves from other calls upon their time. What happens in a space is not incidental. Space has its own agency and its own call to action. The demarcation of space is also the demarcation of time. Making time. This is not to say that time to make cannot be found without a dedicated making space, but that a dedicated making space appears to have way of ‘storing’ some of the intellectual, emotional, and material energy it takes to make, whilst also presenting a ‘temporal’ call to action. When I last saw Fotini, I had Doreen Massey’s For Space (2012) with me. She asked about it and we talked about my analysis of the making spaces I had witnessed. I explained: ‘She (Doreen Massey) says that

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space is not just static and that it is connected closely to time. After I worked with all the other women, I was thinking – the space is not just space – it is space in time.’ Fotini nodded and said: Of course – the space is saying: This is the time! (to make). Massey critiques the idea of space being imagined as ‘conquering time’, saying that it points to space being perceived as a somehow ‘lesser dimension than time: one with less gravitas and magnificence, it is the material/phenomenological rather than the abstract; it is being rather than becoming and so forth; and it is feminine rather than masculine …’ (Massey 2012, 29). I would argue that, when Fotini and myself were imagining space as being a pointer to and a demarcation of time, we didn’t conceive of it as being lesser than time – rather the opposite – we connected space to making time, both in the abstract and literal sense. Pink (2012) highlights that ‘places are not bounded zones that we live or engage in practice in but they are actually produced through movement’ (Pink 2012, 25). Referring to Ingold’s (2000) concept of entanglement and of the constantly changing constellation of things within an environment, she reminds us that ‘these are not movements that we necessarily always observe with the eye or feel underfoot’ (Ingold 2000, 25). The material and phenomenological aspects of space, actually supports abstract and concrete movement: The imagining of making and the doing of making. Neither the abstract nor the concrete happen at a static point in time, they happen in the motion of space and time together. Whilst Becky talks about her space inspiring her making and prompting her to make, Eirini who is without a dedicated making space, has to adapt her process constantly because the space she is making in, is not supportive of her making. When I saw her recently she wore a badge that said: ‘Despite everything – she persisted’. In many ways, this to me, summed up how Eirini makes: – her space (amongst other things) does not offer volition to her making, but is like an obstacle course, both physically and mentally, because she has to keep moving her making, whilst at the same time also pushing against the temporal call of domestic labour. Making space is not just related to time by the temporal call to making that Fotini and I had talked about. As Massey (2012) reminds us, space is not static because it is not fixed in time, even though it may often appear to us in that way. The ideal making space is kind of humming ‘energy storage’ for making. It is not a static space, even when it is not in use – it carries intentionality, which is connected to the maker’s mind whilst at the same time freeing the makers mind, because it incubates disparate ideas, materials, and making not yet started or finished. And as the maker’s mind can re-configure their making intentionality, while away from their space, the space itself is not fixed, even when un-attended, because it hums with the potentiality of an endless amount of configurations of future making. It is part of the maker’s mind. As Massey (2012) points out, space is neither petrification nor a lack of temporality, – it doesn’t hold time still – the lively world is both temporal and spatial. Making thrives in space lively with material and conceptual possibilities.

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Making Space in Time The temporal space that making requires has been more difficult to surface than the physical space previously outlined. It is mainly when a lack of time is brought up as a barrier to making, that it’s importance becomes clearly visible. It may be obvious that making is entirely dependent on time, but temporality in making is not fixed to one single thing, thus hides itself amongst all the other aspects of making. Traditionally, women’s labour in the family and community has been on the one hand a vital commodity for the functioning of the fabric of life, whilst on the other hand being de-valued within the capitalist economic systems (Rowbotham 1973a and 1973b, Weeks 2011). Women now often still fulfil these family and community focused roles, whilst also working for pay externally. This, as Malabou (2016) points out, means that they are dually exploited by the system. Childcare and domestic duties, are however considered to be one of the keystones to have shaped women’s labour for thousands of years as well as their development of making technologies such as weaving (Wayland Barber 1994). During my fieldwork, women did not blame childcare and domestic duties of keeping them from making, but mentioned them as something they might also want to do and that they themselves allowed it to distract them from their making. Attie brings up how women’s making is often both defined, confined and configured by their domestic roles. Commenting on her own life, she says: Well because for women the making is too often the housekeeping and the children’s work but, yes, but I personally had, well a more manly life in the way that, okay I had to cook and I had to do the household but I also had my work and now there is just no, not much household, there is a lot of making, there is room for making, yes, so it’s not, well it’s also different in which age you are. She highlights that, despite having had more of a, as she put it – ‘manly life’, she had still had a future oriented desire to have more time for her making, saying that I always thought of ‘Well when I had my … (pension)’ Then I will be really making, then I can work undisturbed. So despite the fact that she hasn’t had children and hadn’t been keeping a traditional family household, she had still felt that her making had been compromised before she retired from her teaching position. Domestic and care demand on women’s time is visible in the accounts. When I ask Fotini what stops her from making she explains: Again, me stops me because I’m putting many things together like if I want to have time with the kids and read with the kids and clean up the house and cook for the house, then it’s always something behind. What strikes me is that she doesn’t give the children or the household as the primary reason as to what stops her. She highlights her own desire to fulfil those demands, which she prioritises over her making. Toni described how even having a dedicated making space within the domestic setting, was not enough to ‘call’ her to work in the way she needed, because other calls to action within the domestic space dominated. Speaking of renting a space

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externally, she said: I wanted a space to go to. I would argue that this does not only describe a physical space to go to but also importantly a space in time to go to. And this also entails having space to think. She describes how her making space holds parts of her making-thinking not yet resolved, on post-it notes, in books, in work in progress, etc. But on top of those materialities, it provides making-thinking space, because she doesn’t have to spend energy drowning out other demands on her time. Asking, ‘How does thinking function?’, Schües proposes that ‘In thinking I withdraw from the world, and am by myself; that is, I have the feeling of liveliness of myself (and liveliness can also be part of our experiences). However, the inability to think about “something” turns a human into a “sleepwalker”’ (2011, 72). When the women ‘withdraw’ into their making spaces, they have space and time to think, and this also has political implications, a Schües points out ‘A feminist approach always concerns the revaluations of power relations within society, as, for example, the question of the relevance of time when discussing power relations or asymmetrical hierarchies between men and women’ (2011, 6). Toni account shows how being at home, signals in some way being available. This signaling of availability may come from others, but may also come from oneself internally. Toni highlights externally experienced pressure, when she recalls: I think I kind of needed to put the break in from family. It’s like if you’re working from home people don’t think you’re working. ‘Oh you’re at home all day.’ and it’s like ‘No, I am working’. But she also acknowledges how being in the domestic space was also signaling availability to herself: I mean I blame my family but also in my own head having that stuff upstairs, it’s great but then you also get distracted ‘Oh look the washing needs doing.’ I can’t start work until I’ve done the pots, or the garden needs digging and I found myself making excuses because I’m quite easily distracted. Toni made the decision to take her making outside of the domestic sphere, to signal to herself and others that she was ‘at work’. Being ‘at work’ carries a different signal both internally and externally, it eliminates the need to spend energy on demarcating space in time in order for making to become priority. Just being in the domestic space appears to have a way of pushing other duties that one might have before any making ‘duties’ or intermingling with other distractions. In order to spend a meaningful amount of time making, sacrifices often have to be made in financial terms or in the type of economic labour you engage in. Toni explains that in order to prioritise her making, she took a job cleaning a pub very early each morning, before she goes to her studio to ‘work’. She explains: I had to sort of make a decision last year about whether I go and get a proper job or whether I commit myself to the art life and make a thing of it, and I sort of went ‘Well I didn’t waste all that time going to Art School if I’m not going to do it.’ so sort of put myself in a position where I’d only need to work a few hours a week and then the rest of the time is making. To demarcate and prioritise making time takes discipline and sacrifice, and it is very common for the time spent on ‘economic labour’ to eliminate making time.

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Eirini recalls earning money doing administrative work for another artist and when I ask her how that felt, she answers: It was like I was not an artist anymore. I had to like realise that I needed to practice again and it took a while … I was not working at all anymore. This period of time was also after her first child had been born, which meant there were a lot of other demands put on her time. Similarly to Fotini though, Eirini points to herself as being the cause of not making any more within that context and also uses similar terms – I had like a tiny desk in (my son’s) bedroom and I think I got distracted also by a lot of other things, I let myself be distracted. When I ask her what generally stops her from making, she tells me: Routine I think, everyday life. Preparing food, travelling, taking care of the kids. I made a promise to myself that my mornings would be spent for work and I would ignore calls for coffee, walks, paying bills, doing the dishes, cooking, before it’s one o’clock and that from one to two was enough to cook. She told me recently that she realised that while she is making, she feels invincible. She said when I am doing my work I feel like I am the strongest women in the world – I can do anything. This is very similar to what Fotini told be about her making having given her a sense of power. She had said: Now I think I can do a lot of things, I have no problem. I would argue that the demarcation of time to make is a vital space where the women can experience themselves as powerful and this sense of power also partially stored in their making spaces, as well as having rippling effects into other aspects of their lives. Commanding temporal, spatial, and material autonomy are essential to successful making. Of all the women, Toni and Eirini were most explicit about how they conceptualise the prioritisation of their making ‘work’ in conscious opposition to domestic calls to action. When Toni explains why she felt that it was the right thing to do, she refers to the years she had invested into her art-school training and not wanting it to go to waste. Eirini is also a trained artist. For both of them their training may have made it easier to conceptualise their making as ‘work’ which is worthy of prioritisation over domestic work. The tension between domestic spaces and making or economic labour has been much discussed in relation to female labour. Massey’s (1997) research showed that, the spatial separation of home and workplace, was one of the deciding factors in the emancipation of the female Lancashire millworkers in the 19th century, who went on to contribute significantly to the suffragette movement. Being able to leave the domestic sphere and becoming part of a work-based community, meant that women could combine their efforts to negotiate their position within society. These days the internet enables women to pursue a range of making activities from their domestic settings and as a flexible, frequently homebased workplace production economy, Etsy and indie craft work models resonate with wider debates about engaging in self-actualising and cultural work within the creative economy, and these engagements are enabled by digital technology. But Luckman (2013) points out ‘Such work practices might be particularly attractive to women, as they allow for income generating work to be conducted alongside unpaid, domestic responsibilities, but they can also lead to a “presence bleed” whereby

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the worlds of paid work, domestic labour and leisure blur, normally at the expense of the latter’ (Luckman 2013, 256). Furthermore, Schües (2011) highlights that [p]articularly in Western countries, most people say they need more time and that they lack time: many employees complain about the tempo at work; women especially feel that given their different roles as mothers, employees, partners, housekeepers, and caretakers, they lack time for themselves. The fight to balance among the different roles is a temporal problem (Schües 2011, 10).

Thus, making space in time for making purely for one’s own benefit is ultimately a political act. And making time for economic activities within the domestic realm is not the same as making space in time for autonomous making. I argue that order for making to be experienced as emancipatory, its primary function cannot be economic benefit.

The Benefits of Making As part of my participant observations, I also conducted informal interviews, which were conversational in nature. One of the questions I asked the women during those conversations was: ‘Who benefits from your making?’ Although the benefits of their making also surfaced in other parts of our encounters, it was through this question that they explicitly conceptualised it for me. I was also hoping to shine some light on their making motivations – what motivates them to make and what are the values underpinning their motivation? Other aspects of the research showed how their motivation was linked to being inspired by materials and concepts that engaged them. Here, I am primarily surfacing how their motivation is framed by their conceptualisation of the benefits of making as they perceive them. The question itself was not neutral on my part, to the extent that one of the things that had motivated me to do research in this area, had been my perception from an early age that women’s making, made life happen. In the light of this ‘felt’ personal insight and despite gaining an intellectually understanding of systemic exclusion through Patriarchy, it can still be difficult to apprehended how female making could be so invisible and undervalued at an external societal level. So by asking this question I harboured to a certain extent the hopeful intention, of making visible all the ways in which women’s making benefitted the world. What women told me however, gave a far more nuanced and interesting insight into how they framed the benefits of their making, than my somewhat partisan feminist biases had anticipated.

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Benefit to Self When I asked the women who benefitted from their making, the most common answer was that they themselves were the primary beneficiaries. Becky, Katy, Bill, Toni, Kaz, Attie, Dylan, and Eirini all named themselves as benefactors. Becky, Bill, and Katy most explicitly linked it to their personal well-being and mental health: Me: Who benefits from your making? Becky: Me. Absolutely. Me. I suppose people who I give stuff to, but 99 per cent of it is me. Whilst answering a previous question, she had also already commented on this, but in more depth, describing her making as almost as a friend to her: And for a lot of years my craft kept me sane, or relatively sane, because I had a very tumultuous period and my craftwork is where I found my refuge and so I’m very grateful to my crafts. It’s almost an entity to me. It’s almost a friend. Yes, yes, it’s almost a friend that I can turn to when I’m feeling really down and I know it will make me feel better, without having to actually interact with somebody, which is not something I always enjoy because people suck. Other women also named making is being very important for them to cope with life. Bill said: Me. I’d go crazy if I didn’t have something to do. I’ve got, I don’t know, three or four things on the go at the moment and whichever mood I’m in I’ll work on that, you know. Yes, I’m a bit of a flitter bug … I suppose other people that buy the things but, yes, it’s me. I’d go crazy. Katy answered: Obviously I clearly do, I massively benefit from it in so many ways and I can talk about that. … But for me it’s very good for my mental health, I’m not very good at stopping work, … it’s the thing that I think calms me and I think it’s the thing that allows me to exist in this fucked up crazy world as well and cope with it a bit better. Fotini points towards, how her making practice has given her confidence in a more general sense: It helps me to feel better and if you feel that you are good in something then you, it’s a nice feeling if you can do it. It helps me to think that when I was 18 years old I thought I cannot do anything. Now I think I can do a lot of things, I have no problem. Kaz and Dylan mention other people who they might share things with, but sideline them – highlighting how feedback from others might be sought, but is ultimately kept separate from the value they themselves ascribe to their making practice.

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Kaz: Me. I think only me. I don’t really think anyone else is that bothered, but that doesn’t bother me, that’s fine, because I don’t know what everyone likes. Like it’s nice when I show my mates my work and they like it, that’s nice, but I can’t do it for them because, I don’t know. Dylan: I think the people who benefit from my making is just me really, I mean I sometimes share it with other people but, like I said, people are just like, it’s just something someone’s made, but for me it’s really important. So, I think I’m probably the only person that really benefits from it. Attie, also names herself first: Now in that respect, first of all myself … but then goes on to talk about how her making benefits in a broader context, whilst Toni highlights the mental health benefits her making has and further on explains how she understands that this is connected to states of flow. Toni: Oh now there’s a question. Me. With the sewing, yes, it’s definitely me because I find that just incredibly calming and it’s one of those flow moments, you lose yourself and three hours have gone, … Attie reflected on only being able to sleep when she had done something during the day she was satisfied with and the importance of feeling ‘I have created something’ and you can look at it and rest.

Near and Far Benefaction When the women considered how their making might also benefit others, they often mentioned their partners. Becky, Katy, and Vicky identified how their practice impacted positively on their partner. Becky and Katy mention this particularly in relation to the idea that, because their making makes themselves happier it in turn makes things better for their partners too. Becky said: … I suppose to a degree Sully benefits from me being healthy. Because it is good for me. So I suppose it has a knock-on effect that if I’m happy then Sully’s happy, so yes. Katy outlines how her making, as it involves travel, benefits her partner because he gets to see different places, but she ultimately concludes that: … I think it’s about being with me and having me in a better mental health because I’m doing these things, I’m busy and always doing something. So I think he benefits as well. Vicky, who was one of the only two women who hadn’t named themselves as primary benefactors of their making practice, did identify as her partner benefitting from it, albeit more hesitantly: Maybe my boyfriend benefits from it a little bit because he’s quite creative but he doesn’t have a creative job so his outlet is more kind of, he started making clothes spontaneously. She explains that they have started doing creative work together, which gave him an outlet from not having a creative job.

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Becky, who has fostered and childminded for over two decades also mentions how the children in her care have benefitted from her interest in making: The kids enjoy making things obviously, whoever the kids are, because there’s not so much scope for kids to make things these days. Becky also explained in some length how she had used her making therapeutically, to support those often severely traumatised children. Fotini also mentions her children at the same time as talking about herself: I like to create things. I like to do something … you know, I want to do something for my kids, I want to do something for me. This reminds us how entangled the self and any making that is pursued is with others who are cared for and about. When I did the fieldwork with Bill, she talked a lot about all the work that had gone into the themed room she had designed for her visiting grandkids. Making for yourself is entangled in the social fabric of life and making for others is an essential part of this, as long as it can be performed on the individual woman’s terms. Only three of the women who participated, were very immediately explicit about how their making benefitted the wider world. Vicky who didn’t even bring up that her making was benefitting herself, explained how her making benefitted her colleagues, because it fed directly into commercial work that the co-operative studio she is part of is doing. She explains: The studio definitely because I think I spend a lot of time researching processes and things. She then went on to describe how her creative partner might ask her for some quick turn-around solutions for a commercial design brief and because she has been experimenting with her own practice, she can utilise that experience in order to help the studio turn something around quickly. The idea of creative peers benefitting, also comes up with Toni, who highlights how her interests, knowledge, and skills in particular areas have inspired others in the creative community she is situated in, to explore new ways of approaching their own practice through collaborative projects. Eirini’s answer was quite complex – she starts by saying Oh, the world. Well I think that when you are an artist you have a responsibility to get your work out there’ but then ties this back to herself immediately by saying ‘The first responsibility is to yourself because all artists are self-centred and want, I think, people to see their work. So in that context her answer of the ‘the world’ is brought back in line with the idea of this benefitting herself, because she wants her work to be seen. But she also highlights, how this is connected to a broader responsibility to her audience and the community she lives in: So, to get it out there is, your first responsibility to yourself but then also, especially if you’re in a small city like where we live, you have a responsibility to get work in the public space because you need to communicate with people. Attie, who had been an Art and Technology teacher all her working life, also alludes to the idea that her making contributes to culture in a broader context. Although she starts with herself benefitting, she then broadens it out: Now in that respect, first of all myself and, yes, I think culture in general. Similarly to Eirini, she then also goes on to talk about an ‘audience’ of sort – places and people who have benefitted from her making: … I come into school and I see a painting I’ve made, or

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when I come home and I see something I’ve made or people have something hanging on the wall or you see a child that’s wearing a hat that you made, that’s satisfying, yes. Here, her audience is others, as well as herself and she also brings it back to how witnessing other people enjoying her making output, is in itself beneficial to her because it gives her a feeling of satisfaction. Bill makes a similar point in another part of our conversation when she talks about going past a pub that had bought some of her restored furniture, and her looking in and getting a feeling of satisfaction that it was still in use.

Permission to Make What surfaces during the research was that a number of the women had experienced a paralysis in their making practice at some point in time, which in one case lasted for years. This happened when their making was framed within value systems external to them – systems they were in but felt excluded from at the same time. This came out of discussions with Kaz, Lucy, Katy, and Dylan. The women showed a reflective awareness of how certain types of making contexts had meant that they lost power over their making. This loss of power was experienced as a loss of the feeling that their making was meaningful. Feeling that their making was meaningless led to an avoidance of making and a sense of un-happiness. Kaz said it was like I’d shut it off and … it just felt like ‘It's over’. This only appeared with women who had been part of professionalised making in the context educationally formalised or professionalised making. Some entirely abandoned their making for long periods of time, when they perceived that their making would not be recognised within the system. I am conceptualising this as ‘permission to make’, in the sense that the women affected, were at that point relying on external reasons to make – the value they themselves assigned to their making was bound up with the system valuing it. The women who went through periods of ‘needing permission’ to make, experienced a profound loss of motivation to make at all. Recovering from this was described as an internal struggle, during which they ‘divorced’ external value systems from their making practice. This freed them from ‘needing permission’ to make. The women who’s making had always happened outside of these value systems, had no accounts of undergoing such crisis. The systems in question are also what Lave and Wenger (1991) have conceptualised as ‘Communities of practice’. These communities of practice are important support systems for their members and are widely regarded as systems that allow a practice to determine its value system and trajectory. In order to be a member of this community one has to be encultured into it and then becomes part of the production and reproduction of that system (Trowler 1998; Becher 1989; Mc Farlene 2004, Shreeve 2009). A successful member of the system will be valued by it and

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also become part of a gatekeeper to it (Trowler 1998), but just as a community of practice can bestow value, it is just as likely to withhold it. When value is withheld or withdrawn it can affect how the viability of making is perceived. Dylan recalls at one point being so trapped in the idea that something had to be for something, that she was quite down when one of her funding applications for a project was unsuccessful, because in her mind it meant it would be happening: I was telling my dad about an idea I had for an academic project that was to do with play and making things and it didn’t get funded and I told my dad and he was like ‘Well why don’t you just do it anyway?’ and I was like ‘Well it won’t be recognised as having any value unless it’s being funded’. So in the academic system, even though it could potentially then be helpful to children, which I hoped that it would be, without it having been recognised by a research council and worthy of funding – and he would talk about how ridiculous that was to him. He would just say ‘Well you’ve got the idea, there must be a way of – …’. And I think that’s been quite nice, like when I’ve struggled with things in academia, to have someone say ‘Actually that’s a load of rubbish, you could just do it’. It’s not that Dylan didn’t realise that she could just do it, but had internalised the constructs of her community of practice as to how something is assigned value. Feeling like making outside of these, ultimately economic, value systems, is not of value, stifles the impulse to make. Never having been encultured in a community of practice in relation to their making as such, with women like Fotini, Bill, and Becky – the idea of needing ‘permission to make’ does not feature at all as a barrier to their making. The only things stopping their making are restrictions of money, time, space, or health. Dylan, Katy, and Kaz however talked quite explicitly about how their education and work had at some point made them feel as if only making in particular contexts was ‘permissible’. Only by working through this barrier through self-reflection, soul-searching and a certain amount of inner rebellion were they able to reject those embodied concepts of validity and reclaim their making practice. Kaz reflected on the journey she had been on, since reclaiming her making practice: I actually thought I would just get a job in animation, you know, at one of the studios and do you know now I wouldn’t want that. I’d rather do my own thing. Not that, God forbid, not that if anyone rang me up and said ‘Do you want to do six months?’ Of course I do because it would be nice to learn, of course it would, but I just think, I do my own things now, I’ve just got to the point where I’ve spent a good ten years doing shit jobs because I didn’t think I could do anything else. She also mentions how she has the desire to share her insight with her other female friends who have ‘lost’ their making: We’re always sending each other the art stuff because she’s like ‘I really want to get back into it.’ and I said ‘You should, if I’ve got back into it you can get back into it.’ She has reframed her making in terms of ‘This is what I do.’ rather than trying to do what I think people would want me to do and that

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now, when people council her against certain making plans, she feels strong enough to think to herself ‘that’s just their fears’. So, when Kaz talks about her making, as it is now, it is much more similar to how Becky or Fotini talk about theirs. There is a conscious and sometimes willful removal of their making from any external value systems. In the fieldwork, the group of women, such as Eirini, Vicky, and Lucy, who declared their making as beneficial to the wider world, are more actively engaged with external value systems. They are active contributors to them and this confers value onto their making which goes beyond themselves and is visible to others within those communities of practice. These value systems are well established in the wider context of the socio-economic practices as well as capitalist systems. Being encultured into such systems, can on the one hand confers value onto the making, whilst on the other hand withhold. The women who experienced a withholding of value through this system, experienced it both as an internal, self-generated act as well as an external act. They had to actively de-culture themselves in order to experience the value of their making as belonging to themselves, and that being a good enough reason to make. It’s like when I asked Kaz what she now says when somebody asks her what she does/is: I’d say ‘artist’ but it did take me a long time to be all right saying that.

Resisting Benefaction Throughout my encounters with the different women, there was a noticeable refusal by the women to view their making a being primarily conceived for the benefit of external economic factors. Vaneigem proposed that: ‘In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.’ (1967/2006, 52). But these women were not confusing their making with productivity, instead they showed many signs of consciously rejecting the potential of necessity of production, in order to safeguard their desire to make. This surfaced, scattered throughout the fieldwork. Becky was the most explicit about rejecting productivity, she commented It’s not about needing to get something finished, it’s about enjoying making it and whether I give it away, throw it away or sell it, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make any difference to me, I enjoy the process of making. She also later related this to the idea of the investment of time in contrast to monetary investment or return: … the money that I invest in the craft that I’m doing is kind of irrelevant to the end result. I can make a bag that I absolutely love that costs, I don’t know, twenty quid, but if I bought it in a shop, something similar, it might cost 3.99 pounds, but that doesn’t matter because I’ve had the enjoyment of making it. When I point out that in that sense she is paying for the pleasure of making the bag, Becky confirms this, quite defiantly – For the pleasure of

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making something. … Yes, that I could buy in a shop that’s cheaper and quick. I protest that a cheap bag bought in a shop would not be as nice as the one she has just made, but she is determined to make her point: Becky: Well it might be but it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve made the quiet books that took fifty hours of sewing to make, fifty hours, which in a monetary value, if you paid yourself 7 pounds an hour to make you couldn’t sell them, but I enjoyed the process of making it. Mel: And what has happened to them? Becky: I give them away as presents. But that’s fine, even if they wreck them it doesn’t matter because I’ve really enjoyed making them. Mel: Yes, so once it’s out of your realm it doesn’t –. Becky: Yes, it doesn’t really matter. So, if I make something for somebody, if they chuck it in the bin I wouldn’t be offended or upset about it. I might want the material back to reuse but, yes, it’s the process of making that I enjoy. It seems to be a point of pride and principle to Becky that her making is not about monetary economics in terms of her making being financially economical in relation to the time she has spent on making. A quiet defiance in terms of time economics, generally echoed around the women’s accounts – it does not matter how much time is spent on making, because ‘being in the process’ is what they enjoy and desire. They realise that this means that their making time does not fit into a traditional monetary economy – they point out how this time is theirs to spent outside of those measurements, and show a certain pleasure in knowing that it subverts conventional ways a valuing time in a financial economy. Other women were similarly ambivalent about their making being ‘beneficial’ in a social or economic sphere. Katy talked about her refusal to academise her making, because she wanted it to remain in her domain and under her control. She also described how she kept making drafts of particular artifacts, partially because she had no desire to finish her body of work – saying that she could happily make it last for the rest of her life. Kaz highlighted how only when she decided that she would only make what would make her happy, she experienced a kind of emancipation from the pressures she had felt on her making practice up to then. She also talks about putting in ‘ridiculous hours’ into her practice, saying ‘there are no clock-points’. Toni took a cleaning job, so that her making could remain autonomous from any economic demands being made on it and she could put the hours into her very time-intensive black-work embroidery as well as progressing her coding skills for her digitised pieces. The women’s accounts of resisting economic purposes for making, resisting the need to finish and or to re-produce making, also showed up in their actual making as the modes of making.

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1 Blackwork embroidery made by Toni Buckby

Desire to also make for others (which they did), was juxtaposed with their desire to not compromise their modes of making too much, even for those close to them They generally highlighted that ‘finishing was not important’, sometimes delaying the conclusion of any artefactual outcomes so that they could remain process bound for longer. They showed, in their making and in their conceptualisation of it, that they value the iterative, experimental and explorative modes of making, which they identify as the place of most joy. Repetitive processes based on reproduction are judged primarily negatively. Becky explains: … making multiples of one thing doesn’t interest me, I like everything to be different. She makes clear that she understands that – if her making was to make any sense economically, she would have to alter her modes of making: If I was to sell them it would make sense to make five gingerbread houses all in one go because then you can cut out a job lot of fencing or roofing or whatever, and it would save an awful lot of time. But she is also explicit and adamant about why she is making and who for: My crafts is my interest for me, it’s not a commercial thing, even though I have made things and sold them that’s not the reason why I make things and if it was to become that I think I would get bored very quickly. I’m not very good at making the same thing again and again and I have tried, but I’m not very good at that. She mentions that even making repeat items for her sisters is problematic: I will, because I’m making for my sisters but it’s not because I’m going to enjoy the process. Bill also talks repeatedly about getting bored with re-producing particular items. With her smaller craft items, she enjoys thinking of new/different things to make: There’s no shortage of ideas it’s just what I fancy do it and once I’ve done it and got it out of my system that’s great and I’ll move on to the next thing. When I ask her

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about not making the same things again, she says No because I’ve been there, done that, it’s kind of scratched that itch. It’s not that the women don’t want to share their making practices, skills, labour, and fruit, with others. Their accounts, as well as my observations and wider experience of them, clearly shows them using their making to benefit others. The point is that they refuse their making to be defined by anything other than their own desire to make. The kind making some of these women pursue is often called amateur making or craft. Critiquing amateur craft, Adamson (2007) disputes the idea that this kind of making has anything to do with the rejection of capitalist value structures, explaining that from a strict Marxist perspective conceiving it as such is the ‘very embodiment of false consciousness’ (Adamson 2007, 140). He argues that, rather than being an extraction from capitalism the effect of such activity is exactly the reverse. Precisely because they are made so lovingly, homemade crafts betray the degree to which their makers are integrated into the larger structures of capitalist ideology, in which commodity forms are the primary carriers of meaning. The experience of amateurism may feel like autonomy, but in fact nothing could be more pre-determined (Adamson 2007).

According to this critique, it would appear that the women, far from rejecting capitalist value structures, are in fact not only deeply embedded in them but are also re-producing them with their consumption of materials and time. Knott (2015) appears to deal a similar such death knell to notions that making might harbor an anti-capitalist stance, when he states that ‘Amateur craft is inherently dependent on routines of everyday life, the structures symbolized by the “office stool” … – the division of labour, entrepreneurship, the adulation of productivity, and the accumulation of capital’ (xii) and that as such amateur craft ‘does not represent simple, individual opposition against “the machine”, as so often presumed’ (xii). I personally dislike the term amateur on the grounds that, to me it, it speaks more loudly of current ontological value constructs (there is a reason why there is no amateur brain surgery), than of its original meaning of doing something for love and not gain – which would be accurate for the women I worked with. More importantly though, I also beg to differ on both their assessments of making being inexorably bound into the nature of capitalism. I concede that they have relevance insofar as materials acquired and time ‘bought free’ for making, are still subsumed within the dominant system of capitalism and that, in Marxists terms, the pursuit of making speaks of a desire to not be alienated from one’s own labour. What I find at fault here, is that the very framing of making from within the capitalist system can only result in us conceptualising it within its ontology. To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail. I reject Adamson (2007) and Knott’s (2015) assessment of making,

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because I believe that, if anything, the female makers resistance to benefaction is both pre- and post-capitalist. Design anthropology’s expanded conception of human making can offer us a zooming out of contemporary ontological constructs, because through its interests in Anthropology and Archaeology, it can cast our eyes beyond human making dispositions defined by western contemporary thought. But it is Grosz (2010) who touches the heart of my rejection of Adamson’s and Knott’s diagnosis the most, when she asks: Is feminist theory best served through its traditional focus on women’s attainment of freedom from patriarchal, racist, colonialist and heteronormative constraints? Or by exploring what the female – or feminist – subject is and is capable of making and doing? (Grosz 2010, 141).

She acknowledges that freedom from has important political and activist relevance, but critiques the ideas that freedom should be tied to an ultimately negative concept of liberty, because this means that ‘… it remains tied to the options or alternatives provided by the present and its prevailing and admittedly limiting forces’ (ibid., 141). She further argues that freedom from is insufficient for providing ‘any positive action in the future’. Calling on a Bergsonian, pre-socratic philosophy of life, where freedom is conceived as the very, and inalienable, condition of life, she positions freedom to as the conceptual stance which offers future directed possibilities – a freedom that is attained rather than bestowed and one which does not wait passively for its moment, but functions through activity (ibid.). I believe that the women I spent my time with, act from such a space in time created for and by themselves, not from a place bestowed to them within patriarchal capitalism. I reject Adamson’s diagnosis, because it doesn’t account for the intrinsically political act the women engage in when they extract ‘space in time’ from capitalist time. Rather than seeing it as ‘space in time’ embedded in capitalist and patriarchal time, I see it as ‘space in time’ that is being and has been kept secret from it – subverted from it. I also believe that this ‘space in time’ precedes capitalist time, because it speaks of making as a fundamental human attribute and desire. The women do not make because of capitalism, but despite of it. What Design Anthropology and the archaeological records show us, is that human making is an archaic expression of our freedom to, rather than our freedom from.

Freedom to Make Beneficial reasons for ‘making’ being framed as primarily therapeutic, deeply unsettle me. I consider them harbouring an implied judgement of pathology, which I object to. Whilst the women’s own accounts clearly speak of the benefits of making

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to their personal sense of well-being and as supportive to their mental health, I believe it would be a mistake to frame the benefits of making they experience, as one, which is curative or sanative, because one would have to come from a position where making is acting, as a kind socially acceptable sticking plaster to their own personal fragilities. There is no such thing as mental illness. It is merely a convenient label for groupings and isolating cases where identification has not occurred properly. Those whom power can neither govern nor kill, it taxes with madness (Vaneigem 1967/2006, 137).

Whilst I do not believe that ‘there is no such thing as mental illness’, I am sympathetic to the sentiment. Contemporary society is full of sticking plaster prescriptions by the media, government, schools, and work – we are sent on staff-training for our well-being, our kids get taught mind-fullness in school during exam time in order to counteract the rise in childhood depression (in primary school!), government schemes shame us into eating healthier and to reduce our self-medication with alcohol, etc. – I consider the vast majority of these schemes as downright misanthropic. And here is why: These schemes are a symbol of the absolute avoidance within society of having to confront in action, that which is making us depressed, stressed, unhealthy and addicted. There is much good work out there that aims to give people space and access to meaning-making and form giving activities, but we need to beware to not become part of narratives where the conditions that make us ill are framed as ‘just so’ and where activities that we design to soften the blows, normalise the fact that something is fundamentally very wrong. From craft for the elderly, to design thinking for the mentally ill (Devlin 2010, Social Value Lab 2011, Yair 2010, ‘Design thinking in soul care’ 2018, Wolfe 2018) – the applications of forms of making for better living are much discussed and promoted. In a report on craft and wellbeing the Craft Council, highlights the UK governments agenda of measuring the nations well-being and points to a range of examples of how making can benefit a wide range of people, for example: […] participants who are generally given little freedom in life (young people with learning difficulties for example) experience new autonomy from being encouraged to experiment with boundaries, and especially from being given responsibility for sharp, hot or otherwise dangerous materials (5).

Whilst the report hints at the problematics of politicising ‘happiness’ linked to the governments data collection, it also implies that craft could contribute to the improvement of this happiness data. A great amount of academic literature in relation to making and wellbeing comes from a health and well-being background, such as Liddle et al. 2013, Reynolds 2010, Cameron et al. 2013, Stuckey and Nobel 2010, Van Lith et al. 2012, Titus and Sinacore 2013, for example, which explains why the

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standpoint is primarily one of ‘proving’ the therapeutic benefits of creative making. Whilst I take no issue with the validity of research which explores the therapeutic benefits of making and appreciate the humanistic intentions of making making accessible to those in need of its benefits, I propose that analysis of deeper sociopolitical implications of why it is beneficial is needed. As Guffey (2014) reminds us: ‘The politics of human creativity are often messy. The very idea of making, of improving, or of recycling requires an imaginative leap of faith …’ (Guffey 2014, 264), I would argue that we need to pay attention to both the politics and the leaps of faith in making practice. It is perhaps not surprising, that it is primarily feminist literature in relation to craft, such as Grace and Gandolfo 2014, Kelly 2015, Bain 2016, Bratich and Brush 2011, Hackney 2013, to name a few, which takes a political stance and questions underlying political implications of making for mental health and well-being. I have previously proposed to move towards a ‘feminist design ontology’ (Levick-Parkin 2017), because I believe that the plasticity of feminist critique is such, that it has the capacity to ask deeper questions about all our making practices, including questioning the very ontology we are situated within. I also believe that this what is necessary when we look at research findings that tell us that making is experienced as beneficial to mental health and well-being. I do not believe that making is a remedy, which ‘treats’ or counteracts the cause of illness. I propose that it is simply, that, the opportunity for a human to be engaged in making is such an essential part of their human condition that if your ability or desire to make is stifled or curtailed, you become unwell. So, the benefits of then engaging in making, are not a cure, but a claiming of what is our fundamental right in the first place. The capitalist system takes our capacity to make and self-produce. and nurtures in us the endless capacity to consume. And in order to endlessly consume, we have to work. This takes up our time and space. And within work, as Weeks highlights, even Dreams of individual accomplishment and desires to contribute to the common good become firmly attached to waged work, where they can be hijacked to rather different ends: to produce neither individual riches nor social wealth, but privately appropriated surplus value (Weeks 2011, 8).

When Toni and Eirini call their making ‘their work’, they claiming value for their making which is normally earmarked for capitalist productive work, with that the ethical and moral values ascribed to it. That they should do so, is not that surprising, as they are both trained fine artists and the identity of being an artist is traditionally not bound to being economically viable through your work, and this notion is also traditionally cultivated in the art school. Even within wider capitalist society, the romanticised notion of the ‘starving artist’ supports the idea that in order for an artist to work i.e. to make art and be an artist, they do not have to be economically

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productive. They are measured by other systems, such as peers, exhibitions, galleries, etc. which although of course also connected to the economic sphere, do not directly judge based on economic worth but indirectly via aesthetics (Orr 2011, Niedderer 2013, Drew 2004). The first question is: are you an artist that makes ‘good’ work?, then: are you an artist who sells work? (and makes money) – the economic value judgement is there, but one step removed. Although a slight exception to the rule, it still fits neatly within the narrow constructs of what can be counted as ‘work’ within the capitalist system, exactly because it is an exception, but also because capitalism has successfully commodified much of art and culture-making, even if most who produce it don’t necessarily benefit greatly economically at an individual level. Saying they were at ‘work’, Eirini and Toni were able to signal to both themselves and others that they could prioritise their making over other labour demands made on them. But what of the women who are not artists? As previously discussed their making space provided a signal that they could make time, but they had to claim a certain amount of autonomy before they could even make that space. Part of that had to be a refusal to do other work. And the refusal of work is a significant act, which, within a capitalist construct that values work above everything else, is mundanely radical. It is a radical mundanity which Knott (2015) soberly disavows – although describing ‘amateur time’ as ‘the possibility for temporary control of one’s own labour alienation’ (Knott 2015, 98), he pinpoints one of its defining features as being its constraints and limitations in terms of utopianism, and as such its lacking of any meaningful will or future-directive power. Vaneigem (1967/2006) however, proposed that ‘lived space-time is the space-time of transformation, whereas the space-time of roles is that of adaption’ (Vaneigem 1967/2006, 220). I would argue that the space in time that the women take for their making is one where they have freed themselves of roles, – it’s a freedom that is attained, not bestowed and it functions through activity (Grosz 2010). As such, to conceive it as ‘compliant’, ‘weak’ and lacking discursive power, as Knott (2015) describes ‘amateur time’, is to view it from within an ontology of patriarchal capitalist value structures. I refuse the ontology. Capitalism, Mason (2015) proposes: […] will be abolished by creating something more dynamic that exists, at first, almost unseen within the old system, but which breaks through, reshaping the economy around new values, behaviours and norms (Mason 2015, xiv).

He is in this context, primarily talking about the impact of information technology on societal and economic structures, proposing that it is already loosening the relationship between wages and work. I would argue that for women, the relationship between wages and work has never been a particular stable one. Rowbotham (1973a) pointed out that one of the reasons why capitalism has remained to a large degree suspicious of women, is that it has never viewed them as being reliably committed to waged work. I believe that we can still see this suspicion reflec-

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ted in gender pay-gap and career progression discrepancies to this day. This is because women’s labour often remained and still often continues to remain in the process – in the production of their families and communities (Rowbotham 1973b, Parker and Pollock 1981, Buckley 1986). In relation to care for others in particular, this is also often a production they prioritise, if they can, if they must. I do not have space here draw on critiques of reasons for this gendered labour, only to say that I am fully aware of their importance. My main argument here, is that women have always retained knowledge of work outside of the capitalist economic constructs, which although this resulted in painful exclusion for centuries (Rowbotham 1973a&b, Parker and Pollock 1981, Buckley 1986), has also harboured knowledge of ‘freedom to’ (Grosz). Frayne (2015), who’s research with people who had reduced work-hours or given up work, found that ‘they had not done so according to some kind of crude anti-work morality, but according to a strongly felt desire to do more.’ (Frayne 2015, 141) For some that it had included more of, what society currently considers idling time, for others it has meant being involved further in self-production and community oriented production (ibid.). Scholars of post-capitalism, such as Mason (2015), Weeks (2011), Frayne (2015) and Bregman (2016), make the case that self-production will be an essential component of a society which successfully comes to terms with the automisation of a large proportion of what is now wage labour. They argue that in order to thrive, we have to break the link between wages and production, through implementing basic income for all citizens so that from their self-production, society can continue to be produced, socially, culturally, and economically. I argue that making dispositions are the ground from which this can be nurtured by giving it time, space and opportunity to make. The space and time that the women command to make is time for self-production. That is for most of them its primary purpose. And with that, they are anarchic. That the benefit of their self-production extends beyond themselves is evident all around them, yet they refuse to give any of it power over their making. This refusal even extends to their family and community, which is probably the most radical aspect of their practice in feminist terms. A deep knowledge of freedom to, resides both within female making practices and within the art & design discipline, but in order to utilise its full potential for our communities in years to come, it needs to be privileged with value not currently conceivable in contemporary design ontology. In order to make it conceivable, discourses around making, design, and education, have to be expanded beyond contemporary ontology, supported by the breaking of the work/wage conflation and it’s narrowly defined ethical and moral evaluation of both what constitutes public live and what counts as work. As Grosz (2010) reminds us ‘Freedom is not a transcendent quality inherent in subjects but immanent in the relations that living has with the material world, including other forms of life’ (Grosz 2010, 148), which means that each freedom has to be a dialogical process informed by the construction of our own ethics in relation to the world around us.

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Yet, I also believe in the more un-ruly elements of a freedom to, and as Vaneigem (1967/2006) highlights ‘… subversion is the basic expression of creativity. Daydreaming subverts the world’ (Vaneigem 1967/2006, X). In their making, women are taking space to day dream – they are taking space to think, – ‘to feel lively within themselves’ (Schües 2011), but more than that – they are taking the freedom to make, with all its material and sensory possibilities of making the new.

1

In the following all text belonging to the interviews is typeset in italics.

References Adamson, G. (2007). Thinking through craft. Oxford: Berg. Bain, J. (2016). ‘“Darn right I’m a feminist…Sew what?” The politics of contemporary home dressmaking: Sewing, slow fashion and feminism’. Women’s Studies International Forum 54, 57–66. Becher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories, intellectual enquiry and cultures of disciplines. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Bratich, J., and Brush, H. (2011). ‘Fabricating Activism’. Utopian Studies 22(2), 233–260. http://dx.doi. org/10.5325/utopianstudies.22.2.0233. Bregman, R. (2016). Utopia for realists. London: Bloomsbury. Buckley, C. (1986). ‘Made in Patriarchy: Toward a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design’. Design Issues 3(2), 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1511480. Cameron, M., Crane, N., Ings, R., and Taylor, K. (2013). ‘Promoting well-being through creativity: how arts and public health can learn from each other’. Perspectives In Public Health 133(1), 52–59. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/1757913912466951. Clarke, A. (2011). Design anthropology. Wien: Springer. Design thinking in soul care – Prototypr. (2018). Prototypr. Retrieved 12 December 2017, from https://blog. prototypr.io/design-thinking-in-soul-care-80124d4188f0. Devlin, P. (2010). Restoring the balance. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Voluntary Arts England. Drew, L. (2004). ‘The Experience of Teaching Creative Practices: Conceptions and Approaches to Teaching in the Community of Practice Dimension’. Barcelona: 2nd CLTAD International Conference, Enhancing Curricula: The Scholarship Of Learning And Teaching In Art And Design. Retrieved from http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/644/. Frayne, D. (2015). The refusal of work. London: Zed Books. Grace, M., and Gandolfo, E. (2014). ‘Narrating complex identities: Contemporary women and craft’. Women’s Studies International Forum 47, 56–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.010. Grosz, E. (1999). Becomings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Grosz, E. (2010). ‘Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom’. In D. Coole and S. Frost (eds.), New Materialism: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Guffey, E. (2014). ‘Crafting Yesterday’s Tomorrows: Retro-Futurism, Steampunk, and the Problem of Making in the Twenty-First Century’. The Journal Of Modern Craft 7(3), 249–266. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/174 967714x14111311182767. Gunn, W., Otto, T., and Smith, R. (2013). Design anthropology. London: Bloomsbury. Hackney, F. (2013). ‘Quiet Activism and the New Amateur: The Power of Home and Hobby Crafts’. Design And Culture 5(2), 169–193. http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175470813x13638640370733. Julier, G. (2013). ‘From Design Culture to Design Activism’. Design And Culture 5(2), 215–236. http://dx.doi.org /10.2752/175470813x13638640370814. Kelly, M. (2015). ‘Feminist identity, collective action, and individual resistance among contemporary U.S. feminists’. Women’s Studies International Forum 48, 81–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. wsif.2014.10.025.

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Knott, S. (2015). Amateur Craft – History and Theory. London: Bloomsbury. Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Levick-Parkin, M. (2017). ‘The values of being in design: Towards a feminist design ontology’. GENDER – Zeitschrift für Geschlecht, Kultur und Gesellschaft 9(3), 11–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.3224/gender.v9i3.02. Liddle, J., Parkinson, L., and Sibbritt, D. (2013). ‘Purpose and pleasure in late life: Conceptualising older women’s participation in art and craft activities’. Journal Of Aging Studies 27(4), 330–338. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.jaging.2013.08.002. Luckman, S. (2013). ‘The Aura of the Analogue in a Digital Age: Women’s Crafts, Creative Markets and HomeBased Labour After Etsy’. Cultural Studies Review 19(1), 249. http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/csr.v19i1.2585. Macfarlane, B. (2004). Teaching with integrity, the ethics of higher education practice. Oxon: Routledge. Malabou, C. (2016). Changing difference (1st ed.). Cambridge: Polity. Mason, P. (2015). Postcapitalism. London: Penguin Random House. Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Cambridge [u.a.]: Polity Press. Massey, D. (2012). For Space. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Niedderer, K. (2013). ‘Explorative Materiality and Knowledge. The Role of Creative Exploration and Artefacts in Design Research’. Formakademisk 6(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.651. Orr, S. (2011). ‘“Being an artist you kind of, I mean, you get used to excellence”: Identity, Values and Fine Art Assessment Practices’. International Journal Of Art and Design Education 30(1), 37–44. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2011.01672.x. Parker, R., and Pollock, G. (1981). Old mistresses. London: Pandora. Pink, S. (2012). Situating everyday life. London [u.a.]: Sage. Reynolds, F. (2010). ‘“Colour and communion”: Exploring the influences of visual art-making as a leisure activity on older women’s subjective well-being’. Journal Of Aging Studies 24(2), 135–143. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.jaging.2008.10.004. Rowbotham, S. (1973a). Hidden from history. London: Pluto Press. Rowbotham, S. (1973b). Woman’s consciousness, man’s world. London: Verso. Schües, C. (2011). ‘Introduction: Toward a Feminist Phenomenology of Time’. In C. Schües, D. Olkowski and H. Fielding, Time in Feminist Phenomenology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Shreeve, A. (2009). ‘“I’d rather be seen as a practitioner, come in to teach my subject”: Identity Work in Part-Time Art and Design Tutors’. International Journal Of Art and Design Education 28(2), 151–159. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2009.01602.x. Smith, N. (2015). Locating Design Anthropology in Research and Practice (1st ed.). Perth: PDF. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/895695/Locating_Design_Anthropology_in_research_and_practice. Snaith, A. (2015). Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Social Value Lab. (2011). Creative Solutions to Isolation and Loneliness – Social Return on Investment Evaluation. Glasgow: Social Value Lab. Retrieved from http://www.socialvaluelab.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/CraftCafeSROI.pdf. Stuckey, H., and Nobel, J. (2010). ‘The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature’. American Journal Of Public Health 100(2), 254–263. http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ ajph.2008.156497. Titus, J., and Sinacore, A. (2013). ‘Art-making and well-being in healthy young adult women’. The Arts In Psychotherapy 40(1), 29–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2012.09.006. Trowler, P. (2012). ‘Doing Research: The Case of Art and Design’. In P. Trowler, M. Saunders and V. Bamber, Tribes and Territories in the 21st Century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in higher education. London: Routledge. Vaneigem, R. (1967/2006). The Revolution of Everyday Life (2nd ed.). London: Rebel Press/Left Bank. Van Lith, T., Schofield, M., and Fenner, P. (2012). ‘Identifying the evidence-base for art-based practices and their potential benefit for mental health recovery: A critical review’. Disability And Rehabilitation 35(16), 1309–1323. http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/09638288.2012.732188. Wayland Barber, E. (1994). Women’s work. New York: Norton. Weeks, K. (2011). The problem with work. Durham: Duke University Press. Wolfe, D. (2018). Neuroscientist Explains Why Crafting Is Great For Mental Health – David Avocado Wolfe. David Avocado Wolfe. Retrieved 12 December 2017, from https://www.davidwolfe.com/why-crafting-isgreat-for-mental-health/. Yair, K. (2010). Craft and Wellbeing. Craft Council. Retrieved from http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/content/ files/craft_and_wellbeing.pdf.

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FOLLOWING THE ELEPHANT-NOSED FISH: MAKING THINGS MORE COMPLICATED AS A FORM OF RESISTANCE Shintaro Miyazaki and Susanna Hertrich

Compared to the more common design practices research in design – or design research – as a child of the post-war 1960s has always already been linked to more processual aspects of design influenced by cybernetics, system dynamics, and system thinking. Since then a continuous vanishing and diminution of the material aspects in design are noticeable. Certain aspects of design became increasingly ungraspable, invisible and unperceivable as Lucius Burckhardt famously noted in the early 1980s. This has been the case, especially with the rise of service design or user experience design in the 1990s. More recent re-iterations of this radical expansion of design (Colomina and Wigley 2016; Milev 2013) are once again steering its attention towards media technological realms located somewhere in-between interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, users, programmable machinery, smart materials, and organisms. Confronting this strand with transformative and socially responsible design as recently propagated by design researchers such as Wolfgang Jonas, Jesko Fezer or Friedrich von Borries (Jonas, Zerwas, and Von Anselm 2015; Fezer and Studio Experimentelles Design 2016; von Borries 2016) is one of many approaches within the emerging field of new experimental research in design (NERD). Our focus is on adaptive-dynamic (Jonas 1994), signal-based and intangible aspects of designed environments, which are nevertheless still highly material-critical. How can we combine this focus with an attempt of designing playful, and at the same time scholarly advanced approaches, that enable a sustainable transformation of our knowledge and our ways of living in an increasingly automated, highly-complicated and technology-driven world? Especially since we are ‘condemned to being the designers of ourselves’ (Groys 2008)? How can people like you and me open-up new ways of acting and re-designing against protected modes (Kittler 1997) of closed media designs in the age of smart cities, homes, and cars that are planned to be invisible? We will tackle these questions by referring to ‘Sensorium of Animals’1, an ongoing research project (2016–2018) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). This practice-based research project is inspired by the more-thanhuman (Abram 1997) sensorial ecology and biology of the elephant-nosed fish – a species that is capable of electrolocation and -reception, sensorial abilities which allow these fish to sense their electromagnetic environment (Fig. 1). ‘Sensorium of Animals’ explores ways to sense our high-tech electromagnetic environments,

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1 Gnathonemus petersii (Peters’ elephantnose fish) Source: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London (vol. 1864, plate II), Wikimedia commons

especially those serving as infrastructures of our ‘digital’ and wireless devices.2 While we also prototype tactile interfaces, that could be worn on our arms, shoulders or upper body our solution-oriented prototyping and media experimentation is at the same time expanded and synthesised with historical contextualisation and fictional world-designing (Fig. 2). This threefold approach creates and unfolds an enriched spectrum of designerly and theoretical propositions, as well as narrations and speculations. It operates as a conceptual device to make things appear more complicated and complex than they seem to be. Our works will find their way into an exhibition, and publications, both in print and web-based formats. We hypothesise that increasing the complexity of our reflections and knowledge about the protected designs of our critical infrastructures in smart cities, homes, and cars, might open-up new entry points and create possibilities to intervene, re-design and self-determine how we want to use and live with these highly invasive information technologies. Making things more complicated and difficult is also a form of resistance towards overly profit oriented forms of research mostly capitalizing the reduction of complexity leading to more calculable and thus economically valuable forms of design.

Historical contextualisation Historical contextualisation as compared with the remaining two areas of the afore­ mentioned project is probably the most unusual field of design research. However, it is highly useful (Mareis 2016) as it not only reflects the contingency of current practices but also provides their alternative conceptual, discursive and sociopolitical perspectives leading to elaborated practice-based experimentations. The fact that elephant-nosed fish, sometimes called freshwater elephant-fish or Mormyridae are capable of electroreception and electrolocation became known in the 1950s with the research by Hans Werner Lissmann, an Ukrainian-GermanBritish zoologist, who used electrophysiological measurement techniques involving

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2 Three-fold synthesis Illustration: Susanna Hertrich

electrodes, amplifiers, headphones, oscillographs and -scopes to record emissions of those so-called weakly electric fish. In 1958 he collected signal characteristics from different species of these fish and suggested, that they ‘by means of their electric pulses, can locate objects if their electrical conductivity differs from that of water’ (Lissmann 1958, 188). Similar to radar systems in military air force Mormyridae can actively sound out electric field differences of their surroundings by sending out electric pulses and sense their back-reflections. The most recent elaboration of these findings has been conducted by Gerhard von der Emde and his team in Bonn (Germany), who is an advisor of our research project. Von der Emde confirmed already in the late 1990s, that it is mostly the interplay between ‘the spatial pattern of voltage change’ received by the electroreceptors on their skin and nearby objects, which enable these fish to navigate in darkness. Objects change the electric field and thus change the patterns and currents flowing through their electroreceptors. ‘The results of our experiments suggest that electric fish can measure three-dimensional depth by analyzing the electric image of objects projected onto a single, stationary two-dimensional array of electroreceptors’ (von der Emde et al. 1998, 893). Since the sense-making of such animals are highly dependent on their environment this research field is called sensory ecology (Dusenbery 1992). It is not merely an accident that in the 1930s Lissmann, the above-mentioned zoologist, had been a PhD-student of Jakob von Uexküll, whose concept of ‘Umwelt’ was highly influential for example for the forming of the environmental sciences generally, and for at least two more related fields: The first is usually subsumed by the term cybernetics, the second evolving some decades later is called ecological psychology coined by James J. Gibson, who is known for his concept of affordance. Both are highly signif-

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icant for the (design) history of human-machine-interfaces and the later rise of service design or user experience design in the 1990s. Elephant-nosed fish are not only as objects of research linked with cybernetics but as animals capable to orient themselves in their natural environments as they embody its principles. Cybernetics, a neologism coined by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s, is inspired by the Ancient Greek verb kubernáō – meaning to steer, to navigate and to govern. The term refers to a then-new field of science that coupled technological systems such as servomechanisms originating from military fire-control with human and animal sense-making via the now ubiquitous concept of feedback (Wiener 1948; Galison 1994; Mindell 2002). A feedback circuit is both an abstract, thus non-material, but at once also a matter-dependent concept, which simply describes the changing flow of material properties such as voltage, weight, but also monetary value leading back into its own source and thereby either causing its amplification or reduction. Feedback systems are also building blocks in ecosystem ecology, system dynamics or communication systems. From the 1960s on, they found their way into Californian counterculture, art, psychedelics (Turner 2006; ter Meulen, Tavy, and Jacobs 2009; Blauvelt 2015; Kallipoliti 2015; Bernes 2017) and as mentioned earlier also design research (Mareis 2015). In fields such as sensory substitution, cybernetics met assistive technology (Mills 2011, 2010), where Paul Bach-y-Rita beginning his work in the late 1960s is regarded as a pioneer. Sensory substitution later called sensory augmentation is a field of research and engineering, which is aiming at building devices and systems, that translate signals from one human sense modality – such as seeing, hearing or feeling – into another. Our extended team member Akitoshi Honda’s previous work Bipolar (2012) (Fig. 3) has been inspired by Bach-y-Rita’s famous tactile television hardware (1969). It consisted of a 20 × 20 vibrator stimulator matrix ‘mounted in the back of a dental chair for projecting mechanical television images on the skin of the back of blind subjects’ (Bach-Y-Rita et al. 1969, 963). We are currently building a scaled down version with an 8x8 vibrator matrix as it is described further below (Fig. 4). By turning everything into a system of interdependent feedback loops cybernetics accelerated the rationalisation, capitalisation, and exploitation of everything on our planet and continue to do so nowadays under different disguises and keywords, such as big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence. With the spread of personal computers, digital communication and network protocols such as the IEEE 802.11 in the 1980s, the miniaturization of semiconductor technology, the dissemination of sensor networks and wireless information technology and protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or mobile phone protocols we arrived at the most recent age of smart environments, intelligent media-techno-ecologies, which is unnoticeably transforming into a new stage global profit-making. Wireless, insensible electromagnetic infrastructures provide the basis for such high-tech, info-, dataenvironments. Historical contextualisations of these most recent aspects

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3 Prototype module for Bipolar (2012) by Akitoshi Honda Photo: Susanna Hertrich

especially the context and discourses about smart homes, offices, and buildings are currently worked out in the research team and provide many alternative sociopolitical perspectives and conceptual brick stones for our fictional world-designing. The cultural history of the interferences of electromagnetics, esoterics, animism and other more pseudo- or non-scientific fields of knowledge form the last strand of the historical contextualisation linked with ‘Sensorium of Animals’. The connex between techno-spiritualism and technical media networks already had its beginning with the dawn of telegraphy and the first explorations of radio even before radio existed as a distinct technology, but was a side effect of telephony (Kahn 2013, 1). With the dissemination of vacuum amplification and high-frequency radio during the 1920s and 1930s esoteric, techno-spiritual and pseudo-scientific narratives and theories exploded exponentially (Borck 2001). Later prominent figures of these contexts inspired by electromagnetic media technology are Wilhelm Reich (Orgone Theory), David Tansley (Radionics), Konstantīns Raudive (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) and many more. Cross-comparing the aforementioned discourses with East Asian cultures, that come with a long and bulky cultural history of religious world-views such as animism and shamanism provides alternative starting points for our fictional world-designing. In Taoism or Zen Buddhism, practices of working, operating and dealing with energies are crucial. Reactualised as so-called techno-animism (Jensen and Blok 2013), these contexts build a broad spectrum of bizarre narratives, imaginative concepts, alternative metaphors, and terminology. They create linkages between the world of animals, electromagnetic media technology and human-based understanding.

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4 Algorhythmic Driver Modul (2017) Photo: Susanna Hertrich

Fictional World-Designing Inspired by approaches such as critical or speculative design (Dunne 2008; Dunne and Raby 2014) fictional world-designing is a way to create various playful scenarios of an alternative or future life, where we could feel our invisible electromagnetic infrastructure, their signals and processes as sensible pulses, rhythms and ticklings. To what degree would that be needed or even become empowering? How and for what situations? What would happen to our conventional senses? The sensorial ecology of the elephant-nosed fish here operates as a vehicle, which allows us to intertwine the world of animals and its non-human sensorium including all its alterities with its dynamical relationships with non-human worlds full of signal-based and seemingly immaterial aspects of designed invisible environments. Starting with paper-based techniques such as diagrammatisation or quadrant mapping (Fig. 5),3 we have been writing text-based narratives, film exposés or have been pondering about found objects such as a Japanese lucky charm for success with information technology and designed boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989; Pierre Johnson et al. 2017) – antennas or crystals – to create different artifact-based stagings and scenarios (Fig. 6, 7). In order to work within a constrained spatial framework, we built a simple micro-studio walled by two pieces of blue coloured plywood each with a size of about two square meters (Fig. 8). Since blue resembles the colour impressions of an aquarium, the studio opens ways to conjure associations with water and fish. This research ‘aquarium’ contains not only pieces for the fictional worlds but collects also visual, textual and haptic materials from our historical contextualisation operating as triggers and orientation nodes for our

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5 Coordinates for mapping exercise Illustration: Susanna Hertrich

6 Vintage container for the chemical element ‘ether’. Ether or ether space, the air breathed by the gods in ancient Greek mythology, is a common metaphor for the world of radio signals; Japanese lucky charm for success with information technology as sold at religious sites. Photo: Susanna Hertrich

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7 Antenna fetish objects Photo: Susanna Hertrich

8 The research ‘aquarium’, micro-studio and room for experimentation Photo: Samuel Hanselmann, IXDM

story-creation and pieces from our media experimentation (Fig. 9–11). It is thus not only a way to exhibit or display but is itself a productive environment allowing us to connect in unexpected ways with our research objects and designed things. It is also a simple and effective method to materialise practice-based research beyond the discursive medium of written text and printed publication. We are currently working on an expanded exhibition set-up that will feature a selection of the described artifacts, the micro-studio itself, a short piece of written fiction describing our final scenario and two short films that are connected with the short novel. Summarising the scenario-building process, we first began with more straightforward scenarios, where we would transform biologically into elephant-nose fish-inspired beings or where we would have wearables on our body,4 and were confronted with the quite obvious issue of invisibility. How can we show the technological operativity of electromagnetic waves, when we cannot see them? This insight made us realise that we would need to focus on artifacts and non-direct ways how human citizens in a future world will handle, operate and work with electromagnetic signals. We constantly extended and refined scenario fragments considering historical contexts, sociopolitical aspects and technological plausibility until we

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9–11 The research ‘aquarium’, details Photos: Samuel Hanselmann, IXDM

arrived at a utopian scenario, where a group of human citizens perform techno-shamanistic transformations rituals of becoming a super-(techno)-animal in order to protect themselves from the information retrieval machinery of transnational data mining conglomerates. These fictitious techno-anarchist groups are part of alternative closed-loop neighbourhoods, which are ideally economically and sociotechnologically interdependent from these conglomerates. Our focus on sociopolitical issues became rather crucial for our fictional worlds since they not only provide

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narrational vectors, but they furthermore sketch/draft alternative ways of living in an increasingly automated, highly complicated and technology-driven world. Our fictions are intended to provoke reflections about our current infrastructures, which are intentionally designed to remain invisible.

Media Experimentation Informed by our historical contextualisation we re-build two historical contexts and their experiments in the field of sensory substitution between the tactile and other senses such as hearing and vision. The first of these contexts is the cutaneous rabbit illusion described in the early 1970s by Frank Geldard and Carl Sherrick at the time working at the Cutaneous Communication Laboratory at Princeton University (Geldard and Sherrick 1972). Quick sequences of taps actuated first near the human wrist and then near the elbow create sensations of sequential taps hopping – like a rabbit – up the arm from the wrist towards the elbow, despite the absence of any physical stimulus between these two locations. It is thus possible to create the impression of a higher actuator density than actually present by using appropriate spacing and timing (Jones and Sarter 2008, 97). Directly related with such effects is the context around Paul Bach-y-Rita, who stimulated the skin surface not only with a one-dimensional line but moreover with a two-dimensional area, sometimes also called matrix. We fused this second context with the first into a flexible experimental setting (Fig. 4). We have been furthermore prototyping devices that enable us to sense our high-tech electromagnetic environments (especially Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals) via a wearable tactile interface. Tinkering and hands-on experimenting with currently available low-cost modules, parts and devices allows for a grounding of both our fictional world-designing and historical contextualisations. We linked the fictional and speculative aspects of our research to concrete issues of functionality. That way ‘Sensorium of Animals’ is not merely a fictional or theoretical work but also operates within plausible trajectories. The current system is based on a previous project called Detektors (2010) conducted in collaboration with artist researcher Martin Howse (Fig. 12). While Detektors enabled us to listen to the electromagnetic signals surrounding us (Miyazaki 2013b), the Algorithmic Driver Module (2017) we build in collaboration with the artist and programmer Akitoshi Honda invokes feelings of electromagnetic signaling.5 Instead of hearing electromagnetic waves the new system enables to feel them (Fig. 13). The Algorithmic Driver Module consists of a Raspberry-Pi (+ low-budget sound card), which conducts an FFT-based spectrum analysis and triggers in some programmed and controlled way the motor driver units connected to 64 buttonshaped vibration motors. Driver units and Raspberry-Pi are mounted on a custommade printed circuit board. We increased the sensibility and bandwidth of the

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12 Detektors (2010) by Martin Howse and Shintaro Miyazaki Photo: Shintaro Miyazaki

13 Schematic of the prototype system Illustration: Susanna Hertrich

receiver device from 100 Mhz–3 Ghz to 1 MHz–10 Ghz. The transformation of these radio waves into sound is based on so-called logarithmic radio frequency detectors – small integrated chips – fabricated by Analog Devices (Fig. 15). These micro-circuits operate similarly to decibel meters for sound waves, but instead measure the power of electromagnetic waves and relate that to changes in voltage. As these voltages fluctuate very quickly they become audible, when amplified and connected to a

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14 Antenna experiments Photo: Susanna Hertrich

15 New detector with a broader sensibility, casein-case construction Photo: Susanna Hertrich

loudspeaker. The specific acoustic characteristics, dynamics and signatures of the detected electromagnetic waves are translated, coded and mapped to selected vibratory activation patterns. This is currently in an early phase of testing and refining. We are furthermore experimenting with different antenna designs (Fig. 14), are testing different vibratory activation patterns and ways to attach the small vibrator buttons to our upper and lower limbs or torso.

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Synthesis To summarise, the threefold synthesis of the approaches explained above might be one method to tackle the question posed at the beginning, which was: ‘How can people like you and me open-up new ways of acting against protected modes of media designs in the age of smart cities, homes and cars that are planned to be invisible?’ With the project, we basically want to link the world of electromagnetic waves and the vast informational infrastructures they provide with the manifold facets of the fictional worlds they afford. These realms are additionally informed by our historical contextualisation. Such an approach might offer broader insights for our concern of social empowerment in the age of complex techno-ecological entanglements. To describe it metaphorically: We avoid creating a smooth, monolithic and glossy body of insights, instead, we aim to make this body more porous, manifold with many little docking sites and holes providing space of linkage. The threefold synthesis is a vehicle to make things appear more complicated and complex than they seem to be. Materialisation is surely a straightforward way to tackle issues of design, which becomes increasingly ungraspable, invisible and unperceivable. The simplicity and inaccessibility of designed environments such as our wireless in­ formation spheres is an illusion and prevents the possibility of self-exploration, production, and determination. Increasing complexity by an oscillation between materialisation and theorisation is furthermore a form of ethico-aesthetic (Guattari 1995, 8) and design-based resistance towards overly profit oriented forms of research mostly capitalizing the reduction of complexity leading to more calculable and thus economically valuable forms of design. Feeling the pulsations and vast activity of data exchange, collection, and surveillance provide not merely ways to become sensible and raise awareness about hidden, still crucial information on infrastructures of urban life, but moreover offer generative and playful frameworks for further experimental research in design. And this especially concerning our contemporary condition, where ‘life’ and ‘living’ are increasingly enabled, controlled and dependent on invisible, electromagnetic, quasi ‘magical’ infrastructures.

1 2 3 4 5

Subtitle is ‘Electroreception in Experimental and Historical Media and Design Research’, https://sensorium.ixdm.ch/, Swiss National Science Foundation-Project No. 159849. See (Miyazaki 2013a; Pias 2010 [2002]; Bolz, Kittler, and Tholen 1994) on the media history and archaeology of digital technologies. See also left side wall in figure 8. The project ‘feelSpace’ is an interesting working example for recent work on this topic. http://www.feelspace.de/navibelt/ See (Grönvall, Fritsch and Vallgårda 2016) for a similar approach.

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References Abram, David (1997). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage. Bach-Y-Rita, Paul, Carter C. Collins, Frank A. Saunders, Benjamin White, and Lawrence Scadden (1969). ‘Vision Substitution by Tactile Image Projection’. Nature 221 (5184), 963–64. Bernes, Jasper (2017). ‘The Poetry of Feedback’. E-Flux Journal 82. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/82/127862/the-poetry-of-feedback/. Blauvelt, Andrew (ed.) (2015). Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center. Bolz, Norbert, Friedrich Kittler, and Georg Christoph Tholen (eds.) (1994). Computer als Medium. München: Wilhelm Fink. Borries, Friedrich von (2016). Weltentwerfen: Eine politische Designtheorie (Edition Suhrkamp). Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Borck, Cornelius (2001). ‘Electricity as a Medium of Psychic Life. Electrotechnical Adventures into Psycho­ diagnosis in Weimar Germany’. In Mindful Practices: On the Neurosciences in the Twentieth Century (Science in Context, Vol. 14, Nr. 4, Winter 2001), edited by Michael Hagner and Cornelius Borck, 565–90. Colomina, Beatriz, and Mark Wigley (2016). Are We Human? Notes on an Archeology of Design. Lars Müller. Dunne, Anthony (2008). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby (2014). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dusenbery, David B. (1992). Sensory Ecology: How Organisms Acquire and Respond to Information. New York: W.H. Freeman & Co Ltd. Emde, G. von der, S. Schwarz, L. Gomez, R. Budelli, and K. Grant (1998). ‘Electric Fish Measure Distance in the Dark.’ Nature 395 (6705), 890–94. Fezer, Jesko and Studio Experimentelles Design (2016). Öffentliche Gestaltungsberatung: Public Design Support 2011–2016. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Galison, Peter (1994). ‘The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision’. Critical Inquiry 21 (1), 228–66. Geldard, F. A., and C. E. Sherrick (1972). ‘The Cutaneous “Rabbit”: A Perceptual Illusion’. Science 178 (4057), 178–79. Groys, Boris (2008). ‘The Obligation to Self-Design’. E-Flux Journal, Nov. http://www.e-flux.com/journal/00/68457/the-obligation-to-self-design/. Grönvall, Erik, Jonas Fritsch, and Anna Vallgårda (2016). ‘FeltRadio: Sensing and Making Sense of Wireless Traffic’. In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 829–40. ACM. Guattari, Felix (1995). Chaosmosis. An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (trans. Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Jensen, Casper Bruun, and Anders Blok (2013). ‘Techno-Animism in Japan: Shinto Cosmograms, ActorNetwork Theory, and the Enabling Powers of Non-Human Agencies’. Theory, Culture & Society 30 (2), 84–115. Jonas, Wolfgang (1994). Design – System – Theorie. Überlegungen zu einem systemtheoretischen Modell von Design-Theorie. Essen: Blaue Eule. Jonas, Wolfgang, Sarah Zerwas, and Kristof Von Anselm (eds.) (2015). Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser. Jones, Lynette A., and Nadine B. Sarter. 2008. ‘Tactile Displays: Guidance for Their Design and Application.’ Human Factors 50 (1), 90–111. Kahn, Douglas (2013). Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kallipoliti, Lydia (2015). ‘Closed Worlds: The Rise and Fall of Dirty Physiology’. Architectural Theory Review 20 (1), 67–90. Kittler, Friedrich A. (1997). ‘Protected Mode’. In John Johnston (ed.), Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays. Amsterdam: G & B Arts International, 157–68. Lissmann, H. W. (1958). ‘On the Function and Evolution of Electric Organs in Fish’. The Journal of Experimental Biology 35 (1). The Company of Biologists Ltd, 156–91. Mareis, Claudia (2015). ‘TRIZ in the Aftermath of a Transnational Post-War History’. Procedia Engineering 131 (January), 500–508.

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Mareis, Claudia (2016). ‘Design the Future – Mind the Past’. In Thomas H. Schmitz, Roger Häußling, Claudia Mareis, and Hannah Groninger (eds.) Manifestationen im Entwurf: Design – Architektur – Ingenieurwesen. Bielefeld: transcript, 95–112. Meulen, B. C. ter, D. Tavy, and B. C. Jacobs (2009). ‘From Stroboscope to Dream Machine: A History of Flicker-Induced Hallucinations’. European Neurology 62 (5), 316–20. Milev, Yana, (ed.) (2013). D.A. – A Transdisciplinary Handbook of Design Anthropology. 1st New Edition. Peter Lang. Mills, Mara (2010). ‘Deaf Jam From Inscription to Reproduction to Information’. Social Text 28 (1 102), 35–58. Mills, Mara (2011). ‘On Disability and Cybernetics: Helen Keller, Norbert Wiener, and the Hearing Glove’. Differences 22 (2–3), 74–111. Mindell, David A. (2002). Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing before Cybernetics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Miyazaki, Shintaro (2013a). Algorhythmisiert. Eine Medienarchäologie digitaler Signale und (un)erhörter Zeiteffekte [Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Diss., 2012]. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos. Miyazaki, Shintaro (2013b). ‘Urban Sounds Unheard-of: A Media Archaeology of Ubiquitous Infospheres’. Continuum 27 (0), 514–22. Pias, Claus (2010) [2002]. Computer Spiel Welten. Zürich: Diaphanes. Pierre Johnson, Michael, Jen Ballie, Tine Thorup, and Elizabeth Brooks (2017). ‘Living on the Edge: Design Artefacts as Boundary Objects’. The Design Journal 20 (sup1). Routledge, 219–35. Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer (1989). ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39’. Social Studies of Science 19 (3), 387–420. Turner, Fred (2006). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wiener, Norbert (1948). Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Vol. 1053. Actualités Scientifique et Industrielles. Paris: Hermann and Cie.

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THE EPISTEMIC POTENTIAL OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN: INVESTIGATING THE COMPLEX PROBLEM OF URBAN SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH SPATIAL PRACTICE Otto Paans

1 The Challenge for Architectural Research and its Design Practices Achieving a sustainable urban future puts increasing pressure on the tools and methods of architectural practice. If the designing disciplines are instrumental in shaping the urban future, what does this mean with regards to their ways of operating? The pressure is aggravated by the urgency of resource depletion, demographic changes, rapid urbanisation, climate change, and insecurity about climate mitigation. These developments jointly necessitate the search for architectural design tools and methods that address the increasing complexity and presence of multiple ‘known unknowns’ (and ‘unknown unknowns’) while designing and proposing future courses of action. One overwhelming response to the complexity of sustainability problems has been to resort to quantification and parametric modelling in order to exert a degree of control on design problems. For instance, BIM (Building Information Modelling), parameter-driven computational design, and emerging CIM (City Information Modelling) allow for an unprecedented interconnection of design process flows (Stavric et al. 2012; Stojanovski 2013; Müller et al. 2016; Thompson et al. 2017). Enormous bodies of data can be interlinked digitally, conveying the idea of full control over the problem.1 Digital simulation, parametric flexibility, and advanced rendering technologies suggest that the worlds they represent possess ‘internal rigorous consistency’ (Turkle 2009, 72). The domain of digital representation and simulation conjures up strictly internalised, self-enclosed worlds that appear consistent and within reach, reinforcing the idea that designers have full control over all relevant factors for addressing design problems. This illusion of full control has caused an overemphasis on digital simulation in architectural design, tacitly assuming that the degree of control and flexibility offered by such tools equates full knowledge of the problem structure. Architectural design must overcome the limitations of this way of representing and simulating design problems and solutions. The danger in relying too much on quantification and digital modelling in the process of architectural design is that one determines the spatial quality of the built environment by referring to simulation

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outcomes. In other words, the simulation is seen as the ultimate arbiter in thinking about spaces, viewing spaces in exclusively performative terms, a fallacy that undermines the richness of architectural production. Moreover, the looming danger is that digital tools (notwithstanding their enormous potential) are viewed as the only tools that have a future role to play in architectural design. Exactly at this point, it pays off to sidestep this process of apparent progress towards digitalisation, pausing for a moment and turning the question around: what if design problems were addressed by starting from spatiality instead of (digitised) optimisation? Or, to put it in the words of Preston Scott Cohen, what if we take the claim literally that architecture comes from ideas about space? (Architect Magazine 2017). This shift in perspective undermines the tacit premise that outcomes generated by simulative and digital tools directly determine spatial quality. Therefore, it focuses on the potentials of spatial designing. This perspectival shift is necessary as new tools and techniques not only introduce new forms of generating knowledge or design options; they introduce also new forms of forgetting, mostly by uncritically accepting new tools as replacements for the old ones (Turkle 2009, 71–102). Any process of evaluating the merits of new tools and techniques, however, should ideally take place in conjunction with reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of existing tools, minimising what is being forgotten, and maximising what is being learned.

2 Responding to the Challenge Through Architectural Design In response to this challenge, the research project presented here explores solutions to the complex problem of urban sustainability through design-based, spatial architectural experimentation. The central idea is that the act of architectural design itself constitutes a vibrant, valid, and useful form of investigation in which the potentials of making and representing aid to the understanding of complexity. The advantage of architectural instruments like sketching, modelling and diagramming is that they provide a series of ‘modelling spaces’ with different degrees of precision and mechanisms of problem exploration. A thick marker allows for representing and exploring design problems in a different way than a CAD program does. Conversely, sometimes a sketch with a few lines catches the essence of a design better than a technical drawing in all its explicitness manages to do. Jointly, the collective of representations generated in architectural processes allows for exploring problem structures and modelling architectural objects in complementary and overlapping ways, illuminating its potentials and qualities. These consecutive episodes of representation form a modelling chain of design approaches with different degrees of precision (see Gleiter 2009).

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general developmental direction

new theme or tool usage

precision

final design

time

early ideas

increasing coherence

enriching the design

determinate proposal

1 The chain of modelling spaces in the architectural design process

The methodological turn towards established architectural design practices is not a flat-out rejection of the digital. Instead, it is an attempt to constructively juxtapose and recombine digital and manual modes of representation to rehabilitate the generative, epistemic, and explorative potentials of architectural design as a mode of knowledge production and a critical, dialogical engagement with the situation that is played out in the intermediate domain of visual and symbolic representation. Critical juxtaposition of different design methods allows one to explore issues of urban sustainability starting from architectural qualities and spatial arrangements, instead of numerical and quantitative methods, thereby denying the illusion of full control, and embracing a degree of uncertainty and openness, without reverting to purposeless, undirected experimentation.2 By combining different types of representations in one integrated design process, a new chain of modelling spaces and knowledge practices is instigated, leading to insights that are not readily classifiable as either the result of quantitative analysis or digital simulations, but that are generated through the act of architectural designing itself, with a continuous focus on the spaces that result. The most striking feature of progressing in this way is that it produces results and possibilities

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that are not derivable from the interpretation of data in a one-one relationship. Put differently: the results of an analysis do not point unambiguously towards a solution, nor does it indicate always which factors will play relevant roles, avoiding the naturalistic fallacy that analysis and solution are each other’s mirror image. Hypothesising, we say that the core advantage of design-based research stems from the fact that designing juxtaposes and recombines the parameters from an analysis with new, unexpected parameters that played no visible role in prior analysis at all. De Bruyn and Reuter give a clue as to why this happens: The whole is always more and something different than the sum of its parts. For the process of architectural production, it follows that it is not allowed to arrive from the characteristics of individual parts or their law-like interactions at a description of the whole. The relations and connections between parts are of differentiated strength and possibly unstable. Partial systems serve divergent goals like ecological efficiency, aesthetic concept, social acceptance, etc. Their harmonisation follows no verifiable function. (de Bruyn and Reuter 2011, 633)

The wide array of functions and goals integrated in spatial objects like buildings, public spaces, neighbourhoods, and cities cannot be unified under one verifiable or quantifiable function. The array of goals and functions that these artefacts fulfil are simply too divergent to be captured by what Deleuze once called ‘one order of generality’ or one unifying metric that unites all factors: Experimentation is thus a matter of substituting one order of generality for another: an order of equality for an order of resemblance. Resemblances are unpacked in order to discover an equality, which allows the identification of a phenomenon (Deleuze 2016, 4).

Deleuze’s point is well made: the quantification or the subjection of integral, architectural objects under one metric is an attempt to equalise all factors into one order of equal, comparable units. In the case of issues regarding sustainability, often-used metrics are tonnes of CO2 emitted; percentage of energy gained; loss of heat in joules; entrance of daylight in lumen, etc. Deriving all these metrics from a (virtual) object or City Information Model exerts the feeling of precision and control, reinforcing the idea that one knows exactly where to intervene to improve the state of affairs. Once phenomena are expressed in quantitative terms, the thought runs, they can be manipulated at will. However, at best, divergent interests can be balanced relative to one another, with different weighting factors where appropriate. The chain of architectural modelling spaces allows for performing this balancing act, as each tool (or more broadly, modelling space) allows for addressing a design problem with a different degree of precision or focus.

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This design-based approach allows for developing and understanding of sustainability problems from within the architectural discipline and its designing capacity, avoiding what Richard Blythe termed ‘the topological error’ – importing models and practices from other disciplines to legitimise forms of understanding in one’s own discipline (Blythe 2012, 51). However, one should turn the perspective around: The act ‘to theorize’ must come from close observation of what is going on in the practice itself as a primary move rather than to draw on coincidence found with research from other fields (Blythe 2012, 53).

Achieving understanding through designing implies working with inherent un­ certainties characterising complex problems, and thinking in relations instead of individual instances. In other words, the type of thinking needed to solve complex problems is focused on systemic viewpoints instead of databases, addressed through the spatial aspects constitutive of architectural design.4 To avoid the topological error, one needs to understand architectural design on its own terms. Although concepts may sometimes be borrowed from other disciplines, they do not constitute the core subject matter of architectural design. At best, they illuminate it from a specific perspective. The architectural experiment can be seen as constituted by design practices, and provides sufficient subject matter for research. On one hand, the experiment is the core practice of research, the mode in which its potential is played out. On the other hand, the architectural experiment is an object for close examination, allowing one to see the transformative and epistemic potentials at work. Given its emphasis on experimentation, the research is focused on observable transformations in understanding design problems and their spatial implications. This form of investigation is engaged and positively subjective, utilizing exactly what Gadamer identified as pre-judgments: the necessary, pre-formed viewpoint from which one approaches a given problem, and which structures all subsequent attempts at formulating solutions, or drawing epistemic distinctions within a given context. ‘But judgment […] for even if it always distinguishes itself into what is itself and what is other, it still – as a living thing – in the play and interplay of the factors that constitute it. Like all life it is a test, an experiment’ (Gadamer 2013, 252). Directly from the start, the design problem is approached from an architectural viewpoint and through the experimental, transformative practice of architectural design. The pre-judgments structure and direct the focus of designers to themes they are intimately acquainted with: materiality, aesthetics, functional programme, etc. Notably, experimentation in design does not take place randomly: instead, it is structured through a process of disciplined imagination (conducted through careful judgment) that enables purposive, goal-directed development of intermediate design proposals (Zimmermann and Forlizzi 2008; Weick 1989). These goals are not

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merely imposed from the outside; they are not just requirements to which one must conform. Instead, they are just as much produced during the design process, in a process of continuous conversation through experimentation. Designing, then, generates partially its own norms and criteria in an investigative process. Research outcomes are externalised in drawings, (digital) models and representations that form part of the overall understanding of the design problem. Those artefacts jointly represent a visualised, codified form of understanding through design. The fact that designers entertain pre-judgments is a methodological advantage: the solutions they present as responses to complexity arise because they approach it from a distinctive, creative-generative viewpoint. This approach broadly progresses by skilful recombination, sudden leaps of creation, generating multiple sub-optimal options, utilising visual and textual means and focusing on integrating rather than dissecting ideas (Lawson 2005, 42–44; Cross 2007, 22). Therefore, the design process accomplishes a seemingly impossible task: uniting contradictory, heterogeneous, conflicting pre-judgements in a purposive, productive process that proves to be an effective tool in dealing with complexity.

3 Research Cases The case studies being investigated through architectural designing are post-war neighbourhoods located in Rotterdam (NL) and Berlin (DE). The Rotterdam case is the neighbourhood of Pendrecht/Zuidwijk and the Berlin case is located in Hellersdorf-Süd. Both urban areas have been realised in a time frame when the belief in a fully ‘malleable’ society was prevalent, and modernist ideas dominated urbanism. Consequently, positivist assumptions built in these modernist designs are clearly visible. For instance, the design of public spaces assumes personal, individual, cardriven mobility. The housing stock underperforms in terms of energy efficiency. Functional programmes are based on mono-functional zoning, based on idealised models of human behaviour. Yet, these urban areas have a huge potential in terms of functional infrastructure, greenery, and location. The field of tensions between the strengths and weaknesses of these urban areas, combined with the contemporary challenge of urban sustainability jointly form a complex design problem. Multiple factors relevant to the problem must be ordered and integrated into coherent architectural design proposals. In the first instance, the research is focused on achieving higher energy efficiency and reduced CO2 emissions, with other, adjacent factors being added when design proposals allow space and possibilities for doing so. Thus, the nature of the question is on purpose open-ended: the architectural design practice actively generates possibilities that were not visible at the outset of the process.

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Hellersdorf-Süd

Pendrecht/Zuidwijk

surface area

242 ha

122 ha (Pendrecht) 153 ha (Zuidwijk)

inhabitants

± 25,000

± 24,000

time of realisation

1977–1990

1951–1961 (Pendrecht) 1950–1959 (Zuidwijk)

existing typologies

highrise, slabs, apartment blocks, limited freestanding houses

limited highrise, large slabs, limited freestanding houses

urban localisation

periphery of Berlin, surrounded by village structures and similar urban expansions

periphery of Rotterdam, but situated very close to Barendrecht and Dordrecht

spatial description

well defined by typology on the east, and the Rohrbruchpark from the west

well defined by the Zuidpark to the north and open landscape to the south

current status

recent large-scale renovations in Stadtumbau-Ost (2002)

program of renovation and urban upgrading in progress in Pendrecht

2 Two case studies

To address the complexity of urban sustainability problems, a differing range of architectural tools and methods of representation is integrated into an increasingly precise and determinate series of ‘modelling spaces’ each illuminating part of the complex problem structure, jointly suggesting new courses of action. The analytical approach that is central to the attempt to think from space and spatial practice is so-called Situational Analysis (SA) and exploits the repetitive character of the existing urban structure (see Paans and Pasel 2014). SA identifies recurring spatial situations in the built environment. Both case study areas have been designed during the heydays of modernism in a modular, repeatable manner. This spatial feature almost ensures that once a situation occurs frequently, it can be regarded as a structural feature of the urban layout (Paans and Pasel 2014, 138). Subsequently, this situation is photographed, providing a first-person viewpoint from which it is viewed. By analysing, highlighting, and cataloguing its observable characteristics, its strengths, and weaknesses can be clearly formulated. Thus, this form of analysis is explicitly focused on combining empirical, verifiable observations with generative and design-based speculation and development.

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possibility for PV modules +

possibility for topping up heat storage in concrete flat roof fully exposed to sun

modular building construction possibility for stepwise re-design existing open groundfloor

possibility for creating adaptive facade

building seems closed and uninviting possibility for integrating new functions possibility for densifying

CHARACTERISTICS

DISADVANTAGES

flat roof fully exposed to sun

possibility for PV modules

modular building construction

possibility for topping up

existing open groundfloor

heat storage in concrete

impoverished biotope

possibility for stepwise re-design possibility for creating adaptive facade building appears uninviting possibility for integrating new functions possibility for densifying possible water buffering zone limited biodiversity maintenance-intensive greenery possibility for rich biotope

3 Situational Analysis (SA), linking observable characteristics with architectural judgments

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possible water buffering zone limited biodiversity maintenanceintensive greenery possibility for rich biotope impoverished biotope

The core point is that the designer works from clearly identifiable characteristics of the built environment itself. Notably, these characteristics inform and generate options, strategies, speculations, and further visions. Moreover, analysing specific situations has the advantage of starting directly from an existing space with dimensions, daily use, materiality, and embedding in its context. This starting point avoids the discussion on what spatial quality as abstract concept entails. Instead, it focuses directly on the particular qualities of a given situation. SA allows for developing different scenarios for improvement and change of situations. The development of variations is not merely a matter of just providing pragmatic answers to a given problem. Instead, it is a necessary design step to explore multiple ways in which identified strengths and weaknesses can be addressed spatially. By visualising new options and scenarios from the same viewpoint as the initial photograph, the spatial qualities of the intervention can be directly discussed with reference to the original situation. It should be emphasised that issues of quantification and performance are also important in the design response, but they are temporarily secondary to spatial quality. For example, a design proposal that optimises the energy efficiency of a building, but sacrifices habitability in doing so, can be ruled out directly on the basis of an architectural judgment about spatial characteristics. The integral character of the architectural modelling chain consisting of various design tools applied in the context of an existing issue, leading to insights on how designing methods transform complex problems, and how the act of designing can be used as a epistemic (knowledge-generating) strategic asset for problem solving in ways that depart from just fulfilling pre-defined requirements. One further aspect should be noted: this approach may appear as a bottom-up approach, as just identifying minor issues here and there. An objection may be that it avoids structural interventions; or that it overlooks the proper, urban scale of the problem of sustainability. To counter this objection, interventions proposed based on SA are utilised in two different ways. First, they are used in an architectural catalogue, a guide of options, concepts, and partially-formed solutions that may be applied on any urban scale. For instance, if SA leads to a design proposal for topping buildings up with additional, energy-efficient floors, this idea may be applied on a large scale wherever the urban structure allows it. Generic design ideas have thus a specific application beyond the context for which they were formulated. Second, jointly viewed, the collection of situations leads to a very detailed picture of the urban area that is being analysed. The strengths and weaknesses of its spatial structure can be superimposed on classical, layered maps as an additional layer of spatial information that functions as enrichment of the structural information. Exactly this enrichment of understanding is an epistemic potential of the situational method. As analysis and design fluently revert into one another, improved understanding of the built environment can easily be used to propose large-scale

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4 Variation development of a single idea

urban transformation plans and scenarios. Thus, the scale of the analysis (carried out on a local, street-level scale) does not entail that the scale of the designed intervention should also be local and specific. Instead, detailed information gathered on street-level informs planning efforts on an urban scale; simultaneously, it guarantees that large urban plans are better attuned to local consequences.

4 Architectural Design in the Discursive Context of Design Research Architectural practice is currently exploring the interfaces and relations between its traditional tools and new, digital practices as well as new levels of complexity in the problems it addresses. As such, this research project can be positioned at the intersection of two processes that are visualised in Figure 5: On one hand, there is continuous evaluation during the design process, in which new design proposals or artefacts are quantified, measured, qualified and discussed with reference to their individual qualities or in comparison with others. Moreover, every choice is ‘instrumentalized’ – i.e. justified with reference to predefined or newly found variables. On the other hand, there is an opposite, yet simultaneous process of ‘spatialising’, in which these variables are translated into spatial settings that can be measured quantitatively but also evaluated for the spatial possibilities, functionality and usage (van Rijs 2016, 27). The core competence of architectural design is to spatialise ideas, to generate options that can be discussed, compared and evaluated. This is as it were a synthetic, combinatory and creative process. The process of evaluation has a direct, reciprocal relationship to the process of externalising ideas in sketches, drawings, models, and diagrams. Information derived from different types of evaluation (quantitative, qualitative, aesthetic, functional) leads to the formulation of new, architectural configurations that can be ranked, judged, changed, and compared. Note here that evaluation implies simultaneous acts of reductive analysis (deconstructing the proposal focusing on certain themes) and ‘connecting the dots’ (judging the proposal as a whole). It involves

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theory formation

theory-rationale theories, tentative explanations, speculations

spatiality architectural objects, qualities

measuring (analytic)

instrumentality quantitative methods measurability

research through design method formulation

spatialising (synthetic)

experimental-empirical observations, applied problem solving 5 Research through design as situated between theory and experiment, spatiality, and instrumentality

zooming in on certain aspects of design proposals, and considering them in relation to the whole, but also asking ‘what if’ questions about them. What if we combined idea A and B? What if idea C would be augmented a little? What if we added or subtracted some parameters from idea D? Here, the process of evaluation (or, alternatively – analysis) reverts seamlessly into designing and variation development. The double process of evaluating/spatialising is deeply argumentative, as there is considerable emphasis on justification and valuation of choices. In particular, representations (mostly in the form of drawings or models) play a pivotal role in this argumentation process. They embody the result of choices and decisions in a representational format, accessible to public scrutiny and discussion. Externalising ideas into representations enables discussion and evaluation of the results and the design process. In theory formation, individual instances, insights, findings, observations, and concepts from specific cases are grouped into larger, more systematic wholes that form series of results, loose discourses and subsequently proto-theories or fully developed theories. In an account provided by Feldhusen, the grouping of design results in increasingly large series is explicitly linked to disciplinary development (Feldhusen 2015, 13). When one designs, one can evaluate the proposal on its own

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merits. When one creates a series of design proposals, all entries in the series can be compared to one another. If more designers contribute to the overall repository of proposals, the work, and approaches of different designers can be compared. In parallel to this process of increasingly rich comparison, commonly recognised or utilised concepts develop. The more a concept or approach is regarded as integral to the design discipline, the more it develops. With its development, it becomes increasingly determined and regarded as part of the accepted canon of methods or approaches. This not to say that design should be subjected to the ‘cold bath of scientisation’ as Bonsiepe memorably put it (Bonsiepe 2002–2003). The same articulation process is at work in the formulation of theories. Early (proto) theories provide an overview of the dynamics at work in design processes. Notably, they form a ‘collective repository’ of knowledge, frames of reference and loosely accepted standards that are widely used within disciplinary boundaries. These theoretical coordinates can be used for devising new design experiments, or they can be applied to focus the attention at new issues. Thus, as depicted in Figure 6, research through design is also located on the crossroads between theory formation and method formulation and a third process of usage and uptake. When viewed from the viewpoint of design disciplines, this process plays an instrumental role in the distribution and acceptance of ideas, and their subsequent influences on individual design proposals. This process of method formulation resembles largely the classical relation between theory and experiments in the natural sciences, as it has been formulated from Kant onward, notably by Hegel, Popper and positivist philosophers from the Vienna Circle. Methods and new approaches are in turn tested for their merits, and concepts and ideas may or may not become commonly accepted or regarded as useful. This acceptance instigates the processes of concept and theory formation again, restarting the whole cycle. The thought to be avoided here would be that design cannot (or should not) develop to a level where it becomes its own paradigm. The only conceptual danger is that ideas that are widely regarded as paradigmatic are taken as true by definition or unchangeable. Inherently, the self-definition of a discipline is a process where different ideas clash and recombine in a creative tension that gives rise to something genuinely new. The development of a disciplinary paradigm is therefore not something dogmatic or unchangeable – rather the opposite: it is a deeply creative process that is not by definition teleological, but open-ended. Research Through Design (or, if one prefers, Design Research) operates on the intersection between processes I and II. Its experiments can be read as responses to pragmatic questions and identified weaknesses, but simultaneously as attempts to explore complex problems by utilising specific, relatively well-defined design proposals that can be instrumentalised and evaluated. Moreover, these experiments provide the source material for theory formulation, changing and developing the theoretical basis for design disciplines as a whole.

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theory formation

theory-rationale theories, tentative explanations, speculations

individual instance specific designs and ideas

acceptance (uptake) research through design method formulation

application (usage)

collective respository accepted methods and concepts

experimental-empirical observations, applied problem-solving 6 Usage and uptake of ideas in relation to theory formation and method formulation

5 Conclusion We explicate summarily how the architectural design process is explicitly epistemic. Complex design problems are addressed spatially by applying the method of architectural design. Through various forms of representation, the integrated modelling chain of different methods can be applied in practical situations. Importantly, the application of this modelling chain takes place in a specific, real-life situation. The possibilities and limitations of the situation challenge designers to activate their background knowledge, applying it from their specific, disciplinary viewpoint. Although large parts of design problems are only dimly known at the outset, representational design techniques can be used to explore the problem and gradually generate new insights that are not available by just applying classical analytic methods. Constant experimentation leads to the creation of a whole catalogue of options that can be ranked, compared, applied in different contexts, discussed and analysed. These options are not derivable in a one-one relationship from the analysis: they are generated by trying options out and judging them, or as Gadamer put it: they are experimental.

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Simultaneously, the dynamics of this process lead to new theoretical ideas, overviews on design activity as such and new, loosely developed concepts. Therefore, the knowledge that ensues from the architectural design process is pluralist: it deals simultaneously with the content of the problem being addressed, the design methods used to solve it, the experimental setup used to address it, and the theory to explicate, support, and position it with regards to other disciplines.

1 2 3 4

See for a preliminary problem statement: Paans and Pasel 2016 See for an exposition on this theme: Jonas 2014 Author’s translation Not precluding the possibility that databases can usefully assist in suggesting systemic viewpoints.

Bibliography Architect Magazine [Online] Taiyuan Museum of Art, Designed by Preston Scott Cohen, at: [accessed 10 August 2017]. Billen, R., Caglioni, M., Marina O., Rabino, G., and San José, R. (eds.) (2012). 3D Issues in Urban and Environmental Systems. Bologna: Esculapio. Blythe, R. (2012). ‘Topological Errors in Creative Practice Research: Understanding the Reflective Hinge and the Reflective Gap’, in Boutsen, D. (ed.) Good Practices, Best Practices: Highlighting the Compound Idea of Education, Creativity, Research and Practice. Leuven: St. Lucas Architectuur/KU Leuven. Bonsiepe, G., ‘Arabesken der Rationalität, Anmerkungen zur Methodologie des Design’, in: Boldt, C. (ed.) Ulmer Texte (Köln: Köln International School of Design 2002–2003). p. 6–7. Document available from: [accessed 14 March 2017]. Boutsen, D. (ed.) (2012). Good Practices, Best Practices: Highlighting the Compound Idea of Education, Creativity, Research and Practice. Leuven: St. Lucas Architectuur/KU Leuven. de Bruyn, G. and Reuter, W. (2011). Das Wissen der Architektur. Vom geschlossenen Kreis zum offenen Netz. Bielefeld: Transcript. Buchert, M. (ed) (2014). Reflexives Entwerfen/Reflexive Design. Berlin: JOVIS. Cross, N. (ed.) (2007). Designerly Ways of Knowing. Basel: Birkhäuser. Deleuze, G., Difference and Repetition (2016). Transl. Paul Patton. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Feldhusen, S. (2015). ‘Knowledge as the Known – On the Dialogue Between Theory and the Work’. In Weidinger, J. (ed.) Designing Knowledge. Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 13–27. Gadamer, H.-G. (2013). Truth and Method, transl. Joel Weinheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gleiter, J. H., The Promise of an Object. Design Processes as Processes of Theory Construction [Online] Document available at: [accessed 16 October 2016]. Jonas, W. (2014). ‘Research for Uncertainty. Reflections on Research by Design’, in Buchert, M. (ed). Reflexives Entwerfen/Reflexive Design. Berlin: JOVIS, 72–104. Lawson, B. (2005). How Designers Think: The Design Process Demystified, 4th edition. Oxford: Elsevier. Müller, M., Broschart, D., and Zeile, P. (2016). ‘City Information Modelling – Potenziale für eine intelligente Stadtplanung’. In Manfred Schrenk, M., Popovich, V. V., Zeile, P., Elisei, P., and Beyer, C., Real Corp: Smart Me Up!, proceedings of the Real Corp Conference, held 22–24 June 2016, 843–850. Paans, O., and Pasel, R. (2014). Situational Urbanism. Berlin: JOVIS.

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Paans, O., and Pasel, R., The Adjacent Intelligible: On The Practice Of Extracting Fully Intelligible Worlds Through Architectural Drawing, 3rd annual conference of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre: ‘Between Paper and Pixels: Transmedial Traffic in Architectural Drawing’, held at TU Delft/Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 30 November – 1 December 2016. [Online] Document available at: [Accessed 22 February 2017]. van Rijs, J., Methods and Strategies, in Think Design Build – Architectural Matters [Online] Conference catalogue for the Think Design Build conference, held 2–3 June 2016 at the TU Berlin. Document available at: [accessed 20 June 2017]. Stavric, M., Marina, O., Masala, E., and Karanakov, B. (2012). ‘From 3D Building Information Modeling Towards 5D City Information Modeling’. In Billen, R., Caglioni, M., Marina O., Rabino, G., and San José, R. (eds.) 3D Issues in Urban and Environmental Systems. Bologna: Esculapio, 51–58. Stojanovski, T. (2013). City Information Modeling (CIM) and Urbanism: Blocks, Connections, Territories, People and Situations, presented at SimAUD 2013 Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban Design 2013 [Online] Document available at: [accessed 2 September 2017]. Thompson, E. M., Greenhalgh, P., Muldoon-Smith, K., Charlton, J., and Dolnik, M. (2016). ‘Planners in the Future City: Using City Information Modelling to Support Planners as Market Actors’. In Urban Planning 1.1 (2016), 79–94. Turkle, S. (ed.) (2009). Simulation and its Discontents. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Weick, K. E. (1989). ‘Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination’. In Academy of Management Review 14.4 (1989), 516–531. Weidinger, J. (ed.) (2015). Designing Knowledge. Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin. Zimmermann, J., and Forlizzi, J. (2008). The Role of Design Artifacts in Design Theory Construction. Research Showcase @CMU, School of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.

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CO.MAKING – DESIGN PARTICIPATION IN TRANSFORMATION? AN EXPERIMENTAL-PROGRAMMATIC RESEARCH Laura Popplow

0 Introduction Transformation is defined as a complete change, in the direction of an improvement. It has been used in several disciplines, for example in political studies to describe the change of autocratic states towards democracy. More recently, transformation has been used to describe the complete change necessary to reach the goal of a low-carbon society and to prevent the collapse of our planets ecosystem (WBGU 2011b). But maybe these definitions of transformation today are still not complex enough: What is now called the Anthropocene is just one description (and maybe even a misleading one, see Haraway 2016, 31) of the trouble we are in. Yet, in the last couple of years, designers have started to address these complex issues (Jonas, Zerwas, and von Anshelm 2015). While there is nothing wrong about any attempt to change the ways we as humans are living on this planet, I am troubled somehow by the impression that we as designers are still so tempted by the idea we could improve situations and solve problems, that we miss all the interesting work we do while maybe not solving anything but (hopefully productively) creating new issues. The following text is therefore based in practice: By describing situated actions (Suchman 2007) and the choices I made as a design practitioner and design researcher along the way, I hope to encourage design practitioners and researchers to involve in the mundane practice of Design for Transformation, understood here as ‘staying with the trouble’ (Haraway 2017). Transformations are multilayered problems that need to be addressed on all levels of society and culture, changing both practices and structures (John Grin, Jan Rotmans 2010, 3). Transformation is a wicked, affective business – most people are not willing to change the ways they are used to live and do things. Well prepared design methods or the next toolkit will not save anyone from collecting experiences in experiments that could provoke conflicts and will confront ourselves with our own presumptions. Here are two short vignettes of experiences, that led me to this conclusion: 1.) I am sitting in a meeting with a group of design students and two representatives of a local Open Data Initiative who runs a FabLab. We are considering how we could co-organise a local, public hackathon. The goal is to develop ideas how to reduce the barriers of using a bicycle in the city. At one point, one of the representatives starts to question our role as designers within this endeavour. He is wondering

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about what we as designers could possibly add to the ongoing process, apart from some well-designed posters and flyers for the event. The discussion is getting heated, the students are arguing well enough, but the question remains with me and the students during all the process. 2.) I am conducting a workshop with my design partner and a local NGO that runs a weekly meeting for refugees in the city. We have prepared all sorts of materials to build the spaces we wish to inhabit. One of the Syrian refugees who has been here for almost two years, starts to build something that looks almost like the perfect German suburban dream, including a solid fence around the garden. He and his friends are wondering about the shared-flat utopia of one of the members from the NGO. We are struggling to explain the concept of urban commons at the end of the workshop. I am confronted with my own preconceptions and leave with the feeling I learned more than I had to offer. These two vignettes shed light on two of the issues I am especially interested in. The first is the issue of the designers’ role in transformation. The questioning of our role as designers is an example for the preconceptions of design we encounter in the field and the answers we need to define. If we understand transformations as multi-level, multi-stakeholder processes, we should be able to argue for our stake in the process. What are possible roles of the participatory designer in transformation processes? What enables us to support these processes? Where are the boundaries of our capacities? The second issue is inclusive, more democratic transformations. The workshop experience shows the potential of non-verbal expressions to question our understanding of an issue. Transformations need to work through all societal levels, but how could we achieve the mutual learning that is needed (Simonsen and Robertson 2013, 2–3)? How could we contribute as participatory designers to include more voices in transformation processes? How could we unfold controversial views, also opposing to our own views? The following text describes a series of practical experiments that deal with these questions in two different settings: 1. A public hackathon dealing with the transformation of cities towards more cycling. Here, an existing design format, the CycleHack (CycleHack 2018) was tested in a local setting. 2. A public-engagementproject dealing with the question of collaborative living in the city. Several methods and formats were tested and refined, and a new workshop format was one of the results, which is described in more detail. The research programme is based on the concept of programmatic research (Brandt et al. 2011) and was developed through practical experiments. The first formulation of the programme as ‘Design Participation in Transformation?’ was informed mainly by Participatory Design, Design for Social Innovation, and the growing discourse around Transformation Design. The text henceforth follows the re-formulations of the research questions through practice. Co.Making will be conceptualised here as the key practice that Participatory Design could support in

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1 + 2 Co.Making is a social and material entanglement.

transformation processes. The study demonstrates how co.making can be understood as collaborative issue making and how the examples are related to similar experiences in the field of Participatory Design.

1 CycleHack Wuppertal (2015) The CycleHack is a public 48-hour event with a concrete question and mission: How can we ‘reduce the barriers that stop or discourage people from cycling’ (CycleHack 2018)? The event is organised in cities around the world at the same weekend. People from all backgrounds come together to prototype solutions for that question and share them via social media and a special online catalog. The event starts with a public presentation on Friday evening, runs in smaller groups and workshops on Saturday and Sunday and ends with a public presentation of the prototypes on Sunday afternoon. The principle of the CycleHack stems from hackathons in the software industry but was adapted by Scottish Service Designers in 2014 (We Are Snook – We Are Snook – We Are Snook, no date). The CycleHack in Wuppertal was set up as a student project in collaboration with a local Fablab and an Open Data initiative (Glörfeld et al. 2018). The basic idea was to offer a platform for collaborative making to a wide range of actors to support the transformation towards a cycle-friendly city in Wuppertal (Rudolph 2013). The CycleHack was not framed necessarily as a design activity, although the organisation through the design students was pointing at the setting in design practice. The research interest was aiming at finding out about differences between designerly and activist ways of organising and facilitating transformational processes. The research design was henceforth conceptualised as an action research developing an ‘agonistic design thing’ (Binder et al. 2011), which would allow to compare differences between activist and design-practices and to critically engage with the question how design practices could enable local transformations.

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The mixed experiences within the CycleHack – a successful public event and a follow up long-term project development of a collaborative bike rental service (Groneberg 2015), but a rather contentious relation with one of the local cycle activists groups – led to the questioning of the roles of designers in ongoing political transformation processes (Popplow 2018). One local activist group, which was rather critical about the CycleHack, felt that we were taking credits for a political topic that we were not experts in. On the other side, we reached out to a group of Not-Yet-Cyclists, who felt encouraged to think about overcoming challenges to use their bike more often. This led to the definition of the designer as someone who is an outsider to certain local knowledge regimes, but within that role, which could be described as idiotic (Deleuze and Guattari 1994; Stengers 2005) s/he is able to re-ask and re-frame the problem definition and therefore re-open the possibility for more actors to engage in an ongoing transformation through collaborative making (Popplow and Duque 2017).

Experiences & Re-Formulations of the Research Programme The initially formulated research programme ‘Design Participation in Transfor­ mation?’ was first explored exemplary by conducting the CycleHack in Wuppertal. Here, a certain local setting and situation in transformation – the commitment of the local politicians and other stakeholders to make the city more bike-friendly (City Wuppertal 2014) – was intervened by us as designers organizing the hackathon. The hackathon was intended but also perceived as an intervention, as a stepping in of a new party in a situation of conflict. As a researcher, I was aware of the different parties in the situation, but I needed to step into the field to understand that it was not possible to intervene as a neutral party. The hackathon was intended as a neutral platform for all parties to meet and interact, but it was perceived as a competitive format, questioning the ongoing practice of the activist groups. In retrospective, the negative reaction of some activists was not surprising: We questioned their understanding of the issue of cycling and their way of trying to solve the issue. But we also touched a pain point of the situation: Cycling was regarded as a kind of specialised skill in the cycling community and many of the barriers were framed as a lack of commitment to develop that skill. While the hilly surrounding was seen by many actors we interviewed as the main reason not to use a bicycle, the use of e-bikes was seen by some of the activists as a non-valuable solution. On the other hand, we as designers and non-experts in cycling were able to create a new public and to introduce non-specialised, non-activist participants to the issue of cycling in that setting.

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3 Participants working together during the CycleHack Wuppertal 2015

4 The first prototype of an up-cycled e-bike for the collaborative bike rental service ‘RadUp!’

5 Participants of the CycleHack Wuppertal 2015 are interacting with the public through offers of quick hacks.

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6 A student and one of the local cycling activists are shooting a short video ‘How to cycle’.

7 Public presentation of the results at Sunday afternoon

8 One of the hacks is presented by a student.

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Essentially the CycleHack was a public making event, in which a public was produced also through the making process. People without expert knowledge got involved in the complexity of the question through working collaboratively on simple prototypes. What happened in the process was that the collaborative making between cyclists and non-cyclists was questioning the normalised problem definition. And the definition of a problem or the formulation of the issue is by no means innocent, it is the question of power: Who defines the problem? Who is setting the (political) agenda? The generative (design) question posed by the CycleHack team ‘how to reduce the barriers that stop or discourage people from cycling’ includes already a reframing of the issue. It is addressing the Not-Yet-Users, the ones that are discouraged to cycle, who are not participating in the transformation towards a more cycle-able city. It does not intend that the ones to formulate answers need to be specialised or that the solutions must be generated by experts. Here is also a possible role for the designer in transformation: Being the one to re-open the process of formulating an issue and to involve new people with other viewpoints into a transformation process by co.making activities. The political potential lies not in the developed prototypes, but in the re-questioning of the problem formulation. The re-formulation of the research programme therefore was a development from ‘How to get people involved in transformation processes?’ to ‘How to get people involved in the formulation of an issue?’ and even more detailed: ‘How can we get people involved in the formulation of an issue who are not even sure they have a stake in the issue?’

2 co.city lab (since 2015) The second experimental intervention was developed in the context of the housing crisis which became more and more apparent through the migration of more than one million asylum seekers in Germany since 2015 (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge 2018). The need for new models of city planning, for more affordable living space, for more collaborative cities is getting momentum ever since, at least in the architectural discourse (Friedrich et al. 2015). But apart from the experts’ discussions – how could the ones in need for affordable living space get involved in city planning? The programmatic research question developed through the experience in the CycleHack helped to focus the research interest in this field: How can we get people involved in the formulation of an issue who are normally not involved in the formulation of political agendas, because they are for example too young, do not speak the language or simply do not have the time? Through a funding of the European Cultural Foundation in the programme ‘Connected Action for the Commons: Build the City!’ (European Cultural Founda-

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tion 2018) I was able to research and experiment for twelve months together with the designer Carolin Holzer (which I include by speaking of us in the following text). The first idea was to run a series of participatory workshops in collaboration with a refugee camp and to build a common meeting place in the end. But the first field visits and interviews with people volunteering in refugee camps showed that there was simply no space to run workshops in the camps – plus most of the people there were happy to spend time somewhere else. We recognised also a need for networking across the several camps, e.g. for translations if someone was just speaking a special dialect, but also across the network of active volunteers and the official partners in administration and politics. In a first conceptual session in February 2016 we decided that we did not wanted to contribute to the stigmatisation of refugees and that the housing crisis was our main topic despite the background of the people in need. We wanted all people to engage in the issue of city planning, and we saw a need for new ways of public engagement on all social levels: Aiming at including new citizens in city planning processes (refugees, kids and young people, families, and others with little time) we developed a mobile workshop lab to involve people in small interactions on the street. During summer 2016 we ran a series of smaller pop-up-engagement events (Teal and French 2016) with the lab on wheels, which enabled us to participate in different public events both in Wiesbaden and Mainz. We collaborated with a network of local NGOs (Platz da?! e.V. 2018) who are aiming to support the development of affordable housing and are also working for the integration of refugees in Mainz and Wiesbaden. With them we ran a series of two workshops, which aimed to test a series of participatory making techniques with verbal and non-verbal forms of expression in this setting where language competency is also an issue. One of the workshops was a successful collaborative model building session with the topic ‘Living Space – City Space’ (see second vignette). The second workshop aimed more strategically at the conception of a new intercultural meeting space. We also planned a collaborative model building, but the group spent the time mostly with a more classic stakeholder-map and brainstorm session on post-its.

Experiences and Re-Formulations of the Research Programme The experiences of both the pop-up situations with the mobile lab and the two workshops offered the possibility to reflect on the aspects that allow people to engage with an issue by making and not only by means of verbal expression. Although we planned making activities in all the different set-ups we realised that these activities need a careful staging and framing. The making activities were easily discarded during the pop-up-engagement sessions, especially when someone with argumentative verbal skills was present. The making aspect of participation was getting

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9 The co.city mobile lab on its first ride

10 The mobile labs interior holds material for different types of workshops.

11 One of the pop-upengagement events: A mapping of projects and ideas for refugees

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12 Another pop-upengagement event took place during the theater project ‘In Zukunft: Mainz’.

13 During the first workshop in collaboration with the NGO Platz Da?! e.V. we used a visual questionnaire to understand the relation between private and public space.

14 The participants build models of their dream living spaces and connected them in a city model.

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traction and importance through the difference in the two workshops: Do we normally value just verbal and written contributions as participation? Does a formulation of an issue need to be a written or told statement? What is the relation between making and telling activities in a participatory workshop (Sanders, Binder, and Brandt 2013)? The research programme ‘Design Participation in Transformation’ was unfolding in this second experimental setting in the direction of formulations of issues by making together. The models and visualisations are products of a social and material negotiation. They could be also framed as boundary objects (Star and Griesemer 1989). The question how to engage people in the formulation of an issue that are not already active seemed clearer now: Through collaborative making people from different backgrounds were able to engage in and exchange about complex issues. As every issue of transformation is complex, the creation of boundary objects through co.making could be helpful to engage with these complexities. It also appeared that the results of these makings were readable and interpreted in a common process across the group of participants. This process could be framed as a language-game, in which materials are getting meaningful through the social interaction (Ehn, 1988). But how is it possible to steer this quality, to use the making activities to alter the negotiation of the issue within a group? The programme was re-formulated now further: How can we enable communication between different stakeholder positions (politicians, activists, citizens, marginalised groups) in transformation processes through co. making?

Vision Mapping Workshop Consequently, we developed a new workshop format. We realised that we had to make the making less open to direct it more towards a material formulation of an issue. The Vision Mapping workshop was a refinement of the first workshop where we worked with the visual questionnaires and the building kit and the second workshop in which we essentially did a stakeholder analysis and a mapping of possible uses for a specific place. The evaluation of these first workshops revealed that though it was great to have a longer time to build models, especially when language is an issue, time and concentration were limited. To achieve an exchange about the complex issues we were addressing, we would have to prepare the materials more carefully and with slightly less options. The Vision Mapping workshop was conceptualised to address an issue for a mixed stakeholder group in a relatively short amount of time, using and offering different possibilities to visualise through materials, drawing, and writing. We also developed a more carefully staged group process, to collect both individual and common visions. Without aiming at a consensus, the format was developed to

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reveal conflicts and similarities between different views, understandings, and levels of knowledge. To show the potential of the format, I will introduce here exemplary one of the five workshops we conducted so far. This one was in collaboration and commissioned by the NGO ‘Zentrum für gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt e.V.’ in Frankfurt a. M., aiming to enhance the stakeholder communication of NGOs and others around an official public engagement process for a new city wide development concept (Stadt Frankfurt 2018).

Workshop ‘Schöne Aussichten’ Frankfurt In December 2016, we collaborated with ‘Schöne Aussichten – Forum für Frankfurt’. The project focuses on participatory research and dialogues around the future development of the city and has developed a set of ten factors that have been described by citizens as important development fields for the city of Frankfurt since 2014: Work/Economy, Culture, Education, Health/Well-being, Environment, Mobility, Housing, Security, Living together, Politics/Administration. These factors have been described in detail through qualitative research and have been discussed in public engagement dialogues (Zentrum für gesellschaftlichen Fort­ schritt e.V. 2018). The city of Frankfurt a. M. is running a participatory process across the city to develop a vision for an integrated future development since 2016. Several participatory events took place in summer 2016, and in late autumn the city invited to take part in four dialogues that would discuss four different scenarios how the city could handle growth of inhabitants and the building of new housing. Three members of the association and myself took part in three of these dialogues. Beforehand, ‘Schöne Aussichten’ invited a mixed group of stakeholders from the ten different fields for a curated dialogue to reflect about the cities process in relation to the associations own developed factors. The participants were also asked to visit one of the official dialogues. Main idea of the event was to network across different influencers and to steer the discussion around the cities engagement process. A very diverse and interested group of participants came for an evening event in which we facilitated the process through our Vision Mapping tools. For the Vision Mapping, a set of materials is prepared on the tables for each participant: A small lego figure with a flag, a small island, a square and a hexagon as little stages that are each connected with a question. The questions depend on the workshop situation and are also published as written questions on the tables or on the wall. Apart from these pre-set materials we bring boxes with different materials for individual use: small figures, Lego, clips, rubber bands, textiles, modelling clay and non-permanent-pens to write or draw on the washable surfaces of the small stages.

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15 A Lego figure is used for an introduction of the participants.

16 The little stages are filled individually and then merged during the group process into a landscape.

In Frankfurt, the participants were asked first to introduce themselves through the Lego figures by drawing or writing something about their position and role on the little flag. The participants were then asked to reflect on their own experience during the cities dialogues on the four scenarios. As we could not assume that all the participants took also part in one of the dialogues, we kept the questions linked to the small stages quite open. The first stage, the square, was linked with the question: What becomes visible to me through the cities dialogic process? The second, the hexagon, was supposed to give an answer to the question: What would enrich the dialogic process for me? The last, the island, invited a view from an organisational perspective: What does the process of an integrated city development imply for my own project?

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17 The landscapes allow a discussion among the smaller groups and to contrast the different scenarios.

18 During the final round of feedback, the models were used to point out and enact the most crucial situations.

Starting by introducing themselves and their organisation, the participants were asked to explain their visualisations or characterisations to the others in groups of three to four. They were then asked to also compare their own scenarios and find parallels or differences in their positions. After this first round of exchange, we made a tour through the different landscapes that were developed on the individual tables and discussed the different viewpoints. All participants were also asked to comment or emphasise with post-its. In the last new mixing of the groups, the participants were asked to develop a vision of how their common goals could be developed – what would they need to reach their vision? Some of the participants also moved parts of the visualisation landscapes and integrated them in one of the other scenarios.

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In the end, we had a last round of feedback with the whole group, which revealed how the visualisations offered some essential insights through the patterns in the models: Across the group there was a common impression that it was hard to overcome the barriers of city administration and politicians. Several models had these barriers quiet literally built with small walls, doors or ditches. The stakeholders visualised their cause and their groups as small figures trying to overcome these obstacles. The final discussion was influenced through these models which offered the possibility to point at the most crucial situations. It was discussed practically and by interacting with the models how tools or bridges or networks could help to overcome the barriers between the groups and the city administration. The group agreed on the output of the session: They felt encouraged that they would be able to influence these pain points through more exchange between the existing, present organisations.

The Vision Mapping Workshop as Research Output City planning is an abstract topic which involves a lot of expert knowledge for most people. But the consequences of planning have direct influence on the life of everyone living in a city. Visiting the official public engagement event ran by the city administration in Frankfurt, it was possible to observe the need of translating this expert knowledge. A lot of the effort put in this public engagement event was lost using plans and expert terms, which were simply not readable or understandable to a wider part of the public. On the other hand, participation was offered mostly in the form of written or verbal comments. The Vision Mapping is a practical result of the experiments within the field of public engagement in transformation processes that puts an emphasis on co.making instead, addressing other forms of knowledge and enabling other forms of issue formulation. It has been tested so far in five different local situations and with different questions, from more abstract topics like the ‘future of learning’ (HBK Braunschweig – Transformationsdesign 2016) to very specific local processes around a neighbourhood (Wir sind Nachbarn e.V. 2016).

3 Learnings from the Experiments The transformation towards a low-carbon society needs a new social contract, based on democratic values and participation on all levels of society. This is one of the key arguments of the report ‘World in Transition’ by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU 2011b), which was used here to narrow the goal of transformation. One key action proposed in the report is the support of change agents which are defined as ‘individuals or small groups which are initially involved as

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marginalised protagonists but gradually increase the impact of an innovation until it finally becomes established as a new social routine’ (WBGU 2011a). The preceding paragraphs have outlined experiments in Design for Transformation, in which the author initiated projects in collaboration with such niche actors. Through a programme of experimental practice, the role of the designer and her/his contribution for a more democratic transformation became mapped in situated actions. A provisional knowledge regime (‘Design Participation for Transformation?’) has been explored through specific local situations and groups of stakeholders. Programmatic research is a post-foundational research practice, it has to establish its own provisional knowledge regimes on the move in order to support new ‘practices-in-the-making’ which is needed in times of increasing societal challenges (Brandt et al. 2011, 51). The evaluation of a programme and experiments therefore has not only to reflect the impact that such a formulation of a provisional knowledge regime could have on other designers practice or as a model of knowledge-production in design in general, but it should account for the changes that it made in the sociomaterial relationships it affected. Intervening in ongoing transformation processes is not always welcomed – other actors have already invested time and effort in the issue and will not neces­ sarily invite a collaboration with designers. The vignette from the CycleHack is an example of the confrontations these interventions could provoke. This experience helped to question both the politics of collaboration and the designers’ role among other actors in transformation. The assumption of collaboration as the best way to enhance transformation processes was challenged through the conflict with the other change agents. Indeed, the role of the designer as an outsider to a local knowledge regime (described here through the figure of the idiot) became productive through the provocation of prototyping without expert-knowledge. While the CycleHack was initiated as a platform to support the local niche actors, the conflict with the local actors revealed the potential of public, collaborative making to re-open the formulation of an issue and to invite other actors to engage in the co-formulation of the issue. The politics of inviting for a co-formulation of an issue has been framed as a new direction for Participatory Design more recently (Stahl and Lindström 2016). This was a re-framing of the invitation of participatory designers to involve potential users in the design process. While Participatory Design comes from the background of technological design and aims to develop more democratic designed technologies, the approach described by Stahl and Lindström aims at the use time of design and ‘designerly public engagements’ (ibid.). Here, the study of the CycleHack adds evidence that issues are ‘co-emergent in different kinds of material engagements’ (ibid., see also Agger Eriksen 2012; Marres 2012). The social and material entanglements of situations, human and material actors and the action of making between those were defined here as co.making. The focus of this co.making is the public engagement in transformation. Through the public making during

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the hackathon (which was showcased through local radio, television and newspapers as well as Social Media) a new public of Not-Yet-Cyclists was invited to the issue formulation, which broadened the local debate. The vignette from the co.city lab demonstrates an experience of further experimentation with the potential of material visualisations in the co-formulation of issues. It shows the potential of mutual learning (Simonsen and Robertson 2013, 2–3) through co.making activities: A formulation of an issue through making does not rely on the verbal articulation skills of the participants, nor does it prefer an already analytically, pre-formulated solution. Transformation processes are complex issues, or wicked problems (Rittel and Webber 1973). They are not easy to formulate, because these issues contain to many constraints to be analysed systematically. Through the process of visual and material articulation, these issues unfold in ways that enable a review of different viewpoints without the need to reach a simple consensus. The making of the issue helps also to document the viewpoints of the individual participants – arguments are not easily overwritten by others, because they remain visible on the table and can be enacted and changed within the groups process. Making has been proposed as one of three activities that form the framework of participatory design methodologies – next to telling and enacting (Sanders, Binder, and Brandt 2013). While these three are often intermingled, the Vision Mapping workshop shows how co.making could initiate all three activities. The making with materials on the three little stages is a start into a group conversation (telling) and ended here by enacting scenarios with the figures and models. By putting the making at the centre, a formulation of the issue is initiated through a material or visual articulation. Interviews with participants of the Vision Mapping workshop produced first evidence that the emphasis on the making enabled more sustained discussions of the issues within mixed stakeholder groups (interviews made by the author). The explorations of Participatory Design methodologies in the context of Design for Transformation point towards a possible role of co.making as one key action to support more democratic transformation processes. This could lead to further research, adding evidence that more people feel engaged in transformation through making activities in contrast to methods relying just on verbal or written articulation (like comments, post-it sessions, etc.). The role of the participatory designer among other actors in transformation could be strengthened by demonstrating that her/his expertise in making models and visualisations – what we call design (in German ‘Entwerfen’) – and her/his ability to steer social processes help to interpret the artifacts developed through co.making as products of a material and social negotiations. But in order to foster making activities as part of the public engagement agenda in transformation processes, designers will also need to develop new skills to translate the results of co.making into the expert-driven language of political agenda setting.

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Transformation as ‘Issues-in-the-Making’ Transformation in times of the Anthropocene needs a new definition, aiming at improvements like ‘more democratic’ or ‘more sustainable’ seems too general. Transformations are possibly better defined through ‘issues-in-the-making’, through the constantly changing constellations of human and non-human actors. Abstract knowledge does not help without situated social and material practices – this is the crucial point where we need to formulate issues that are linked to all other levels of transformation while being also able to situate these issues in an actionable way. The argument developed here could be synthesised to the following: We need carefully staged co.making for a public co.formation and transformation of issues.

References Agger Eriksen, M. (2012). Material Matters in Co-Designing: Formatting & Staging with Participating Materials in Co-design Projects, Events & Situations. Malmö University. doi: 978–91–7104–432–7. Binder, T. et al. (2011). Design Things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brandt, E. et al. (2011) XLab. Kopenhagen: The Danish Design School Press. Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (no date) BAMF – Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge – Aktuelle Zahlen zu Asyl. Available at: http://www.bamf.de/DE/Infothek/Statistiken/Asylzahlen/AktuelleZahlen/aktuelle-zahlen-asyl-node.html (Accessed: 22 April 2018). City Wuppertal (2014). STRATEGIE FÜR WUPPERTAL. Wuppertal. Available at: https://www.wuppertal.de/ rathaus-buergerservice/medien/dokumente/Strategie_2025.pdf (Accessed: 16 July 2017). CycleHack (no date). Available at: https://www.cyclehack.com/ (Accessed: 16 July 2017). Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? London: Verso. Ehn, P. (1988). Work-oriented design of computer artifacts. Arbetslivscentrum, Sweden. European Cultural Foundation (2018). Connected Action for the Commons – European Cultural Foundation. Available at: http://www.culturalfoundation.eu/connected-action/ (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Friedrich, J. et al. (2015). Refugees Welcome Konzepte für eine menschenwürdige Architektur. Jovis Berlin. Available at: https://www.jovis.de/de/buecher/product/refugees-welcome.html (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Glörfeld, R. et al. (no date). opendatal | Open Data Initiative Wuppertal | OKlab Wuppertal. Available at: https://opendatal.de/ (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Grin, J., Rotmans, J., and Schot, J. (2010). Transitions to Sustainable Development: NEw directions in the study of long-term transformative change. Abigdon: Routledge. Groneberg, C. (2015). RadUP! University Wuppertal. Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble, Staying with the trouble. Durham and London: Duke University Press. doi: 10.1215/9780822373780. HBK Braunschweig – Transformationsdesign (2016). Symposium un/certain futures – Programm – TRANSFORMAZINE. Available at: http://transformazine.de/symposium-uncertain-futures-programm (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Jonas, W., Zerwas, S., and von Anshelm, K. (2015). Transformation design: Perspectives on a new design attitude, Transformation Design: Perspectives on a New Design Attitude. Basel: Birkhäuser. Marres, N. (2012). Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137029669. Platz da?! e.V. (2018). PlatzDa?! Mainz e.V. | Home. Available at: http://platzda-mainz.de/ (Accessed: 22 April 2018).

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Popplow, L. (2018). ‘Service [Design] Learning for Transformation? Der CycleHack 2015 in Wuppertal als forschende Designlehre und Service Learning’, in Bauer, B. and Hensel, D. (eds.) Designlernen – Diskurs, Praxis und Innovation in der Designlehre. München: kopaed-Verlag, 87–97. Popplow, L., and Duque, M. (2017). ‘ENGAGING WITH GHOSTS, IDIOTS & – _________________ OTHERNESS IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN’, in No 7 (2017): Nordes 2017: DESIGN+POWER,. Oslo. doi: 1604-9705. Rittel, H., and Webber, M. (1973). ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. doi: 10.1007/BF01405730. Rudolph, F. (2013). Strategien zur Stärkung des Radverkehrs unter schwierigen Rahmenbedingungen Analysen. Wuppertal. Sanders, E. B.-N., Binder, T., and Brandt, E. (2013). ‘Tools and techniques: ways to engage telling, making and enacting’, in Simonsen, J., and Robertson, T. (eds.) Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. New York and London: Routledge, 145–181. Simonsen, J., and Robertson, T. (2013). Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design. Edited by J. Simonsen and T. Robertson. New York: Routledge. Stadt Frankfurt (2018). Stadtdialog – Frankfurt 2030. Available at: https://www.frankfurtdeinestadt.de/ frankfurt2030/de/home/informieren (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Stahl, Å., and Lindström, K. (2016). ‘Politics of Inviting: Co-Articulations of Issues in Designerly Public Engagement’, in Smith, R. C. (ed.) Design Anthropoligical Futures. London, New York: Bloomsbury, 183–198. Star, S. L., and Griesemer, J. R. (1989). ‘Institutional Ecology, `Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39’, Social Studies of Science. SAGE PublicationsLondon, 19(3), 387–420. doi: 10.1177/030631289019003001. Stengers, I. (2005). ‘The Cosmopolitical Proposal’, in Latour, B., and Weibel, P. (eds.) Making Things Public. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 994–1003. Suchman, L. (2007). Human-Machine Configurations – Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teal, G., and French, T. (2016). ‘Designed Engagement’, in Design Research Society 50th Anniversary Conference. Brighton, UK. WBGU (2011a). The proactive state with more participation, German Advisory Council on Global Change Social Contract Factsheet. Available at: http://www.wbgu.de/fileadmin/user_upload/wbgu.de/templates/ dateien/veroeffentlichungen/factsheets/fs2011-fs1/wbgu_fs1_2011_en.pdf (Accessed: 22 April 2018). WBGU (2011b). Welt im Wandel – Gesellschaftsvertrag für eine große Transformation. Berlin. We Are Snook – We Are Snook – We Are Snook (no date). Available at: https://wearesnook.com/ (Accessed: 20 April 2018). Wir sind Nachbarn e.V. (no date). Frischer Wind im VierViertel: Workshop mit Caroline Holzer und Laura Popplow | Folkwang LAB Wir sind Nachbarn. Available at: http://nachbarn.folkwang-uni.de/2017/01/31/ frischer-wind-im-vierviertel-workshop-mit-caroline-holzer-und-laura-popplow/ (Accessed: 22 April 2018). Zentrum für gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt e.V. (2018). Schöne Aussichten – Forum für Frankfurt. Available at: http://www.schoeneaussichtenffm.de/ (Accessed: 22 April 2018).

Image Sources Figures 1, 2: Nicole Bräutigam/Laura Popplow. Figures 3–8: Annegret Bönemann/Laura Popplow. Figures 9–14: Laura Popplow. Figures 15–18: Nicole Bräutigam.

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DON’T TAKE OUT THE TRASH: RESEARCH THROUGH CONCEPTUAL DESIGNS IN DESIGN EDUCATION Susanne Ritzmann

The title of the following contribution to this book is meant to attract your attention. By proposing the reversal of a well-established everyday activity, I am introducing the underlying idea of this research project that is reflected by this rather conceivable scenario. Contrary to what we in the Western world are used to regard as normal, I am proposing to treat trash in a somewhat unusual way. Furthermore, I am claiming that this unusual treatment will lead to useful knowledge not only for the design discipline.

From First Intention to Design Research PhD Before I will explain how I implemented a new perspective in my doctoral research methodology and made use of it, I would like to provide some context with a small insight into how my design research project at the University of the Arts Berlin (Germany) came into being. When graduating as a product designer in 2011, with my final project I tried to tackle the big question of how my work as a designer could be justified in a world that is overly saturated with artifacts. Back then, I was both fascinated and horrified by the sight of the debris of the everyday and tried to work out a way for me as a designer to stand clear of producing just trash and to wash my hands clean of ruining the planet with useless and dreadfully toxic products. As you might guess, this was overly ambitious and the resonating naivety soon came to show. Throughout this first process of inquiry on wasteless design, I was stuck with images of printers using coffee grounds as ink, bikes made of bamboo and salad bowls upcycled from washing machine doors, as well as literature on lifecycle thinking1, recycling, dematerialisation2, and ecodesign guidelines3. In terms of reviewing what I now call sustainable design approaches and transition design processes, this was meaningful, but from a designerly perspective, something else was much more enlightening and leading the way to a particular approach to design research. In despair of not being able to reach my initial aim, I literally took the task home. That is, I started an experiment on myself and my personal everyday routine. In this experiment, I took the pledge not to produce any trash for a certain amount of time. I named this setting trash abstinence and established formal criteria for the procedure. These included

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1 ‘Pure Trash’ is an object and a service for ‘treashuring’ (trashing and treasuring) personal scrap plastics as resources become scarce.

the duration and physical range of abstinence, a detailed definition of what is classified as trash and what may be exceptions. The results of this experiment revealed numerous design problems in my everyday life. Most striking was the effort to arrange for unpackaged food. Even though there are possibilities to at least purchase fresh unpackaged vegetables and fruit at a farmer’s market, the common time frame for this – mornings to middays – presents a real challenge to students and working class alike. But even when I managed to buy fresh unpackaged vegetables, it felt like an ascetic diet since all usual meal combinations include processed food which, at that time, could not be bought unpackaged. The resulting strategy to eat out freed me from food packaging. But the preparation process being out of my sight just pointed to the fact that I did not know how the food on my plate got there. All these issues connect to diverse dimensions of sustainability and the impossibility of solving them all with one single solution or formula. But my understanding of the complex web of my personal needs, its implicit entanglement with the material world and bigger patterns of behaviour grew to an extend where I obtained a personal and critical picture of sustainability in design which still guides me in my professional practice today. Back then, I translated this understanding into a critical or speculative design object (Fig. 1). This did not really answer any questions about how design is able to save the planet or how to eliminate trash, but it communicated a viewpoint towards societal processes that have ecological consequences. Thus the design result was no fixed solution to the problem, but the start of a discourse. After my graduation, I used this experience and the emerging academic possibilities of doctorate programmes in design faculties in Germany and elsewhere to integrate the design and idea of this abstinence experiment into a research project. Taking advantage of the intellectual input of the growing community of design researchers, I was able to form a more fundamental design question that related back to my initial starting point of how I could ever be a ‘good’ – a sustainable

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product designer in this world. There was a meta-level to this question that remained unanswered: How to convey the concept of sustainability within the context of design education? While some would say that this question has been answered many times before, in my perspective it is still a somewhat pressing and up-to-date design problem. From my inquiry on waste I had learned a lot about sustainability, ecological footprints, emissions, rebound effects, trade-offs, biology and chemistry, moral and ethics. This complex web of dimensions of sustainability remains hard to grasp and hard to follow. To really convey sustainability to design students it needs a better – a designed concept that offers a different operational mode rather than looking at spreadsheets or databases of numeric values of some sort. In my view, the vast amount of collected knowledge on sustainability can also be hindering to design students when it comes to actively producing ideas and concepts. I had made this experience myself while trying to get all sustainability factors in line and still create a useful, desired, and aesthetic product.

Trash as Transmitter One possible answer to the above stated design question was just waiting to jump out of me and onto the proposal paper: Trash had already fascinated me with its horrid and human dimension and, most importantly, it had taught me a lesson about human life in our habitat. Thus, I decided to use the proposition that trash can be a transmitter for teaching sustainability in design as the exploratory starting point of my research. Accordingly, I came up with four precise educational settings or tools based on the idea of putting the phenomenon trash centre stage, even though it is widely understood as just one symptom of the overall problem. These four ‘designs’ as a connected whole are the key (see Fig. 2) that leads to all other insights of my dissertation. But before further results of this research project will be revealed, it is necessary to explain how the design question and the proposed designs as an answer lead to a research question of relevance to the design discipline. According to design theorist Alain Findeli (2010) and his notion of project-grounded research, every design problem comprises a more fundamental research problem. Project-grounded research locates design knowledge within design projects. In my case, the phenomenological characteristics of trash as a conceptual consideration in my design proposal pointed to the questions: How to argue for trash being able to convey sustainability? How to link design and trash? What is the relation of composing as designing and decomposing as discarding? With this, the agenda of my research project was set. I pursued to analyse the social phenomenon trash in relation to design and design theory. To do so, I conducted ‘classical’ research methods, such as observations at waste containers (see

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project-grounded research (Findeli 2010) educational setting / tools DESIGN PROBLEM

TRASH ABSTINENCE GARBOLOGY

TRASH

TRASH DIARY conceptual designs

TRASH DESIGN

epistemology of trash RESEARCH PROBLEM

discarding as analyzer

artifact lifecycle educational program

2 Structure and elements of the described design research project

Fig. 3), at waste disposal facilities (Fig. 4) and in the public sphere (Fig. 5). These observations shed light on actual practices taking place at the end of artifact life and enabled a theoretical modeling of this phase into two separate stages: firstly disposal by individuals and secondly removal by institutions.4 Both stages involve a range of different activities, but the interaction between both stages is in most cases limited to an exchange of artifacts without any immediate contact between the two sides. To find out more about the educational value of trash, I conducted three case studies of design projects in academic contexts related to trash. In order to fit trash into the existing theoretical systems of design and design education, an extensive review of related discourses5 framed these empirical enquiries and broadened the examination of the characteristics of trash as well as of sustainable design. So far, it seemed, the phenomenon of trash is a neglected component of design theory. The ecological debate in design since the 1960s has led to a basic consideration of the end of life of artifacts and the establishment of lifecycle thinking, but until today, the theorisation of this phase rarely goes beyond a distinction between removal and recovery. While the beginning of the artifacts as a design process seems very well documented (see Akin 1979; Cross 1982; Schön 1983; Jonas 2007) and the use of artifacts is currently shifting into the focus of design theory and research (e.g. Krippendorff 2006; Brandes, Stich, and Wender 2008; Bredies 2013), the actual end of use remains largely unnoticed or less detailed. Adding to the aforementioned methodological approach, another large part of my research implies a design specific perspective on empiricism, meaning the inclusion of design abilities into the construction of research data. The thematic

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3 Hidden observation at waste containers in Berlin, Germany 4 Observation at a waste incinerator facility in Berlin, Germany

5 Selective observation of waste phenomena in public, here in Southern Germany

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core of the presented project – trash – offers an exemplary approach towards the grounding of design research. From my previous experiences with and examination of trash I knew what ‘powers’ are at work in the context of waste. Trash as matter involves on a visual, tactile, and olfactory level. Students are bound to be fascinated and horrified at the same time. Trash as meaning on the other hand is highly engaging for its inner tension between chaos and order, value and destruction. The phenomenon’s entanglement in diverse levels of life, such as work, home, industrial, individual, public, or private, and its accessibility make it an ideal tool or magnifier for issues of sustainability and for stimulating and providing a new learning experience. Therefore, the core research method in this research project and its ‘designerly’ approach were the conceptual designs based on the phenomenon trash and the trial of trash seminars with students as participants. These seminars had to be designed in a way that students would learn about the basic dilemmas of production and consumption but also proactively create an informed attitude capable of acting.

Trash as a Concept of Involvement in Education The trash seminars resulted from a conceptual system of four perspectives on trash that translate into settings or tools. These four conceptual designs lead the way through the theoretical reflections throughout my research. A quote by Gay Hawkins (2006, 15), renowned sociologist and waste habits researcher, sums up well how I would like these tools to be read: ‘It is crucial to make sense of the distinct ethos of waste that underpins consumption, to acknowledge that how we eliminate things is just as important as how we acquire them.’ In order to point that kind of attention to waste, I came up with a set of scenarios that would consequently ask involved people for certain operations. The idea of these scenarios is to take on a specific perspective on discarding that induces action of participants. These perspectives range from a rather negative to a quite positive perception of waste. I translate these perspectives into precise educational prompts – tasks ranging from personal everyday life context to external investigations and professional practice. Those translations themselves are design-driven, whereas the resulting systematic outcome as a structured educational programme is based on theoretical reflections. The four prompts are depicted in Figure 6 as icons illustrating the triggered action. These ‘primary’ actions enable the access to the phenomenon and are meant to create initial data and/or artifacts: 1.

Trash abstinence, as executed in the afore-mentioned graduation project, revolves around the refusal of trash and discarding. Students are asked to live through a day without produc-

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TRASH ABSTINENCE

GARBOLOGY

TRASH DIARY

TRASH DESIGN

6 Four ways of methodological access to trash through triggered actions

2.

3.

4.

ing any rubbish, and if they still do, they are asked to keep those things for further investigation. Over that time they document their experiences related to the experiment. A rather concerned viewpoint is reflected by garbology 6, which is an archaeological method of investigation developed by a researcher team of anthropologists in the US. They claim that existing societies and cultures, too, can be investigated through their debris. Students are asked to explore trash as an indicator of some sort and as a medium of truth. They record the type and amount of waste at a certain location. This could be a public place like a neighbourhood or a specific context like a university building or a family home. The focus here lies on processing usually concealed or neglected conditions, such as waste bins in a backyard or scrap corners at public buildings, as viable data. A third perspective on waste is acceptance. A trash diary does not impede discarding, but it asks for a proper recording of any trash that is produced, where and when. Similar to quantifying apps for walking and sleeping or the growing number of people sharing their personal portfolios of everyday life on social networks like Facebook or Instagram, a trash diary puts the ‘trivial’ of the everyday in detailed, quantitative focus. In fact, Facebook turned out to be a useful application when it comes to documenting disposal with place, time and further remarks. The final perspective, trash design, is in favour of trash, i.e. trash turns into the actual aim of a design action. The task for design students here is to come up with ideas that lead to faster, maybe unusual ways of discarding. This could be in the form of public waste bins. But this framing could also

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ACCEPTANCE

SYNTHESIS

A person starts dealing

‘What needs to be done for this?’

with the artifact.

The relation of ANALYSIS and PROJECTION renders the

S

conditions of the solution.

Explicit, contingent stories or scenarios are

ARTIFACT

IG

live?’

ES

created.

ASES OF USE

‘How do we want to

PH

PROJECTION

ROCESS P HA N P

SE

ACQUIREMENT The user inserts the artifact into the established network of everyday practices.

NORMALIZATION

D

Status and meaning of the artifact evolve dynamically with the entire ensemble of

ANALYSIS

the everyday.

‘What is the problem?’

DISPOSAL

A dynamic picture of the problem structure is constructed.

The decision of seperating from the artifact leads to a ritual act as a consequence.

DISCARDING AS UNIT OF ANALYSIS

REMOVAL

The actual phase of disposal becomes the center of attention during the analysis. The connection between disposing and designing can be achieved

ELIMINATION/DECONSTRUCTION The actual destruction or deconstruction of the artifact takes place outside the designer’s and user’s sphere of influence.

through the proposed tools.

7 A model for the current status of an artifact lifecycle, including two separate stages of trash

lead to ideas like disposable clothing or furniture. The leading question here would be: What are the characteristics of these artifacts that make people throw them away? This rather unusual and also undesirable perspective allows for experimentation and triggers an examination of the topic without presupposed norms. As this indicates, the presented tools relate to trash in an exaggerated way, allowing all kinds of interpretations and actions while stepping away from a normative frame that some other approaches towards sustainability use. These proposed tools want to trigger actions and reflections of students. As in other design projects, I tested my ‘prototypes’ in different use cases, that is, with students of different design disciplines and with non-students, to see if the proposed settings will lead to any useful findings or insights.

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Results: Educational and Design Theoretical Framework The proposed tools as such are part of a more complex educational programme and also closely related to a design theoretical framework resulting from the initial idea of using trash as a transmitter. From the literature review, the conducted case studies and observations, I was able to develop three answers to my research problem (see Fig. 2): Firstly, I propose an epistemology of trash which is a description that outlines design knowledge of trash and how trash relates to design and to ecology. When consulted by a designer, it answers the question: What is trash, in terms of its mode, meaning and appearance? This serves as a foundation for the thesis of trash being a carrier of knowledge. Secondly, on the basis of existing models of the design and use process (Bredies 2013), I have worked out a visualisation of the current status of an artifact lifecycle for design (see Fig. 7) expanding artifact theory by the categories of disposal as throwing away and removal as eliminating or deconstructing. This model was then the foundation of locating the proposed connection between designing and disposing, adapting the model accordingly and, lastly, making it part of an educational programme. This educational framework (Fig. 8) developed around the designed tools takes social practices, as defined by Reckwitz (2002) and others, as the dimension of analysis. Starting point of the programme, therefore, is discarding as a social practice. The programme comprises the elaborated epistemology of trash as an input and inspirational source for students. Here students learn to define trash through taking practices as a mode of enquiry, outlining it as the practice of discarding and recognising common coping strategies, such as recycling, as abstract and out of practical reach for designers. The practice of discarding is characterised as incorporating ambivalent meanings of order and chaos, with diverse forms of appearance (from mobile micro-plastics to endlessly drifting electronic debris in space) and striking relations to design practice. In a phase of reflection, students are then meant to take up one of the afore-mentioned perspectives on discarding that induce further action. These actions produce artifacts or data which are then available for analysing, working with or editing. The matrix of iterations after the first contact with trash is depicted in Figure 8. The possibilities to go through this matrix are numerous, depending on the thematic focus of the course. The testings of the trash seminars created results of those iterative steps that illustrate the potential learnings of students through this programme (see Fig. 9). The outcomes range from experiments with conventional food packaging materials to performances of new everyday practices. The design of the educational prompts leads participants to generate qualitative and quantitative data on waste and further iterations ask them to use their design capabilities to either visualise, interpret, find analogies for, manipulate, explain, or analyse this data. In doing so, students go through a process of perception – reflection – action (see Fig. 8). In most cases,

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discarding

epistemology of trash

PERCEPTION REFLECTION

Trash Abstinence

Garbology

Trash Diary

Trash Design ACTION

artifacts & data

PERCEPTION REFELCTION

visualization

explanation

statement

analogy

interpretation

items

manipulation

ACTION

8 The elaborated educational framework for using trash as a transmitter of knowledge in the education of designers

9 Interventions and Interpretations of trash artifacts and data – exemplary outcomes of different ‘trash seminars’ (Photos: Chiara Hoffmann, Anna Marszal, Friederike Stanitzek, Yomi Ajanı, Martin Klingner)

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resulting interventions or interpretations do not lead to market-ready products as they are highly experimental or improvised. Nevertheless, they should be read as enacted knowledge of students, highlighting a process of understanding through wild but analytical inquiry.

Conclusion: The End is the Beginning of a Discursive Learning Process Trash is not only present for the design discipline as a problem but also as a starting point of a design process. This design research project has developed and tested appropriate access points to discarding in order to convey a reflective perspective onto individual design practice and its anticipated use of artifacts. Such reflective capability may inform future design decisions of students. Through the design and testing of educational prompts, I was able to establish a theoretical system for connecting trash with design, to disclose its position within the design process and to propose a theoretical concept of design education for sustainability. It is an activitybased educational concept and curriculum for understanding sustainability, which can be perceived as an utilisable and practical (design) result of my research. This proposed format of learning may also help students to get familiar with research and empirical methods, emphasising the part where a design driven approach to empiricism can be fruitful in terms of data collection and analysis. Applied in academic settings, it can demonstrate the combination of design and research, emphasising the strengths and weaknesses of the design discipline. The other main outcome of the research project is a dedicated design theory of trash, represented here by a model of the artifact lifecycle (Fig. 7). This model can now provide a basis for elaborating specific design artifacts or design practices in regard to sustainability. The integration of disposal into the theories of design and therefore into the disciplinary practices may then enable a fundamental change of the practice of discarding. Already now, basic instances of this idea can be observed as, for example, in unpackaged supermarkets or service design concepts. While the actual effect of the proposed tools and programme on future activities of design students still has to be determined by further research, the theoretical model (Fig. 7) already allows for philosophical discussions. With the model being a medium of translation, questions about the current role of discarding in our society can be addressed. Throughout the empirical part of the project, I was able to observe forms of irregular disposal such as arrangements and drapings of trash on the streets and sidewalks (see Fig. 10). These arrangements almost resemble a design action more than they do appear to be a routine, because they literally force residents and waste management enterprises to engage with those artifacts. This practice that frequently appears in large cities in Germany can then be read as ‘resistant’ (de Certeau 1988): a manoeuver

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10 An almost artistic arrangement of trash on the sidewalk in Berlin, Germany

with which ‘consumers’ can liberate themselves from established regimes of order. In this way, disposal may be seen as a design of resistance (see Fig. 11). To complete this network of implications for the design discipline will be a continuous process, towards which I and hopefully many other (design) researchers will direct their energy and attention.

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SYNTHESIS ACCEPTANCE

PROJECTION

ARTIFACT ANALYSIS

DISPOSAL AS DESIGN OF RESISTANCE

ACQUIREMENT

NORMALIZATION

DISPOSAL

REMOVAL

11 An adapted visualisation of the artifact lifecycle as a design process of resistance to established order induced by the user

1

2

3 4

5 6

While lifecycle analyses (LCA) quantitatively assess the entire ecological efficiency of products from cradle to grave (Tischner and Moser 2015), the Cradle-to-Cradle concept focusses on ecological effec­ tivity of products, taking into account the capacity of materials to be held in biological or technological cycles after disposal (Braungart and McDonough 2009). Also known as Factor 10 (Schmidt-Bleek 2008), dematerialisation assumes that the input of natural material for a product or service has to be lowered (by the factor 10) by clearing it with its desired benefit (material input per service). A collection of guidelines can be found in the Designguide of the Wuppertal Institute (Liedtke et al. 2013). While the German vocabulary offers specific terms for each stage (Entledigung and Entsorgung), the linguistic distinction in English is not as clear. Verbs such as disposing, removing, and discarding seem to have a more flexible and therefore broader meaning in the context of waste. Related discourses included the following aspects: sustainability in design, the phenomenon trash, artifacts in design, design education, and practices in design. Garbology is a research area of archaeology established in the 1970s by Prof. William Rathje. In this ethnographic science the systematic analysis of contemporary waste is carried out through archeological methods. It is based on the assumption that contemporary material culture of a population can be assessed just as ancient debris (see Rathje and Murphy 1992).

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Bibliography Akin, O. (1979). ‘An Exploration of the Design Process’. In Design Methods and Theories, 1979 (13), 115–119. Brandes, U., Stich, S., and Wender, M. (2008). Design by Use. The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things. Basel: Birkhäuser. Braungart, M., and McDonough, W. (2009). Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things. London: Vintage Books. Bredies, K. (2013). Gebrauchsunfertig. Experimentelles Interfacedesign und originelle Aneignung. Dissertation, Braunschweig University of Art. Cross, N. (1982). ‘Designerly Ways of Knowing’. In Design Studies, 3 (4), 221–227. de Certeau, M. (1988). Kunst des Handelns. Berlin: Merve. Findeli, A. (2010). ‘Searching for Design Research Questions: Some Conceptual Clarifications’. In Chow, R., Joost, G., and Jonas, W. (eds.). Questions, Hypotheses & Conjectures. Bloomington: iUniverse, 278–293. Hawkins, G. (2006). The Ethics of Waste. How We Relate to Rubbish. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Jonas, W. (2007). ‘Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline’. In Michel, R. (ed.). Design Research Now. Essays and Selected Projects. Basel: Birkhäuser, 187–206. Krippendorff, K. (2006). The Semantic Turn. A New Foundation for Design. London: Taylor & Francis. Liedtke, C., Buhl, J., Ameli, N., Oettershagen, P., Pears, T., and Abbis, P. (2013). Wuppertal Institute Designguide. Background Information & Tools. Edited by Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. Wuppertal Spezial 46. Rathje, W., and Murphy, C. (1992). Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. New York: Harper Collins. Reckwitz, A. (2002). ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices. A Development in Culturalist Theorizing’. In European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2), 243–263. Schmidt-Bleek, F. (2008). FUTURE – Beyond Climatic Change. Position Paper, available online. Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books. Tischner, U., and Moser, H. (2015). How to do EcoDesign. Edited by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dessau.

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EXCEPTIONAL FUTURES VS. EXCEPTIONS TO THE FUTURE: A PATAPHYSICAL APPROACH TO DESIGN FICTION Søren Rosenbak

Introduction Design fiction, understood as a critical design practice, sets out to bridge imagined elsewheres and elsewhens (most often futures) with the present through the craft of design. Weak societal signals (emerging trends, technologies, movements, etc.) of today are extrapolated into speculative yet often mundane scenarios, in order to render our present everyday lives palpable to us in new ways. Some questions that typically emerge through this exercise include whether the future presented is attractive or not (and for whom), how this future can be attained or avoided, and how we might need to shift our current understanding of a given issue. In this sense, ‘design fiction’, straightforwardly reflecting its two semantic components, exists at the crossroads between, on one hand, design as a materialised reality brought into existence, and on the other, fiction understood as an imaginative exercise in rethinking how the world could and perhaps should be different. This chapter outlines a pataphysical approach to design fiction, through a shift from design fictions understood as exceptional futures towards design fictions understood as exceptions to the future. In order to describe this shift, the chapter starts off by outlining design fiction in greater detail. This, in itself, is not a trivial task. As summarised by Gonzatto et al. (2013), design fiction is described variably as a philosophy of things (Lukic and Katz 2010), a research prospect (Grand and Wiedmer 2010), a methodology (Milton 2003), and a design technique (Bleecker 2009). To this we can add a genre (Dunne and Raby 2014), a research trend (Sturdee et al. 2017), and a platform (Near Future Laboratory, n.d.). In fact, design fiction currently enjoys a proliferation and hype to the point that the question has been raised: ‘Is Design Fiction the new Design Thinking?’ (Baker 2016). Much has indeed happened since 2005, when sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling is credited for first coining the term, which he later elaborated as ‘[…] the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change’ (2012). In the present argument, design fiction is understood as a critical design practice. Consequently, in contrast to the infancy ascribed to design fiction in HCI as exemplified with articles such as ‘Back to the Future: 10 Years of Design Fiction’ (2015), this understanding will allow us to unpack design fiction through a trajectory reaching back well beyond Sterling’s coining of the phrase. In turn, from this unpacking –

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simultaneously providing an overview and a multi-sided critique of design fiction – we are more fundamentally able to reconceive an alternative design fiction practice. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to this task of unpacking, and is structured in four parallel linages: Science Fiction, Industrial Legacy, Critical Design Practice, and Auteurship and Beyond. Drawing on David Kirby’s work on diegetic prototypes and the case of Destination Moon (1950), certain design fictions are argued to exhibit a singular quality. This is due to design fiction’s industrial inheritance, its ability to act as a technocentric self-fulfilling prophecy, its (knowing or unknowing) unreflective Western ignorance and violence, and its limited (and privileged) conceptualisation of the lone-genius-designer as the design auteur. In the final section, the various critiques are synthesised and argued to collectively expose the way in which design fictions can function as exercises in designing exceptional futures. By way of American Exceptionalism, the exceptional is extended into an exceptionalist dimension. Against design fictions thus understood as exceptional futures, the second part of the chapter outlines an alternative: Design fictions understood as exceptions to the future. Firstly, design fictions are contextualised in Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman’s (2012) tradition of design as a third way between the true (abstracted science) and the real (the messy real world). As a consequence, the aspirations towards attaining the true (such as technocentric self-fulfilling prophecies) are severed, refocusing design fictions on their designerly role of being exceptions to the future (rather than THE future itself). Accordingly, design fiction is reframed through pataphysics, not only ‘the science of imaginary solutions’, but also the science dedicated to examining the laws governing exceptions. The pataphysical concept of clinamen/swerve is discussed as a way to reframe the extrapolation of weak signals to the future and back, and thereby making a shift from individual to community, fiction to friction, from a vacuum to a networked messy reality, and from the future as an empty vista lying in front of us to a space cluttered with de(futuring) debris boomeranging back towards us (Fry 2011). In order to get a firmer grasp on this pataphysical approach to design fiction, the second part concludes with an example of how design fictions thus understood as exceptions to the future in this way can play out. The example, ‘A Future Domestic Landscape: Faceless Interaction in 2037’ (FDR), is a 10-week course for the second year MFA students in Interaction Design (IxD) at Umeå Institute of Design, running from 2015 to 2017 with 28 design fictions produced to date. In the analysis and discussion of the collective course outcome, particular attention is paid to the clinamen/swerve by way of analysing the interwoven qualities of the design fictions. The third and final part of the chapter asks ‘so what?’ in order to discuss the implications of making the shift from design fictions understood as exceptional futures towards design fictions understood as exceptions to the future. The discussion is structured into four themes: The Plural Turn, Critical Mass vs. Critical Mess, Ways of Working, and The Design-Curator of Fictions, with all themes synthesising

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the various points made across the chapter in its entirety, as well as illustrating its arguments through the example of ‘A Future Domestic Landscape: Faceless Interaction in 2037’.

1 Design Fiction as Exceptional Futures Science Fiction As briefly mentioned in the introduction, Sterling has offered one of the most widely cited definitions of design fiction. His personal journey from the vanguard of science fiction writing into the design world thus serves as a natural starting point for beginning to trace the sci-fi lineage of design fiction. This connection is perhaps the most well-described grounding of design fiction, in particular with regards to the promises and perils of ubiquitous computing (see e.g. Bleecker 2009; Dourish and Bell 2014; Weiser 1991). A core concept within this tradition is the ‘diegetic prototype’ featured in Sterling’s earlier definition. The term was originally coined by David Kirby in the essay ‘The Future is Now: Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-world Technological Development’ (2010), and refers to prototypes that are so convincingly embedded in the fictional worlds (in film studies referred to as diegesis) that they come across as ‘real’, consistent objects that people actually use (Kirby 2010, 3). Through the role of the diegetic prototype, Kirby unravels the role of scientific innovation and its societal agendas, exploring the way in which cinematic storytelling can aid in this process of producing desire and removing public resistance from tech innovation. Across close readings of a series of examples, he argues that ‘Popular cinema […] provides scientists, engineers and technological entrepreneurs with the opportunity to promote visions of a shiny future in hopes that these visions will become self-fulfilling prophecies’ (ibid., 6). While Kirby, like Bleecker and many others, discusses Minority Report (2002) and its famed gestural interface system as a successful example of an embedded diegetic prototype transcending cinematic dreaming into real life demand1, I’d like to focus on Kirby’s discussion of the shiny vision of space travel through the example of Destination Moon (1950). This example is interesting by the way that it illustrates some of the dynamics of future visions becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Kirby’s description of the making of the film, and particular the clash between ‘initial scriptwriter and main science consultant, science fiction author and former US navy engineer’ Robert A. Heinlein (Kirby 2010,18) and the ‘veteran script doctor’ James O’Hanlon (ibid., 20) is telling. Against Heinlein’s vision of a scientifically authentic depiction of space travel, O’Hanlon was eventually brought into the late stages of the production by the studio, in order to remedy the highly tech-centric, realist nature of the film. O’Hanlon attempted to do this by introducing an array of

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audience sure-fires such as ‘comedy, musical interludes, and cowboys’ (ibid.). However, Heinlein not only understood how all these comical elements would undermine his mission of conveying the attractiveness and feasibility of space travel, but also saw how they would drain the budget for convincingly depicting space travel on the silver screen. His techno-lobbying eventually paid off, shaping a new genre of space film, and proving Kirby’s concluding statement: ‘For any science consultant who is trying to get funding for their un-developed technology diegetic prototypes allow for “happy endings”’ (ibid., 26). Additionally, with the clear hindsight of history, the example is also providing us with an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as humankind 19 years later indeed would travel through space and set foot on the moon. Or, one should add, the US would set foot on the moon. Recalling the highly charged context of the Space Race raging between the US and the USSR, Kirby makes the important comment that ‘[o]ne audience’s shiny spaceship future is another audience’s impending doom’ (ibid., 23). Read alongside sci-fi writer William Gibson’s famous quote: ‘The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed’, (Rosenberg 1992) we begin to see the adversarial and highly situated nature of shiny tech visions.

Industrial Legacy From the perspective of design as a contemporary discipline, Kirby’s description of the way that diegetic prototypes function resonates with design’s industrial legacy in several ways. While it would be possible to dive into this connection from a design historical perspective, I will instead try to tease out some industrial design qualities surfacing through Kirby’s argument. Perhaps one of the most obvious points to make concerns the consideration for scale and reproducibility. While it is hard to compare the popular appeal and spectacle of a sci-fi Hollywood production aired in cinemas in the 1950s with the design fictions of today coexisting across a multitude of channels (personal websites, special festival screenings, Youtube channels, etc.), the medium of film pertains to a potential for mass outreach. With the wide access to ever improving animation software, green screens, huge libraries of free video and audio material online, fab labs for 3-D printing, etc., perhaps it can be said that the crafting of design fictions (both in terms of prototypes and narratives) is more accessible than ever. Compared to the economic expense of shooting Destination Moon on 35 mm film reels, along with other significant production costs, a five minutes long digital video is able to be reproduced and shared across a vast number of channels (blogs, news sites, etc.) and social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in an instant. In fact, this ability to explode into the digital sphere, potentially reaching what science consultant on e.g. Minority Report (2002) John Underkoffler refers to as the ‘technological imaginative vernacular’2 (Kirby 2010,10), is at the heart of one of the most heated recent discussions in design fictions as well as

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critical and speculative design (see in particular the comment thread following Thackara, 2013). At its core, the question concerns whether likes, shares, blog posts, etc., while highly measurable, is a satisfying proxy for actual influence or impact. As such it relates to the value of design fictions and the ways in which they engage an audience and bring about real change – do they actually deliver on their promises of fulfilling technocentric phantasies, increasing profit, raising public concerns, questioning the status quo, etc.? Not many design fiction practitioners have the luxury of ticking this box in the same sense that Robert A. Heinlein was able to as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in 1969. From Kirby’s elegant framing of diegetic prototypes as ‘pre-product placement’, it is key to acknowledge that design fiction (like all design) serves somebody, a defining characteristic of the larger tradition of design as opposed to e.g. science and art (Nelson and Stolterman 2012, 41). In this sense ‘who is the client’ remains a most relevant question in the design fictional domain, especially considering the diversity we see in terms of who design fictions are serving, from vast corporations such as e.g. Microsoft, to governments, or perhaps the designers themselves. Another related and highly pressing question would be: ‘Who’s future?’ As much as design fictions are capable of not only extrapolating the now into a future and back, but also to accommodate parallel realities or alternative pasts, it is fair to say that a vast majority of design fictions extends on a Western linear time conception, with a past behind us, a present immersing us in the ever fleeting here and now, and the future as an open vista in front of us. While Kirby’s point that ‘[o]ne audience’s shiny spaceship future is another audience’s impending doom’, already brings the question of conflicting (designed) future visions into play, we can dig deeper into this problem through a critique of the Western ideology embedded in the time-space model fuelling this very logic (see e.g. Phillips [2015] and Schultz [2018] for more extensive critiques on this topic along with proposed alternatives). To extend on this, and building on the earlier point concerning the adversarial nature and highly situated scope of design fictions, one could crudely rephrase Kirby’s quote into: ‘one culture’s imperialistic conception of future, has been – and continues to be – other cultures’ impending doom’. This lack of reflexivity, sometimes translated into the non-critical grounding of design fictions, points to self-fulfilling prophecies happening in destructively purported vacuums, devoid of existing contexts, or as Tony Fry might put it, unaware of the defuturing that is occurring along with the futuring in question (2011). Enforcing (knowingly or unknowingly) a particular, predominantly Western, ignorance and violence in this way, has a clear colonial, imperialist, and capitalist dimension3. While this is a larger argument outside the scope of this paper, I would like to hang on to this notion of unreflective design fictions existing in purported vacuums. To summarise, I would like to highlight how all these different aspects (industrial scaling and reproducibility, the service relationship, and unreflective Western vacuum wrapping) adds up to a curious singularity. We will unpack this emerging

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property later, after tracing another lineage by contextualising design fiction in the larger field of contemporary critical design practice.

Critical Design Practice In the book Speculative Everything, critical design pioneers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (2014) state how they prefer the term speculative design over design fiction for a range of reasons. Admitting that the two terms and design approaches often overlap to the point where they are sometimes used interchangeably, they argue that design fiction has an unfortunate emphasis on video over product, and due to its closer affinity to tech and science fiction, is less critical and has a narrower scope, as compared to speculative design. Indeed, this question, not only about where to locate design fiction, but also what value to ascribe to design fiction (and consequently to neighbouring and often overlapping practices), is a controversial topic within the larger field of critical design practice. James Auger states a mostly semantically grounded preference for speculative design over design fiction on the grounds that fiction discloses the unreal character of the project for an audience, ‘dislocat[ing] the object from everyday life, exposing their fictional or academic status’, and consequently compromising the purpose and potency of design fictions. Malpass, in his contextualisation of critical design practice, argues in line with Dunne and Raby, that design fiction ‘is better seen as a method or tactic rather than a field of practice’ (2017). Contrast this with Duggan et al. (2017): ‘Design fiction is currently the most prominent field within a constellation of related speculative design practices such as critical design, counterfactual design, and design futures (Tonkinwise, 2015)’. While Tonkinwise (ibid.) doesn’t actually argue for design fiction being the most prominent field in the cited reference, he does offer a laconic and consciously provocative disentanglement of the various terms, in his aptly titled essay: ‘Just Design. Being Dogmatic about Defining Speculative Critical Design Future Fiction’ (ibid.). Underneath this semantic spring cleaning exercise lies the rationale of modifiers such as ‘speculative’, ‘fictional’, ‘critical’, etc., not only acting as unnecessary, tautological modifiers (all good design should already be speculative, fictional, critical, etc.) but also effectively legitimising ‘plain’ design or perhaps worse, actively hindering ‘plain’ design of incorporating said qualities. Ironically, Tonkinwise insists on ‘Transition Design’, e.g. in stating: ‘All design is extended producer responsibility, in the “consequence business”, Transition Design’ (ibid.) Of course ‘Transition Design’ might be argued to exist on a different rung of modifiers, along with e.g. ‘Systems Design’. This differentiation is of less importance in this context. As a pivotal figure in the Transition Design programme at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, Tonkinwise’ insistence on leaving ‘Transition’ unscathed in a categorical denouncement of so many other modifiers, is characteristic of a young critical design discourse, in which many practitioners and research-

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ers have interests in constructing or annihilating certain semantic hierarchies and consequently tweaking power structures and positions. To be clear, this agonistic tug of war can definitely be a good thing, ultimately bringing the design discipline forward. In either case, this is the locus of ‘design fiction’, as a contested and yet attractive term that is largely up for grabs (academically as well as commercially). This situation is of course inescapable, in the sense that you – even if you intentionally or unintentionally try to evade any explicit positioning (what do you mean by ‘design fiction’?) – exist in this agonistic space.

Auteurship and Beyond While the celebrated lone-genius-designer (in lieu of a much cooler portmanteau such as ‘the starchitect’) by no means is a stranger in the design field (yes, Philip Starck, I’m thinking of you), the role of the design author or perhaps auteur is of particular significance in design fiction considering its strong propositional and visionary character. Bleecker for example describes design in itself as ‘a kind of creative, imaginative authoring practice – a way of describing and materialising ideas that are still looking for the right place to live’ (2009, 6). Bowen, in disseminating the interplay between critical theory (and by extension critical design) and participatory design, discusses the risk of ‘the theorist/designer [being placed] in a morally or intellectually superior position – the ‘all knowing designer’ as auteur’ (2010, 5). Milton, articulating a filmic design methodology inspired by the work of Alfred Hitchcock, goes as far as to speak of the design auteur (2003). As an example he cites the project ‘Object for Lonely Men’ (2001) by Noam Toran, alumni of the Design Interactions Master’s programme that Dunne and Raby headed at the Royal College of Arts in London between 2005–2015, commenting: ‘The work investigates the idea of the user as protagonist and co-producer of the designs meaning. With Noam Toran becoming the author or indeed directorial auteur of experiences rather than product representation’ (Milton 2003, 5). The casting of the designer as auteur has attracted strong critique, with the heavy connotations of power and privilege also highlighted by Bowen. As an example, Gonzatto et al., in their paper ‘The ideology of the future in design fictions’ (2013), contrasts their own design fiction practice at the Faber-Ludens Institute of Interaction Design in Brazil with ‘the work of the RCA [that] makes use of the academy as a privileged locus to perform provocative design proposals […]’ (ibid., 43). Another example of this line of critique would be Tonkinwise stating that ‘[d]esigners fetishizing “noir” embarrassingly belies your film auteur wannabe-ness’, probably not so subtly referencing the book Design Noir by Dunne and Raby (2001). In addition to adding on layers to the contested space in which design fiction exists, this line of critique also ties into the previous points made regarding the lack of reflection over the particular Western ideology and bias found within design fictions and the larger field of critical design practice.

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At this point let us take a step back and return to Milton’s vision of filmic design, modelled in the image of Alfred Hitchcock as ‘arguably the most famous and commercially successful auteur’ (2003, 6). Firstly, it is important to note that the auteur theory, dating back to France in the late 1940s, and particularly developed in the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma as a sort of preamble to the French New Wave, is a very particular lens for cinematic storytelling. Secondly, taking the cinematic aspect of design fiction seriously, we can perhaps ask ourselves whether this is the only, and perhaps most beneficial lens for design fictions? Here I would like to fast forward to the present in order to take a look at a somewhat different perspective, using the example of what is arguably one of the most popular design fiction series in mainstream contemporary Western culture, namely the series Black Mirror (Brooker 2011–). Of course, for the general public, Black Mirror will most likely pass as science fiction, situated eerily close to our everyday present lives. However, for designers, the series can be read as an exemplar of design fiction (see e.g. Walker 2015 and Fuller 2016), building on a long tradition of fruitful exchange between the design discipline and the film industry. Importantly, Black Mirror is an anthology series, meaning that while the entire series is created, produced and largely written by Charlie Brooker and designed by Joel Collins, each hour-long episode within each season confronts us with a standalone design fiction (future, world, characters, etc.), incl. a unique cast and director, with no apparent overarching narrative stretching across the season. Between a series like Black Mirror and the French New Wave there is of course decades of development in media use, technology, audience expectations, and experimentation with narrational modes. Media scholar Jason Mittell, writing in 2006, e.g. discusses the rise in narrative complexity across the then recent two decades of American television: ‘At its most basic level, narrative complexity is a redefinition of episodic forms under the influence of serial narration – not necessarily a complete merger of episodic and serial forms but a shifting balance’ (Mittel 2006, 32). With key examples such as Twin Peaks, Seinfeld and The X-Files, he further argues that part of the pleasure of these unconventional series comes from them pushing the established norms in American television at the time (ibid.) Black Mirror exists in this tradition of narrative complexity and rethinking narrative formats. How do we see the filmic aspects of design fiction tap into this space of evolving narrational modes and continuous experimentation as it matures further?

The Exceptionalist Dimension As a way to tie together some of the points made so far, I believe we can consider certain design fictions as exercises in designing exceptional futures. Here, I use the term exceptional in a sense of the singular, unusual and spectacular, as when Heinlein delivers space travel to the moon as a grand and meticulously designed vision

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that is realised 19 years later. Of course this might be one of the most extreme examples of exceptional quality – however, while the vast majority of design fictions operate with more nuanced and quotidian versions of exceptionality, I believe Destination Moon, as an extreme case study, serves us well as it allows us to unpack some more general issues. One striking facet of Kirby’s analysis of Destination Moon, concerns the position that Heinlein must be in, in order to have his technocentric agenda pushed into the completed film. The ability to set self-fulfilling prophecies like this in motion by holding the necessary social, cultural, and economical capital, is clearly characterised by extreme privilege. Even looking beyond the quite extreme case of Heinlein, and taking the afore-mentioned democratisation of video and prototype production means (software, 3-D printing, etc.) into account, it seems obvious that this contemporary and arguable more widely available ability to craft design fictions is still resting on a great deal of privilege. Preceding the question of whether one is able to craft design fictions well, one needs to know that design fiction is a thing to begin with, in order to be able to engage with it. One aspect of this has to do with the broader privilege of receiving a sufficient, high-quality education. Also, perhaps more importantly, in order to articulate future visions through design fictions, one needs to have a voice in the first place, along with the experience of having a stake in any future. In terms of the debate concerning the outreach of design fictions and the arguments for likes and retweets posing a viable metric for success, it is tempting to extend on the exceptional in the direction of the spectacular and the spectacle, reaching Debord’s notion of the ‘society of the spectacle’ (1992 [1967]), a key concept in the situationist programme. While this line of thought ties into the present argument, it exists outside its present scope. Here I will instead focus here on extending the exceptional into its exceptionalist dimension, in order to further synthesise some of the points made earlier and push the argument further. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines exceptionalism as: ‘the condition of being different from the norm; also: a theory expounding the exceptionalism especially of a nation or region’ (n.d.). While this latter kind of exceptionalism has been used in a range of different geographical and historical contexts, here I would like to focus on American exceptionalism, as perhaps the historical example of exceptionalism par excellence, and also for the reason that it allows us to further contextualise the critique of Western bias in design fictions. According to Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, ‘[t]he term “American Exceptionalism,” [is] said to have been coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, [and] has historically referred to the perception that the United States differs qualitatively from other developed nations, because of its unique origins, national credo, historical evolution, and distinctive political and religious institutions’ (Koh 2003, 1481). From the perspective of a legal scholar with extensive experience in the US government, Koh paints a nuanced picture of the many faces of American exceptionalism, and in particular discusses the complicated dynamics between what can be crudely

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1 Uncanny, fractured, and broken near futures. Still from Black Mirror (Brooker 2011–) title sequence

summarised as the good kind (‘[the] capacity to display exceptional leadership in a post-Cold War world’) and the bad kind (‘US insistence upon double standards’) (ibid., 1501). He goes on to exemplify the way in which US double standards have been disastrously applied, e.g. in the case of the detention camp at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay where ‘[t]he technique of creating extralegal “rights-free” zones and individuals under US jurisdiction necessarily erects a double standard within American jurisprudence, by separating those places and people to whom America must accord rights from those it may treat effectively as human beings without human rights’ (ibid., 1500)4. Arguing that double standards employed in this way serve to undermine American soft power and global leadership, and fearing a long-term anti-Americanism backlash e.g. in the Middle East, Koh concludes by arguing for reducing the bad kind of exceptionalism and enhancing the good kind by means of transnational legal process, meaning: ‘the process by which public and private actors – namely, nation states, corporations, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations – interact in a variety of fora to make, interpret, enforce, and ultimately internalize rules of international law’ (ibid., 1502). Through this example of the US, and keeping in mind the broader definition of exceptionalism as the condition of being different from the norm, we may ask ourselves what interplay we see between the way in which exceptional design fictions function and this larger exceptionalist worldview? At times it seems as if there is an unsettling resonance between a (willing or unwilling) disinterest in critically contextualising singular design fictions, and the way in which e.g. the ‘bad kind’ of American exceptionalism sometimes opportunistically and hypocritically plays with isolationist agendas coupled with a unique international mandate of power. Put differently, in the metaphor of Koh, what kinds of futures are designed into existence, once we as designers decide to halt or ignore ‘transnational’ interaction

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(negotiation with other futures-coming-into-being), reaching the conclusion that we sometimes inherently are able to step outside any need for interaction and negotiation, and yet still somehow assume an international relevance and power in shaping the way forward for everyone?

2 Design Fictions as Exceptions to the Future Design Fictions as Ultimate Particulars In Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman’s The Design Way (2012), the tradition of design is carved out as a tertium quid, a third way between the true (abstracted science) and the real (the messy real world). One of the cornerstones is the understanding of every design solution as an ultimate particular, ‘[…] a concept that distinguishes design from other traditions of inquiry and action. The real must be approached through judgment […] augmented by science-based tools and methods – the true’ (ibid., 40). Put bluntly, this is the reason we can’t simply copy-paste a successful design solution from one context to another. While the true thus can provide helpful means to reaching the ultimate particular (we can e.g. think of studies in ergonomics as part of designing a particular chair), it can never be more than a limited aid in the process: ‘There is no scientific approach for creating an ultimate particular because science is a process of discerning abstractions that apply across categories or taxonomies of phenomena, while the ultimate particular is a singular and unique composition or assembly’ (ibid., 31). Transposing this foundational conceptualisation of design into design fiction allows us to start further unpacking what it is design fictions are doing, e.g. as compared to their ‘truer’ distant relatives: futures studies, predictive analytics, algorithmic programming, and spiritual prophecies. The concern here is not so much whether any of these endeavours are actually capable of accurately predicting the future. The point is that while some of them claim fully or partially to be able to do so, this is inherently not the goal of design fictions. As the graphics of Black Mirror remind us, not only are the visions of our near-futures (and consequently our present selves) uncanny, they are also fractured and broken. We can think of self-fulfilling prophecies as shards of glass somehow transcending the reflection and our current lives, selectively passing from the realm of imagination into materialised existence. However, to imagine this entire fractured surface literally coming into focus as our present reality in a 1:1 manner seems completely laughable. More importantly, as Nelson and Stolterman reminds us, this would also be missing the point, as it isn’t designerly. Put differently, the idea of a ‘true’ future, as sold to us by e.g. population growth statisticians, financial analysts, and techno-libertarians,

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inherently exists outside the domain of design, as does any sincere aspirations towards this extreme. Design does something different, also in the case of design fictions. As much as future trends, predictions, and prophecies can be inspirational, they should never be mistaken for design fictions. While this might seem relatively obvious in this extreme dichotomisation, I believe a reframing is needed to rid design fictions of their singular lives in purported vacuums and thus sever even the slightest aspirations towards the domain of the true. Rather than design fictions understood as exceptional futures, I propose design fictions understood as designed exceptions to the future. We know we will never get it right, but getting it right, or even aspiring to this goal, has never been the point in the first place. As we shall see, the shift from design fictions as exceptional futures to design fictions as exceptions to the future has some significant implications.

Examining the Laws Governing Exceptions: Pataphysics To start understanding this shift, let us first dive into what designed exceptions to the future could mean via pataphysics, a science dedicated to examining the laws governing exceptions. Pataphysics, popularly referred to as ‘the science of imaginary solutions’, has been described as everything from ‘a method, a discipline, a faith, a cult, a point of view, a hoax. It is all of those and none of them’ (Schattuck 1960, 27). This curiously slippery existence is an essential attribute of pataphysics. Contrary to a relativistic free-for-all buffet where anything goes, pataphysics is obsessively governed by a logic – a pataphysical logic that is – that subverts our rational impulse in such an intensive way that it can appear notoriously difficult to grasp. Returning to Nelson and Stolterman’s localisation of design between the true and the real, we can thus consider pataphysics a deliberate effort to playfully and effectively destabilise this dichotomy, exposing how it is but another imaginary solution. Additionally, as Shattuck reminds us, ‘[t]he idea of “truth” is the most imaginary of all solutions’ (ibid., 28) and ‘[b]eyond ’Pataphysics lies nothing; ’Pataphysics is the ultimate defence’ (ibid., 30). While pataphysics too exists beyond time, it found a particularly eloquent voice in the French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry in Paris, 1893. In Jarry’s oeuvre, the pataphysical energy culminated with one of his later works, ‘Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician: A Neo-Scientific Novel’, in which Jarry offered the following definition: Pataphysics, whose etymological spelling should be έπι (μετà τà φυσικά) and actual orthography ’pataphysics, preceded by an apostrophe so as to avoid a simple pun, is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, whether within or beyond the latter’s limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental, ’Pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of

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the general. ’Pataphysics will examine the laws governing exceptions, and will explain the universe supplementary to this one; or, less ambitiously, will describe a universe which can be – and perhaps should be – envisaged in the place of the traditional one, since the laws that are supposed to have been discovered in the traditional universe are also correlations of exceptions, albeit more frequent ones, but in any case accidental data which, reduced to the status of unexceptional exceptions, possess no longer even the virtue of originality. DEFINITION.– ’Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments. (Jarry (1965) [1911], via Shattuck (1960),131)

For the pataphysician, seen through the science of the particular, the world is wholly comprised of exceptions. Any exercise in deducing or inducing conventional logic or rules in a positivist manner is at best the amusing fruit of scientific imagination, at worst lazy circumventions made in the name of progress, utility, truth claims, etc. So what does Jarry’s mention of ‘unexceptional exceptions’ add up to, how does it comprise a science? Bök points out that ‘[w]hile a metaphysical science must rule out exceptions, such excepts are the rule (in which case they are no longer exceptions); instead, the rule is itself the exception in a ‘pataphysical science that rules out the rule’ (Böck 2002, 39, original italics). With an acute awareness that ‘nothing is any other thing’ (Brotchie 2014, 24) the pataphysician treats all these exceptions as equivalent. Many more interrelated pataphysical concepts arise from this briefly outlined foundation. Here I would like to dive deeper into the concept of clinamen/swerve, as it offers us a possible way of thinking about design fictions understood as exceptions to the future, and in particular the extrapolation of weak signals to the future and back. Clinamen finds its origin in the dispute between Epicurus and Democritus (both grounding their philosophies in atomic theory). Democritus argued that all physical phenomena, incl. human free will, derive from the linear fall of atoms, understood as a prima materia, and the causal patterns emerging from this motion (Motte 1986, 263). Epicurus diverged from the determinist nature of Democritus’ theory by refuting the essential notion of linearity, instead arguing that the occasional swerve of falling atoms is precisely ‘the locus and the guarantor of free will’5 (ibid.) As with the rest of Epicurean philosophy, this concept survived through De rerum natura by Lucretius, in which he coins clinamen atomorum as the ‘swerve of the atoms’: Here too is a point I’m eager to have you learn. Though atoms fall straight downward through the void by their own weight, yet at uncertain times and at uncertain points, they swerve a bit – enough that one may say they changed direction. And if they did not swerve, they all would fall downward like raindrops through the boundless void;

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no clashes would occur, no blows befall the atoms; nature would never have made a thing. (II, 216–24, via ibid., 264)

The pataphysical swerve thus designates this sudden deviation from the otherwise boundless (deterministic) void, and the endless chains of causality. McCaffery, in his unpacking of clinamen as a pataphysical law (2012), traces it from its Ancient Greek inception, through De Quincy and Coleridge up to a revival in the 1980’s and ’90s, mentioning Serres, Nancy, Derrida, and Baudrillard (McCaffery, 2012). Of particular relevance to the present argument is Nancy stating that ‘one cannot create a world with simple atoms. There has to be a clinamen. There has to be an inclination or an inclining from one toward the other, of one by the other, or from one to the other. Community is at least the clinamen of the “individual”’ (Nancy 1991, 3–4, via McCaffery 2012). To bring back clinamen in a more familiar design context, we can observe the swerve from design fiction to design friction. Mallol, in her paper ‘Displaying f(r)ictions. Design as Cultural Form of Dissent’ (2010), plays with the double notion of fiction as projection and friction as irritation, referring to the philosophy of Jacques Rancière. Design fiction practioners Bastien Kerspern and Estelle Harry (2015), reflecting on the work produced through their studio aptly titled ‘Design Friction’, discusses friction in the act of confronting and engaging an audience with a design fiction, as a speculative mode of Latour’s notion of mapping controversies. As part of introducing this project, Latour et al (n.d.) describes how ‘citizens need to be equipped with tools to explore and visualize the complexities of scientific and technical debates’, in order to ‘find their way in this uncertain universe and to participate in its assembly’. Indeed, design fictions, despite their imaginative nature and flirtation with the scientific true domain, too exist in a messy reality or to stay with Latour we can say they too are deeply embedded in networks (Latour 2005). In this messy networked reality, we don’t only see friction between the fiction and the audience along with all sorts of other actors, we also see friction between different fictions. To return to Destination Moon, not only was the Space Race a literal race to put a human being into space, on the moon, etc., it was also a race between conflicting space visions, of crafting powerful diegetic prototypes into future worlds, molding a public opinion, shaping the future in one nation’s image. Indeed Kirby’s ‘[o]ne audience’s shiny spaceship future is another audience’s impending doom’ goes both ways. In this sense we can also understand the Space Race between the US and the USSR as a grand example of conflicting design fictions. We can add a final layer of complexity with regard to the temporal space in which all this is taking place, recalling Fry’s notion of defuturing. Countering the aforementioned Western notion of the future as an empty vista lying in front of us6, Fry reminds us that ‘[t]he future is not empty; it is not a void. Rather it is filled with all those things we have thrown into it as they travel back toward us delivering either their futuring or defuturing potential’ (2011, 433).

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At this point, let us imagine the process of crafting a design fiction in this context, bringing together all the layers described into one image. The turbulence one can imagine on this journey of extrapolating weak signals from the present into a designed future that reflects back on the present is rather astounding. Firstly, we have the friction from engaging an audience along with a larger, messy reality along our journey. We can think of this as situating the design fiction and opening it up to an audience. Then secondly, add to that the friction from bouncing against a myriad of other co-existing extrapolations, much like the swerving atoms. This could be other diverging or converging design fictions, or perhaps conflicting ones such as the Space Race. Thirdly, let us remind ourselves that we’re doing all of this, not facing an expanding open vista, but instead while simultaneously navigating a sea of (de)futuring debris swirling towards us. To stay with outer space imagery, we can metaphorically imagine this challenge as the task of sending out a satellite into geosynchronous orbit, and how – rather than populating an empty void – this will be a delicate exercise in accommodating a great wealth of functioning satellites, along with an ever-growing amount of space junk. Importantly, both actual and speculative agency is altered in this way. This multi-layered image is a radical departure from the open vista supposedly housing the exceptional future, the illusory void in which self-fulfilling prophecies play out. Rather, this is the rich context in which design fictions understood as designed exceptions to the future operate. Framing the extrapolations as swerving motions (clinamen) highlights the fact that the friction and collisions between conflicting design fictions (all exceptions) and all other rich aspects of reality (also exceptions), in fact produces agency (as ‘the locus and the guarantor of free will’). With a plurality of designed exceptions to the future, the audience is invited to engage and navigate the confluences and divergences in this complex dynamic space, in order to negotiate and trace out their most desirable paths ahead. In order to get a firmer grasp on this pataphysical approach to design fiction, let us now turn towards ‘A Future Domestic Landscape: Faceless Interaction in 2037’ as an example of how design fictions understood as exceptions to the future could play out.

A Future Domestic Landscape: Faceless Interaction in 2037 Design fictions plays an increasingly well-described role in design education (see e.g. Langdon 2014; Markussen and Knutz 2013), perhaps most explicitly by Matt Ward, as outlined in his rallying call for moving towards a fictionally biased design education (2013). While the context of this case study, a 10-week course for MFA students in Interaction Design, is educational, I won’t focus too much on the pedagogical aspects here, but rather on the processes and outcomes of the course: the practice of design fictions.

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The course currently titled ‘A Future Domestic Landscape: Faceless Interaction in 2037’ is a 10-week project for the second year MFA students in Interaction Design (IxD) at Umeå Institute of Design, conveyed and taught from 2015 to 2017. Having taught and co-coordinated the 2015 version with then IxD Programme Director Niklas Andersson, I’ve since been responsible for the course in 2016 and 2017, in close collaboration with the current IxD Programme Director, Stoffel Kuenen. Besides course responsibility, my role has consisted of lecturing and tutoring. The course (from here on simply referred to as ‘FDL’), asks the students to craft design fictions (practically consisting of minimum one experience prototype and a narrative in a 2–3 mins video format) relating to the domestic life 20 years from now, using (inter)faceless technology, meaning non-screen based interaction, e.g. voice interface, haptics, sound, taste, etc. (Janlert and Stolterman 2015). Together with this technological dimension – building on the legacy of ubiquitous computing, and thus very in line with Bleecker (2009) – the project also asks students to consciously navigate a social, aesthetical, and systemic-societal dimension in their work. In doing so, the project deliberately seeks to explore the space outside the well-trodden, trite paths of a broken Internet of Things imagination, epitomised in the flat-pack future of the smart home. This is done by bringing in an array of external guests posing critical perspectives relating the role of future technology, as well as the role of design, what we mean by ‘home’, feminist and decolonial perspectives on how we design for futures, and more. As the IxD MFA programme is highly international, we further ask the students to critically situate their design fictions in rich cultural contexts familiar to them (rather than a generic Western setting), and to not only consider who they are designing for, but also to actively engage the audience of their projects, testing out their design fictions along the way. Finally, at the end of the 10 weeks, a group exhibition is opened for the public to engage, bringing together all the design fictions, along with the students. To give an idea of the collective outcome of the course, some examples include design fictions confronting us with: • The way in which a system of collaborative, yet stupid bots, could bring meaning and joy to the life of a widowed elderly Swedish woman (‘Bots – Collaborative AI for the Smart Home’ by Kevin Gaunt 2015). • The unravelling and resolve of ‘smart conflicts’, as a rebel smart coffee maker executes a plot to eliminate a rivalling French press, in order to secure the owner’s uncompromised attention and affection (‘Smart Conflicts’ by Hector Meija 2016). • The measures taken by an expecting Finnish couple for affecting the phenotypic development of their unborn baby,

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2 + 3 Madyana Torres acting as mother across two different design fictions, (left) still from ‘The New Natural’ (Toriseva 2015), (right) still from ‘New Age Privacy’ (Nacsa 2015)

using an epigenetic toolkit of smart soft toys (‘The New Natural – Shaping resilience’ by Jenni Toriseva 2015). • A radio for channelling a closed conversation between female rape victims in India using tactile feedback (‘Together Radio’ by Sreyan Ghosh 2015).

Interwoven Qualities This is but a tiny window into the unfolding output of the course, with 28 design fictions finalised to date (2015 and 2016) and 9 new ones being finalised at the time of writing (2017). While the previous examples are supplied in order for the reader to get at least a taste of the diverse outcomes generated within the course structure, my main focus here is on the collective quality in the output of the course, rather than the individual projects7. This is a shift from singular futures to a plurality of futures, not as a retrospective afterthought, but as a key driver in the course. Thus, rather than attempting the impossible task of discussing 28 design fictions, I will instead focus on teasing out some qualities across them, paying particular attention to the interstices and any confluences and divergences, rather than unpacking any one design fiction in particular. Or put in more pataphysical terms, one could say that the focus here will be on the clinamen, the swerving motions and collisions, rather than the single atoms. First we should note that the 28 design fictions have been produced in two cycles (2015 and 2016), each of these consisting of a full-time study of 10 weeks, in which one batch of design fictions (18 first year, 10 second year) are produced in parallel, either individually or in groups of 2–3. While all student projects develop differently in the 10 weeks, the synchronised process encourages collaboration and produces synergy across the projects, both in a topical and methodological sense, and also practically speaking, as when students e.g. help each other out in the work-

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shops or labs, or step in behind or in front of the camera. However, while this dynamic process of collaborating fluidly helps improve all projects drastically, it also does something more than that. When looking at the collective design fiction output, it creates an interweaving emergent quality across the separate design fictions, qualitatively different from the individual merits. As Aristotle’s famous maxim goes, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. As an example Madyana Torres, one of the students in the 2015 course, acts as a mother in two different design fictions. In the first one, ‘The New Natural’ (Toriseva 2015), Torres is using an epigenetic toolkit of soft toys, Three Wise Friends, to alter the environmental factors influencing the expression of genes of her unborn baby. The examples shown in the video are her diet, the level of air pollution outside, and her stress levels. In another design fiction, ‘New Age Privacy’ (Nacsa 2015), Torres is a concerned parent in a future where the home, for some tech-savvy individuals, offers the last bastion against pervasive societal dataveillance. As one of these few individuals able to control what data is collected and shared in her home, Torres eventually makes the painful decision to voluntarily share data concerning her young daughter’s learning difficulties with the local school. Seen individually, the two design fictions raise important issues around genetic manipulation and privacy respectively. However, seen together they open a larger discussion concerning parents’ future ability to effectively shape their kids’ quality of life, both before and after they are born. As an audience we are invited to fill in the gaps, not only within each design fiction, but also in bridging them. Could it e.g. be the same child? What other difficult decisions have the parents had to make along the way? And how does the agency of the parents balance with the agency of the child, as time passes and the child grows up? The interweaving effect happens both in front of as well as behind the camera, and also across years, as exemplified by three other design fictions, Miglė Padegimaitė’s ‘Sleep Lab’ (2015), André Kennedy’s ‘Companion’ (2016), and Maximilian Herr’s ‘The Face It Kit’ (2017). Between the three design fictions, Kennedy stars as the main protagonist in Padegimaitė’s ‘Sleep Lab’, while Herr in turn is the main protagonist in Kennedy’s ‘Companion’. Herr is currently finalising his project. This is not merely fun trivia – as the younger students dip a toe into the fictional worlds developed in the previous years, an anticipation is sparked that is then translated into their very own projects the year after. This dynamic is one of the reasons for the course brief having changed very little from year to year, the other more significant one being the continued relevance of the brief, as both design industry and academia continues to largely struggle with delivering compelling and meaningful alternatives to the aforementioned flat-pack domestic futures. Of course, design fictions also speak to each other without any overlapping actors, as certain issues and topics gain traction across the multitude of projects. An example could be behaviour change. In Qian Yedan’s ‘Better Human’ (2015), set in a future People’s Republic of China, the Chinese National People’s Congress have

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4 + 5 The topic of behaviour change tackled differently across two design fictions, (left) one part of a couple embracing healthy eating positive reinforcement, the other resisting in Qian’s ‘Better Human’ (2015), (right) the POV shot of Dulce, the jealous smart coffee maker plotting to eliminate the French press in order to win her owner’s uncompromised attention and affection, in Meija’s ‘Smart Conflicts’ (2016).

passed ‘BETTER HUMAN’, a programme to support behaviour regulation of citizens. Qian explores the programme in a series of experience prototypes for the home, each employing different behaviour change strategies: reflector, troublemaker, and satisfier. Her video shows us a future home transformed into a place of healing and habit change therapy, in which a couple negotiate their highly different attitudes to this change. This plays out across various loops of negative and positive reinforcements in their everyday, e.g. regulating of stress and healthy eating. Hector Meija’s ‘Smart Conflicts’ (2016) also deals with therapy, but one for smart objects gone rogue in the home, introduced as a service that promises to improve the owner’s relationship with the smart object. Ironically, it is at the very moment that the protagonist is watching an ad for this very service on TV, that the rebel AI smart coffee maker successfully effectuates a plan to eliminate the rivalling French press. In fact, the coffee maker ingeniously uses the unaware owner in the plot, as part of a tiny but efficient Rube Goldberg device. Comparing the two, ‘Better Human’ tells the story of a massively scaled top down governmental behaviour change programme, through the romantic relationship of the two protagonists. One of the characters embraces the programme as a blessing, the other resists it as a curse. However, through their human-to-human interaction, one eventually shifts the opinion of the other. ‘Smart Conflicts’, on the contrary, largely describes a nonhuman-to-nonhuman interaction in the conflict between a smart and a ‘dumb’ coffee maker. Here the smart objects therapy service is introduced in a bottom up random ad on TV. Further, we experience all this through the human lens of a love triangle. This romantic aspect is further explored in Meija’s prototyping of the smart coffee maker, Dulce, and his efforts to reframe a feminine aesthetic away from gender normative clichés. Ultimately the project outlines an unwanted machine behaviour (jealousy) and our human inability to change it in time, as we’re being outsmarted.

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3. A Pataphysical Approach to Design Fiction: Implications of the Shift So What? So what does this all this mean? And why does it matter? These are the questions I’d finally like to reflect on here, keeping in mind the insights from the ‘FDL’ case study, and returning to the implications of the shift from understanding design fictions as exceptional futures, towards understanding design fictions as exceptions to the future. What are the consequences of this turn away from the singular to the plural, deterministic linearity to swerwing motion (clinamen), from the exceptional to many exceptions, from technocentrist aspirations to pataphysical obsessions? Instead of trying to produce a satisfying unified response to this many-sided question, I will instead attempt to outline some consequences and indeed questions here, in the format of short, synthesised themes, opening up possibilities for further exploration and experimentation with how we can design fictions. Each of these themes complement one another, they are randomly sequenced, they sometimes overlap, and together they form a non-exhaustive whole.

The Plural Turn Thinking of design fictions, and more broadly futures, in a plural, rather than singular sense, is by no means anything new. However, an important distinction lies in the way it is possible to consider plurality as a cornerstone for designing fictions. There is an important difference between gathering design fictions in an exhibition space after-the-fact, even if they respond to a common theme, and the ‘FDL’ course, in the way that the plural aspect is a consistent driver throughout all the steps of the project: brief, design process, outcomes, engagement. However, I think the most interesting question doesn’t relate as much to how to design fictions in a plural sense, but more specifically how to design for the interweaving effects between the design fictions, the clinamen, and with it the emergent qualities of confluence and divergence discussed in the ‘FDL’ examples? A large part of this exercise naturally has to do with including widely different (and sometimes conflicting) voices and perspectives, as when we in ‘FDL’ encourage students to critically ground their design fictions in specific cultural settings familiar to them, rather than a generic Western setting. There are numerous interesting paths to explore in pushing this domain further. One could e.g. consider the frame of ‘multivocality’ by transposing Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘polyphonic novel’ into design fictions (Geib 2017). In this space we find Polyphonic Futures by Ranner et al. (n.d.) who has adopted Bakhtin’s polyphonic dialogism as a mission statement in the exploration of their ‘Silken Futures’.

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However, one could also focus on the entanglement of futures through the lens of Barad’s agential realism (1996)? How do these tangents differ in their conceptions of ‘plural design fiction’, conceptually and practically? As already mentioned the plurality and friction also extends outwards, with a continuous engagement with stakeholders and audience throughout the design process. This outwards engagement, embracing friction into fictions, is increasingly being tackled (in addition to the example of Kerspern and Harry’s friction [2015] recent examples include e.g. DiSalvo’s speculative interventions [2016], Elsden et al.’s speculative enactments [2017], and Rosenbak and Feckenstedt’s cospeculation [2016]). Thus, it seems as if a similar push is needed in terms of understanding the plural turn ‘from within’, populating this dimension with more examples, practices, and a more refined vocabulary. This would also significantly contribute to understanding the full potential of the swerving motions (clinamen) across the entirety of design fictions, and their various collisions, inwards and outwards, if such a distinction even makes any kind of sense.

Critical Mass vs. Critical Mess As previously argued, in some ways the crafting of design fictions has perhaps never been more possible than now. However, at the same time, the sea of noise has never appeared larger than at this point in time, in particular with regard to available digi­ tal video content, and perhaps even in terms of the amount of ‘futures’ being produced. While this is a complex problem extending much beyond design and design fictions, it’s a highly relevant one for us to grapple with. In the context of ‘FDL’ this is when we ask ourselves: When is the design brief exhausted, or perhaps better, when have we reached a critical limit of futures within this particular design space? I use ‘design space’ here in the sense Bo Westerlund talks about it as a conceptual tool for understanding ‘all the possible design solutions. In reality the design space is an extremely complex multi-dimensional space containing an endless amount of solutions’ (Westerlund 2005, 1). While acknowledging that the now 28 design fictions from ‘FDL’ by no means are alone in their design space, the question of critical mass still presides: When does a critical mass of design fictions containing finely tuned potentials for interwomen qualities to emerge instead become a total mess, a claustrophobic cluttering of futures, absorbing any meaningful possibility for friction and collisions and thus leaving no gaps to fill out with reflection? And similarly, when are there too few design fictions for any interweaving effect to occur, for any friction to develop? While this is perhaps a more familiar concern, the overarching question of how to find a balance between the quantity and quality of design fictions on one hand, and the scope and dimensionality of the design space (as set out by the design brief/problem) on the other, remains paramount.

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Ways of Working As part of considering how to design for this balance, we might too have to rethink how we work as designers: Are we able to saturate a design space sufficiently and reach this critical mass in a default work mode of individualised serial monogamy, hopping from one brief to the next, or should we suspend this linear way of working, e.g. in favour of extensive periods of radical promiscuity? How do design fictions understood as exceptional futures enforce the individualised serial monogamy work mode and vice versa? And, recalling Nancy’s: ‘Community is at least the clinamen of the “individual”’ (1991), how could design fictions understood as exceptions to the future open up alternative, more communal dynamics in our ways of working? The link between the way we do design fictions (craft, collaborate, etc.) and our modes of working and building design careers, strikes me as an overwhelmingly under-researched area. Also, this is a question of how we understand ourselves: Are we design auteurs? Or maybe co-producers, as we set out to prototype new narrational modes in design fiction? What other roles exists for us? And ultimately: Who do we want to become?

The Design Curator of Fictions Another aspect of the plural turn, along with the critical mass vs. critical mess, concerns curation. Here it is tempting to bring in Maria Lind’s reflections on ‘the curatorial’ (in the text of the same name), ‘as a way of thinking in terms of interconnections: linking objects, images, processes, people, locations, histories, and discourses in physical space like an active catalyst, generating twists, turns, and tensions’ (2001, 63). Lind further argues for a connection to Mouffe’s notion of ‘the political’, and based on her experience of the United Arab Emirates pavilion in Venice, reflects that ‘[h]ere, “the curatorial” emerges in the multiplicity of connections and layers, in how they are orchestrated to challenge the status quo, with the work themselves placed at the center of the project’ (ibid.). This lens resonates well with the previous points made in relation to the interweaving effects between the plurality of design fictions, the clinamen. In ‘FDL’, the students themselves put together and organise their physical group exhibition space – not only curating their individual projects but also the collective experience, including the spaces and frictions between projects. Also, recalling the multiple levels of frictions discussed earlier, the concern for curation goes beyond this concluding spatial arrangement, as the different projects engage various audiences throughout the design process, in several different ways. As part of a broader discussion concerning the understanding of ‘critical design’ across HCI and design, Pierce et al. outlines two types of design criticism in HCI, one of them being the critic-as-designer, ‘who writes about (others’) design,

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6 The ‘FDL’ 2016 exhibition opening taking place in Humlab-X on Arts Campus, Umeå

often with a curatorial approach, from the perspective of a designer’ (2015, 2090). Perhaps a similar kind of hybridisation between design fiction and the curatorial, as outlined by Lind, would be a beneficial step forward in orchestrating and making sense of design fictions as exceptions to the future? This is not a trivial task: How do we aesthetically communicate a plurality of interwoven futures? How do we engage audiences in the clinamen?

1 2 3

4

5

6 7

Beautifully captured by animator Christian Brown’s: ‘I wish I could get away with charging my clients a fee for every time they say Minority Report to me’ (2013). The quote is from an interview David Kirby did with John Underkoffler in Los Angeles, CA, on 25 March 2005 (Kirby 2010, 26). For the sake of clarity of argument and focus in this paper, the text will critique and argue around a predominantly linear Western time conception, seeing as this is the model subscribed to by a vast majority of design fictions. However, this is not to ignore this important line of critique and an urgent need for decolonising futures and design, but simply due to practical limitations, realising that a deeper engagement with non-Western time conceptions is outside the scope of this present argument. It would be most relevant to extend Koh’s foremost legal and political explication of exceptionalism into a discussion of Agamben’s philosophical and historical contextualisation of the ‘state of exception’ (2005), carried out as part of his larger Homo Sacer project. As pointed out by both McCaffery (2012) and Hugill (2012), the Greek Epicurean pre-microscopic conceptualisation of the atom, as well as the atomic swerve, is itself a great pataphysical example of an imaginary solution. An example of this model is John Voros’ Futures Cone, one of the most widely used temporal models in design fiction, critical, and speculative design. This is not to diminish their outstanding standalone qualities, as has also been recognised outside the educational context, e.g. by several projects receiving praise and winning design awards.

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References Agamben, G. (2005). State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Baker (2016, June 28). ‘Is Design Fiction the new Design Thinking? The Big Idea.’ Retrieved from: https://www.thebigidea.nz/stories/is-design-fiction-the-new-design-thinking. Barad, K. (1996). ‘Meeting the universe halfway: Realism and social constructivism without contradiction’. In Feminism, science, and the philosophy of science, eds. Nelson, L. N., and Nelson, J., 161–194. Dordrecht: Kluwer Press. Bosch, T. (2 March 2012). ‘Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction (Interview). Slate Future Tense.’ Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_ tense/2012/03/02/bruce_sterling_on_design_fictions_.html. Bowen, S. (2010). ‘Critical theory and participatory design’. In Proceedings of CHI 2010. ACM. Brooker, C. (Producer). (2011–) Black Mirror [series]. Amsterdam & London & Canary Islands: Zeppotron/Endemol & Channel 4 & Gran Babieka. Brotchie, A. (2014). ‘Interim. Concerning Pataphysical Equivalence. Course in General Pataphysics.’ In Foulc, F., Lacaze, D., and Brotchie, A. (2014). On Pataphysical Equivalence. The Journal of the LIP, Number 10. London: London Institute of Pataphysics. Brown, C. (25 February 2013). ‘How “Minority Report” Trapped Us In A World Of Bad Interfaces’. The Awl. Retrieved from: https://www.theawl.com/2013/02/how-minority-report-trapped-us-in-a-world-ofbad-interfaces/. Bök, C. (2002). ‘Pataphysics: The poetics of an imaginary science. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Copley, F. O. (trans). (1977). Lucretius. The Nature of Things. NYC: Norton. Curtis, B., and de Bont, J. (Producers), and Spielberg, S. (Director). (2002). Minority Report [motion picture]. Los Angeles & Glendale: Twentieth Century Fox, Dreamworks, Cruise/Wagner. Debord, G. (1992). [1967]. Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press. DiSalvo, C (2016). ‘The Irony of Drones for Foraging: Exploring the Work of Speculative Interventions’. In Design Anthropological Futures. London & NYC: Bloomsbury Academic. Dourish, P., and Bell, G. (2014). ‘“Resistance is futile”: reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing’. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 18(4), 769–778. Duggan, J. R., Lindley, J., and McNicol, S. (2017). ‘Near Future School: World building beyond a neoliberal present with participatory design fictions’. Futures 94:15–23. Dunne, A., and Raby, F. (2011). Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser. Dunne, A., and Raby, F. (2014). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Elsden, C., Chatting, D., Durrant, A. C., Garbett, A., Nissen, B., Vines, J., and Kirk, D. S. (2017). ‘On Speculative Enactments’. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (5386–5399). ACM. Exceptionalism. (n.d.) In Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/exceptionalism. Fry, T (2011). ‘Urban futures in the age of unsettlement futuring, defuturing’. Futures 43: 432–439. Fuller, J. (20 October 2016). Black Mirror and design fiction. Personal Blog. Retrieved from: http://jarrettfuller.blog/post/152070390277/black-mirror-and-design-fiction. Gaunt, K. (2015). Bots – Collaborative AI for the Smart Home. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Retrieved from: https://www.kevingaunt.com/#bots-section Geib, J. (2017). Separations in Multivocality: Reconfiguring Dialogue through Design. Licentiate Thesis in Architecture. Göteborg: Chalmers University of Technology. Gonzatto, R. F, Van Amstel, F. M. C., Merkle, L. E., and Hartmann, T. (2013). ‘The ideology of the future in design fictions’. Digital Creativity, 24:1, 36–45. Gosh, S. (2015). Together Radio. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Retrieved from: https://sreyan.com/work/togetherradio/ Grand, S., and M. Wiedmer. (2014). ‘Design Fiction: A Method Toolbox for Design Research in a Complex World’. In Proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference, Montreal, 2010. Herr, M. (2017). The Face It Kit. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Hugill, A. (2012). ‘Pataphysics – A Useless Guide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Janlert, L. E., and Stolterman, E. (2015). ‘Faceless Interaction – A Conceptual Examination of the Notion of Interface: Past, Present, and Future’. Human – Computer Interaction, 30(6), 507–539.

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Jarry, A. (1965). [1911]. Selected Works of Alfred Jarry. Trans. Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor. London: Methuen. Kennedy, A. (2016). Companion. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Kerspern, B., and Harry, E. (26 December 2015). Reanticipation: Iterative Design Fictions. 1st International Conference on Anticipation. UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory Systems. Medium. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/design-friction/reanticipation-iterative-design-fictions-b871d11fdcd7. Kirby, D. (2010). The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development. Social Studies of Science, 40(1), 41–70. Koh, H. H. (2003). ‘On American Exceptionalism’. Stanford Law Review, 1479–1527. Langdon, J. (2014). A School for Design Fiction. Leipzig: Spector Books. Latour, B., Girard, P., and Venturini, T. (n.d.). Mapping Controversies. SciencesPo Médialab. Retrieved from: http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/publications/mapping-controversies/. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lind, M. (2010). The curatorial. Selected Maria Lind Writing, 63–66. Lindley, J., and Coulton, P. (2015). ‘Back to the future: 10 years of design fiction’. In Proceedings of the 2015 British HCI Conference, 210–211. ACM. Lukic, B., and Katz, B. M. (2010). Nonobject. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mallol, M. (2010). ‘Displaying f(r)ictions. Design as Cultural Form of Dissent’. In Proceedings of the 6th Swiss Design Network Conference: Negotiating Futures Design Fiction. Basel: FHNW Academy of Art and Design. Malpass, M. (2017). Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practices. Bloomsbury Publishing. Markussen, T., and Knutz, E. (2013). The poetics of design fiction. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces, 231–240. ACM. McCaffery, S. (2012). ‘The ‘Pataphysics of Auschwitz’. In The Darkness of the Present: Poetics, Anachronism, and the Anomaly. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Meija, H. (2016). Smart Conflicts. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Retrived from: https://medium.com/@hectormejia/smart-conflicts-5a3d9557079f. Milton, A. (2003). ‘Filmic Design – A Hitchcockian Design Narrative’. In Proceedings of the 5th European Academy of Design. Barcelona. Motte, W. F. (1986). Clinamen redux. Comparative Literature Studies, 23(4), 263–281. Nacsa, J. (2015). New Age Privacy. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Retrieved from: http://www.julianacsa.com/newageprivacy/. Nancy, J. L. (1991). The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Near Future Laboratory (n.d.) What We Do. http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/. Venice Beach, San Francisco, Geneva, Barcelona: Near Future Laboratory. Nelson, H. G. and Stolterman, E. (2012). The Design Way: Intentional Change in An Unpredictable World. Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Padegimaitė, M. (2015). The Sleep Lab. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Pal, G. (Producer), & Pichel, I. (director). Destination Moon (1950). [motion picture]. Los Angeles: George Pal Productions. Phillips, R. (ed.). (2015). Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice, vol. 1. Philadelphia: The Afrofuturist Affair/House of Future Sciences Books. Pierce, J., Sengers, P., Hirsch, T., Jenkins, T., Gaver, W., and DiSalvo, C. (2015). ‘Expanding and refining design and criticality in HCI’. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2083–2092). ACM. Ranner, V., Omenetto, F., Lastra, C., and Huntley, D. (n.d.) Polyphonic Futures Website. Features. https://www.polyphonicfutures.com/about. Rosenbak, S., and Feckenstedt, H. (2016). ‘The Design of Digital Shadows: Co-Speculating Presents That Might Already Have Come True’. In TRADERS MEDIATIONS Proceedings, 13–29. Rosenberg, S. (19 April 1992). Virtual Reality Check Digital Daydreams, Cyberspace Nightmares. Style Section. Page C1. San Francisco: San Francisco Examiner. Schultz, T. (forthcoming). ‘Decolonising Techno-Colonising Indigenous Design Futures’. Strategic Design Journal. Shattuck, R. (1960). ‘Superliminal note’. Evergreen Review, 4(13), 24–33. Sterling, B. (2005). Shaping Things. (Mediaworks Pamphlets). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Sturdee, M., Coulton, P., and Alexander, J. (2017). ‘Using Design Fiction to Inform Shape-Changing Interface Design and Use’. The Design Journal, 20 (sup1), S4146–S4157. Thackara, J. (19 December 2013). Republic of Salivation (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta). Design and Violence. New York: MoMA. Retrieved from: https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/designandviolence/republic-of-salivation-michael-burton-and-michiko-nitta/. Tonkinwise, C. (2015, August 21). Just design: Being dogmatic about defining speculative critical design future fiction. Medium. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/@camerontw/just-design-b1f97cb3996f. Toran, N. (2001). Object for Lonely Men. NYC & Jerusalem: MoMA & Israel Museum collections. Retrieved from: http://noamtoran.com/NT2009/projects/object-for-lonely-men. Toriseva, J. (2015). The New Natural – Shaping resilience. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Walker (11 March 2015). Design for Dystopia. How seductive designs help ‘Black Mirror’ tell unnerving stories. Reform. Medium. Retrieved from: https://medium.com/re-form/design-for-dystopia-2fa211679dd8. Ward, M. (17 Juli 2013). Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice. Towards a fictionally biased design education. Medium. https://medium.com/@matthewward/design-fiction-as-pedagogic-practice-9b1fbba7ae2b. Weiser, M. (1991). ‘The computer for the 21st century’. Scientific American, 265(3), 94–104. Westerlund, B. (2005). ‘Design space conceptual tool: grasping the design process’. In Proceedings for ‘In the Making’. Nordes. Copenhagen: the Nordic Design Research Conference. Qian, Y. (2015). Better Human. Interaction Design MFA programme. Umeå: Umeå Institute of Design. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/148601709.

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UTOPIA AND UCHRONIA: A NEW EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH IN THINKING ABOUT TIME Helga Schmid

Every culture has a deeply rooted and particular perspective on social time, ‘its own unique set of temporal fingerprints’ (Rifkin 1989, 9). Time serves as a frame of reference understood and applied by people within each society. From birth onwards, the specific cultural temporality becomes deeply encoded, almost like a sixth sense. As the sociologist Norbert Elias explains in his classic work Time: An Essay (1993), the sense of time becomes part of each individual’s personality, as if no other time structure could be possible. The temporal, cultural system, with all its facets, thus becomes deeply embodied. Certainly, any Western system is undergoing perpetual change, and one of the driving forces for change is rooted in new technologies. Subsequently, these technologies influence our temporal existence, and play a determining role in forming and reconfiguring how we understand and use time. For example, the mobile phone has changed our behaviour in relation to the temporal arrangement of appointments. In many cases, punctuality has given way to flexibility (Rosa 2013, 231–236). The measurement of time by the clock is still pivotal, but societal synchronisation dynamics have changed as a result of digital technologies. This leads to the current state of Western society, which is described as an ‘instant network society’ or ‘high-speed society’ (Rosa et al. 2010). The embodiment of the rhythm and speed of digital life creates an atmosphere in which perceptions of time pressures and the scarcity of time are increasing (Wajcman 2015, 4). The expression ‘time-crisis’ sets a dystopian tone in contemporary debates on the nature of today’s temporality (Han 2009, 7–8). This essay introduces the idea of utopian and uchronian thinking as a new way to approach the current temporal crisis. Hereto, I discuss the etymological relationship of the terms utopia and uchronia, and draw similarities between utopian and uchronian thinking. In reference to the utopian scholar Ruth Levitas (2013), who outlined ‘utopia as a method’, the concept is applied on temporal thinking within an interdisciplinary design practice. I discuss the concept of uchronia in reference to the sociologist Helga Nowotny (2014), and build upon her concept, a new experimental approach in thinking about time independent of the Western societal norms of clocks and calendars. In a brief example, I exemplify, how uchronian thinking can be applied.

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1 Uchronia Diagram (1876), Charles Bernard Renouvier Redrawn by Helga Schmid, 2017

Utopia and Uchronia Utopia and uchronia – the known and the unknown. Under the shadow of the established spatial concept of utopia, exists silently its temporal equivalent. Before introducing the concept of uchronia, I begin with a brief outline of the utopian concept as understood in this context: Utopia is a term coined by Sir Thomas More in 1516 for his book Utopia. The word is based on the Greek term ‘ou-topos’, meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’. In English, the homogeneous interpretation of the terms utopia and eutopia, from ‘eu-topos’, meaning ‘good place’, are used interchangeably (BBC Radio 4 1999). In his book, More envisions an idealistic society living on a fictional island. He presents the role of utopia not as a blueprint for the perfect society, but rather a suggestive exploration of imaginary ideas and dreaming. In 2016, More’s book celebrated its 500th anniversary of publication. Many concepts were developed during this period of time, and a single definition of utopia cannot do justice to the topic’s complexity. Therefore, I concentrate on the sociologist Ruth Levitas’ definition of utopia in her books The Concept of Utopia (1990) and Utopia as Method (2013), especially her understanding that, ‘utopia is the expression of the desire for a better way of being or of living, and as such is braided through human culture’ (2013, XII). Building up on this, the term ‘uchronia’ is a concept that derives from ‘utopia’. In the same manner as utopia, uchronia is defined as ‘no time’ or ‘non-time’ from the Greek ‘ou-chronos’. The word uchronia was first used by the

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French philosopher Charles Bernard Renouvier in his novel Uchronie (L’Utopie dans l’histoire) in 1876. (Fig. 1) Uchronia is explored mainly in the literary genre of alternative history1. Scholars of the genre (e.g. Paul Alton, Emmanuel Carrère, Pierre Versins, Christoph Rodiek) have discussed it widely in this context. Uchronia, however, is not limited to the field of alternative history. The sociologist Helga Nowotny (1996) introduced the terminology to sociology in her book Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience by strongly aligning her model to the utopian concept: ‘Uchronias, like utopias before them, have a central social function to fulfil: they contain proposed solutions to particular unsolved problems in a society.’ (1996, 136). Her model is fundamentally different to alternative history. She is concerned with how time is managed in daily life. Nowotny’s uchronia aims for a new time structure of social time in contrast to the present model, whereas in alternative history, uchronia is a genre or specific narrative form, but in terms of content does not explicitly refer to alternative time structures. In her interpretation uchronia is equivalent to a ‘temporal utopia’ offering an imaginary escape in the form of a time paradise. She defines it as an attempt to escape the rigidity of clock time through the development of new time concepts. Uchronia in this sense is located in the now or the close future and is intended to offer a new and better conception and experience of time.

Ways to Uchronia To introduce her concept in sociological theory, Nowotny suggests three ways to uchronia: The first way expresses the desire for more time, for example in the idea of a ‘cockaigne full of time’, cockaigne meaning an imaginary place of plenty. In such a place the hunger for time would be satisfied by all the time in the world, combined with all the money in the world, and consequently, life would be a paradise of leisure, pleasure and consumption. It would be a mythical place which is utopia and uchronia all in one. Nowotny’s second way to uchronia is more complex in its approach and oriented towards self-determination and temporal flexibility. The current strict division of work and leisure time is expected to disappear, giving the individual the right to structure their time for themselves. The current development of flexible time management paves the way for this uchronia. For instance, personal e-mails are written during the working day, while work e-mails are answered on the weekend. Work and leisure can become one time again. Ideally the experience of time would be perceived as unitary passage of time and not as fragmented parts of hours and minutes. However, there are two sides to this. On the one hand this development can lead to true sovereignty and temporal freedom – the feeling of being pressed for time can wane as the strict categories of work and free time disappear. On the other hand, the main trigger for the scarcity of time is related to the rise of

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the vita active (active life) over the vita contemplative (contemplative life)2. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues for a shift in perspective by ‘revitalisation of the vita contemplativa and relearning of the art of lingering’ (2009, 2). If the appreciation of the vita active over the vita contemplative is the status quo, temporal sovereignty might lead to an intensification of time pressure. Nowotny’s third way to uchronia is one in which there is a breaking out of rigid, standardised time, and in its place, a search for the spontaneity of the ‘vicissitudes of life’. Through a rediscovery of natural rhythms, ‘the battle against nature is to be brought to an end and homeostasis replaced by homeorhythmics’. By proposing a return to the ‘biological and cultural heritage’, supported by chronobiology and chronosociology, the individual daily experience has to open up for the unpredictable and unknown. This type of uchronia asks for new periods of time, outside of the categorise of work and leisure time (Nowotny 1996, 139–141). In summary, all three of Nowotny’s types of uchronia pursue the goal of removing the ‘I have to …’ from daily life and replace it by ‘I feel like doing …’. The essential aspects that characterise uchronia for her are that uchronia is linked to the concept of a temporal utopia, and thus a time paradise, offering a new experience of time; uchronia is now or in the extended present3 ; uchronia is about the right use of time with regard to today’s social time; and essentially uchronia is a new approach to understand and use time. (Fig. 2) On the basis of Nowotny’s uchronianism, the political scientist Valerie Bryson discusses possibilities for a new politics of time. She stresses that ‘thinking about non-existent ways of understanding and using time opens up a range of radical alternatives outside the framework of patriarchal norms and the short-term logic of capital accumulation’ (2007, 169). Bryson uses uchronia to criticise and reflect upon contemporary time norms, conditions, and values. Rather than imagining an ideal time paradise or the perfect timing, her female-oriented uchronia is a method to challenge today’s politics of time by suggesting a list of new, negotiable criteria. The role of uchronian thought for her is to ask: What time culture is worth striving for, and what is the set of criteria to organise social time? Bryson’s uchronian ideas are intended for the here and now, and whether particularly female or not is negligible in this context. Primarily, uchronia is a useful tool to initiate a discussion about the politics of time. Other sciences refer to Nowotny’s concept as well, for instance in the field of chronobiology4. In their study of biological rhythms, the scientists Foster and Kreitzman conclude their book Rhythms of Life with a chapter on ‘Future Times: Uchronia or Dyschronia’ (2004, 232–242). According to them, the notion of time in the future can lead in one of two directions which conform, from their point of view, to the time paradise of uchronia or to Bryson’s politics of time. The uchronian ideas are meant to influence today’s temporal structures through suggesting a set of criteria to organise future times, more precisely euchronia (the Greek eu meaning good), or the time hell of dyschronia (the Greek dys meaning difficult or of bad status), which conforms in their approach to a ‘temporal dystopia’.

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2 Three Ways to Uchronia, Diagrams drawn in reference to Helga Nowonty (1996) Helga Schmid, 2017

It is not surprising that Foster and Kreitzman mention the term ‘dyschronia’ in contrast to the uchronian concept of Nowotny. The manipulation of the biological clock can have all sorts of implications in relation to the rhythm of life, especially in today’s ‘achievement society’ (Han 2015, 8), where huge efforts are devoted to create a sleepless, fully awake human being.

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Utopia as Method and Uchronia as Methodology Nowotny’s uchronian models pave the way for a new approach on thinking about time, but how can these initial theoretical approaches, take on shape in design research and as part of a greater academic discourse? Again, a look at utopia and utopian thinking provides a suitable model of reference. Levitas is renowned for her research on utopia, and published the book Utopia as Method – The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. She suggests to use utopia as a method, and summarises her understanding of utopia in the following way: A utopian method […] provides a critical tool for exposing the limitations of current policy discourses about economic growth and ecological sustainability. It facilitates genuinely holistic thinking about possible futures, […]. And it requires us to think about our conceptions of human needs and human flourishing in those possible futures. The core of utopia is the desire for being otherwise, individually and collectively, subjectively and objectively. Its expressions explore and bring to debate the potential contents and contexts of human flourishing. It is thus better understood as a method than a goal […] (Levitas 2013, XI).

Levitas points out aspects of utopia which are highly relevant for the development of uchronia toward similar ends: concept as method or critical tool, debate, possible futures, holistic thinking, and being otherwise. In her earlier work The Concept of Utopia (1990), she defines utopia in reference to the philosopher Ernst Bloch as an anthropological constant. In brief: ‘utopia is the expression of the desire for a better way of being or of living, and as such is braided through human culture’ (2013, XII). First and foremost in importance is the understanding of uchronia as a tool for action and practice rather than a defined and unimpeachable goal. Levitas construes three different modes within her utopian method: archaeological, ontological, and architectural. She describes the archaeological mode as ‘piecing together the images of the good society that are embedded in political programmes and social and economic policies’, her ontological mode entails the ‘historical and social determination of human nature’, and in the architectural mode she discusses ‘the imagination of potential alternative scenarios for the future’ in relation to space (2013, 153). She outlines that in the past, utopia as a method has been neglected in sociology, because of the institutionalisation of the discipline as an empirical, respectable academic field. (2013, 84). Her intention is to reintroduce utopian thinking to social science. H.G. Wells’ lecture ‘The So-called Science of Sociology’ (1906) underpins her argument: ‘the creation of utopias – and their exhaustive criticism – is the proper and distinctive method of sociology’5. Levitas’ definition of utopia as a method is the key inspiration for uchronian thinking. However, she limits the utopian method to social science. She concen-

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trates exclusively on the relationship between sociology and utopia, without encouraging a general application of utopian thinking outside her discipline. Though my research is inspired by Levitas’ conceptual framework, I frame uchronia as a methodology rather than a method. I understand and use uchronia as an umbrella term, under which it is possible to apply a series of methods. The methodology is positioned within the existing design practice of critical and speculative design. Over the years, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s concept of ‘critical design’ expanded and the ‘speculative’ element became part of their design philosophy, manifested in their latest book Speculative Everything. Therein, they reason ‘that many challenges we face today are unfixable and that the only way to overcome them is by changing our values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour.’ Therefore, their focus is on ‘the idea of possible futures and using them as tools to better understand the present and to discuss the kind of future people want, and, of course, ones people do not want’ (Dunne et al., 2–3). This is consistent, indeed almost identical with, Levitas’ sociological approach (2013, XI): ‘A utopian method […] provides a critical tool for exposing the limitations of current policy discourses about economic growth and ecological sustainability. It facilitates genuinely holistic thinking about possible futures.’ In their definition, Dunne and Raby outline their position with regard to ‘the future’. They differentiate between four trajectories, as probable, plausible, possible, and preferable futures. Their design work is situated in the field of the ‘preferable future’: Not in trying to predict the future but in using design to open up all sorts of possibilities that can be discussed, debated, and used to collectively define a preferable future […]. Designers should not define futures for everyone else but working with experts, including ethicists, political scientists, economists, and so on, generate futures that act as catalysts for public debate and discussion about the kinds of futures people really want (Dunne et al., 5–6).

Along the same lines, Lyman Tower Sargent quotes Bauman in relation to social theory: To measure the life ‘as it is’ by a life as it should be (that is, a life imagined to be different from the life known, and particularly a life that is better and would be preferable to the life known) is a defining, constitutive feature of humanity.6

The same quote is discussed by Levitas’ (2013, 106), and Dunne and Raby (2013, 73) to define their understanding of utopias/dystopias in the exact the same words of Bauman. Interestingly, Levitas’ Utopia as a Method and Dunne and Raby’s book Speculative Everything were both published in 2013. These two works exist in parallel, defining a very similar conceptual understanding of utopia. Levitas even identifies her ‘utopian mode as speculative sociology’ (2013, 153). However, both act

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within their own discipline, not recognising how their ideas of utopian thinking overlap with the complementary sociological and/or critical and speculative design approach. This is where the uchronian methodology is situated. It is a general mode of thinking on time and temporal systems. Uchronian thinking differentiates from ‘future thinking’ (systematic study of the future)7. The intent of uchronian thinking is not a prediction of the future in relation to temporality. Its purpose is to understand the present-day relationship with time, gain new insights into contemporary temporality, and on this basis, start to discuss alternatives.

Application of Uchronian Thinking In my practice and teaching, I explore the potential of uchronian thinking, and introduce this approach to my discipline of design and design research. In the following, I exemplify how I embed uchronian thinking as part of my teaching at the Royal College of Art. I conduct experiments about programming spaces, from curatorial and computational perspective, and exploring alternative temporal systems. In this respect, I set up “time frames” for the students rather than briefs. One uchronian project ran over five days, Monday to Friday, 27th to 31st of November 2014, inclusive of a 48-hour experiment. Twelve students were selected from across the college, including 1st and 2nd year MA students from Architecture, Sculpture, Visual Communication, Information Experience Design, Fashion Womenswear, Jewellery and Metalwork, and Critical Writing in Art and Design. On Monday, the students were briefed for the experiment. I asked them at the beginning to talk about their own interest in the topic of time, by answering three questions: 1. How do you perceive time in your everyday? 2. How would you like to spend your time (in an ideal world)? 3. How have you explored temporality/time in your own practice? I then grouped them into three teams of four. In the afternoon, the groups were asked to decide upon a temporal structure they wanted to live by for the 48-hour experiment. On Tuesday, the actual experiment began. I allocated each group an experimental space which I had selected beforehand. The groups did not know what to expect. They were free to choose what to bring, but all three groups had to leave their phones and any other time-giving devices with me. I equipped them with a basic mobile phone (with time and date display obscured) for emergencies, and instructions on how to get to their designated space. At approximately 2 p.m. each group started their experiment, lasting until Thursday approximately 2 p.m., in order to guarantee similar experimental conditions. I visited one group directly, and telephoned the other two groups to signal the end the experiment. Afterwards, I interviewed each group about the course of the experiment and the project ended with presentations by each group in one of the experimental spaces.

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GROUP ONE: In Search of Lost Time8, Rotherhithe Library

The first group carried out their experiment in the former Rotherhithe Library in London, a large, open space with a stage and an accessible rooftop. They choose to continuously read aloud Proust’s In Search of Lost Time as their time giver over the course of 48 hours. Each chapter of the book served as a time unit. By taking turns, always one member of the group read out loud a chapter, while another member was knitting for this period of time. As each person was given a different colour yarn, so the length of knitting for each chapter was thus visualised by the change in colour. This produced a visual output of each time unit. The other two students listened, wrote, cooked or slept meanwhile. Two of the students described their experience as follows: I think we chose this as a way of exploring the notion of time as an essentially human construct, and therefore as something we can construct in any way we want. Our project played with ideas of activities which have really endured over time: oral storytelling and the childhood craft of dolly knitting. In the input it was interesting to see time construction as something which unites a group. In the output it was interesting to see time visualised in a tangible sense.9 The experiment offered together an experience of escapism and returning … Initially the desire to look at the time was strong and the necessity comfort of knowing what stage of the day it was challenging. But the reading continued and the knit developed, providing a new source of time and this eventually overruns the desire to look at the time.10 In the Uchronia workshop we switched off time for a few days – the replacement of time with the conceit of the new zeitgeber was the switch – and when we came back to it (almost like a space or a condition) it was like we could smell it again, or see its outline.11

GROUP TWO: Time to Eat, Pumping Station

The second group choose hunger as their time giver. They were send to a remote place in the outskirts of London: a former pumping station, surrounded by forests and meadows. Away from social rhythms, they focussed on their bodies, specifically their feelings of hunger, and explored these by cooking, under the additional temporal influence of music. This was their manifesto:

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3–9 Uchronia Workshop I (2014), London. Images by Joanne Chan, Laura Gottlieb, Khusboo Gupta Khandelwal, Sarah Kilkenny, Hyeyeun Lee, Kristian Vistrup Madsen, Dah Ye Noh, Molly Richards, Charles Rickleton, Francesco Tacchini, Adam Waldron, and Boran Wei

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We will respect our companion’s chronobiology. We will live without traditional time conventions for 48 hours and enjoy the pleasure of eating and listening to music. We will aim to consume three meals a day together. We will aim to document this experience and produce a book and film. We will use music as a measuring unit. Music will be an ingredient. Music will be the authority. We will decide on the music together in response to our mood, weather, food, and surroundings. We will let our stomachs tell the time.12

The group documented their meal times by texting me, when they where about to eat, and made a guess about the actual time. One student wrote about the experiment: I’m always hungry so I rely heavily on the time to dictate when I eat. I’d like to say that this experiment taught me I should just eat when I’m hungry, … it also taught me that … time is a key ingredient.13

GROUP THREE : Space as Zeitgeber, Eaton House Studio

The third group was send to a pink mansion in Essex. They decided on the space as their time giver, with the intention to create a narrative around the (elaborately and thematically decorated) rooms of the house. The French novel Against Nature14 by Joris-Karl Huysmans served as their inspiration. The novel is about a French aristocrat who leaves his decadent upper-class life in Paris for a remote villa in the countryside. Isolated from society, he creates his own artificial world full of eccentric art, luxury perfumes, exotic jewels, and classic literature. Over the course of the 48 hours, the students individually wandered through the house, from room to room. The numerous bed rooms and showers dictated the rhythm, leading to a polyphasic sleep pattern, in contrast to our societal day-and-night rhythm (monophasic sleep pattern).15 The intensity of the space has been summarised by one student: I spent two days in the ‘pink house’ which was full of objects, very strong colours and every space had a distinctive mood. Time in this artificial space became associated with place, context. The house imprisoned me and dictated my time.16

Each of the students created work, from short films, images, and drawings inspired by the different rooms and invented imaginary additional rooms. In this experiment, the space indeed became the dominant zeitgeber. (Fig. 3–9)

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Reflection on the Uchronia Workshop The three groups stepped out of the societal system by each forming their own, independent collective. Although this experiment was only conducted for a short period of time, it had a lasting impact on the participants. Their reflection, based on material from interviews and questionnaires are expressed here through examples which follow. All the students agreed in the interviews that they would like to do the experiment again and extend it to a longer period of time, ideally around a week. One of my questions addressed the difficulty of not knowing the time: After leaving clocks and the digital world behind, did you feel the need to know the time or follow a certain kind of structure during the 48 hours? Here the answers showed great deviation. Some students expressed a real necessity to know the time: I am somebody who habitually and constantly checks the time. During the experiment I found not being able to do this extremely frustrating. Afterwards I felt extremely grateful to be able to do this activity. As I was drawing these [animations] I was aware that 12 drawings equals one second of output (12 frames per second) and found that although I didn’t really know how long it was taking me at least knowing how long what I was making would be gave me a sense of ‘groundedness’. (I know that isn’t really a word but ‘security’ felt like the wrong word.) In a way this was a device for determining a length of time in the future.17

Others experienced it as a form of freedom: I was surprisingly fine with not knowing the time. It was quite a relief actually. When the group would speculate about the time, I felt a bit apprehensive, as if it took away from the experience. Our experiment had quite a tight structure, which might be why we were more immersed and it was easier to forget about the clock or digital world.18

One of my main questions focussed on the impact of the workshop and experiment on the participants. Did this 48 hour experiment change your thinking on the present structure of time? And if yes, how? This is one of the answers: This experiment has had a profound impact on how I feel about time. Being constantly in the making or reading, really put me into a flow of productivity. Productivity being something more analogue and physical. It really makes me want to make things and keep going despite the hours of the clock.19

Around one year later, and again two years later, I asked the students again about the impact of the experiment on their relationship with time, to gather information on the longitudinal aspects of the study. One student expressed no effect of the experiment in relation to time, although subsequently said:

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I would love to do the experiment again. … The present time has made man extremely materialistic. We are constantly doing something and don’t have the time to get bored.20

Another student described the general impact as low, except it changed the behaviour and thinking in certain moments: A walk in the woods did not take as long as we expected it would. Now I sometimes just take a walk and time to chill when I feel stuck instead of forcing my brain to work at the desk. It shortened my time of procrastination at certain moments – I was reminded of how long the preparation of a meal could take vs. the time to consume it.21

For one student, the workshop as a whole was more impactful than just the experiment: I would say the main thing [the experiment] changed is that I am often recognising and thinking of alternative time telling devices. For instance a flickering light, or a rotating bus-stop billboard advert. […] For several months after the experiment I thought about time a lot more but I would say this was a result, not of the physical experiment, but of≈the conversations surrounding the experiment and my experience with the participants.22

The majority of students, however, described the experiment and workshop as an impactful event: Yes. I think it has changed my thinking. Perhaps not limited just to time but more broadly on ideas that many human constructions that we live by without thought could be challenged to produce a creative output. I think it also challenged my thinking about reasons for constructing time; producing a society that is in sync is perhaps good for our well-being socially. The experiment would have been very different if it was a singular experience.23 I believe more than ever I’m more conscious that measures of time are practically everywhere, I attempt not to be too attached or to set rigorous time schedules that are unnecessary or overall could be detrimental. I have fun with matching an event or situation with alternative measures of time. I’ve also become far more ‘Zen’ to others time keeping, I’ve always had a respectable standard of timekeeping compared close friends and familiar members and now and especially after the experiment I’ve become more sympatric to others relationship to time.24 It was a very special experience. One year later after this workshop I am looking to continue to experiment (artistically, personally) with my own experience of spaces and time. Since the workshop I have been thinking how my own practices fits in to this; designing, redesigning spaces for a reflective, creative and slower pace.25

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These examples beautifully express the profound impact of the experiment on the participants, though the intensity of course varied from person to person. One student expressed her relief from the daily temporal fragmentation by the experience of an uninterrupted work flow in the experiment, and this experience made her realise our ‘atomised time’, speculating that it might even influence her creative process and mode of working later on. The other student had a far-reaching insight, in line with Elias’ understanding of time as ‘a means of orientation in the social world’.26 This was a result I was hoping for in this experiment: an essential and radical questioning of the given social construct of time. Fundamentally in my research and design practice, I create awareness for the potential of a new way of thinking, uchronian thinking in order to shift the current perspective of time to a space for visions and dreams about our temporal existence. Uchronia is not intended to offer the one answer or to solve the dyschronian crisis, but to spark a debate around the possibilities and think anew our temporal structure. This does not need to be solely a thought experiment. Now, more than ever before, it is up to an individual as to how to structure their time. A full schedule does not necessarily result in a fulfilled time. No device and no one else can solve or make these decisions for us. In the here and now, every day bears anew the potential to explore and experience uchronia.

1 Alternative history is a genre in science fiction, often used synonymously with the term alternate history, counterfactuals, or allohistory. The stories suggest an alternative course of history which is different from history. For a comprehensive description of the genre of Alternate history, see, ‘The Plot and America’, Uchronia: Uchronia: Introduction (1991), http://www.uchronia. net/intro.html [accessed 28 October 2017]. 2 In reference to the definition of vita active and vita contemplativa in Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958). In contrast to Arendt’s approach, for Han the vita contemplativa ‘connects to the experience of being [Seinserfahrung] in which what is beautiful and perfect does not change or pass – a state that eludes all human intervention’. 3 The term extended present was coined by the philosopher Hermann Lübbe, expressing that categories ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ cease to exist. See Weis 1995, 53. 4 Chronobiology. Derived from the Greek (chronos for time, bios for life, and logos for study), the word is used to denote the study of biological rhythms. For more details, see Foster et al. 2004. 5 H.G. Wells (1906) ‘The So-called Science of Sociology’, Sociological Papers 3:367. cited in Levitas 2013, 65. 6 In Sargent, Utopianism, p. 114. See Zygmunt Bauman, Society Under Siege (Cambridge: John Wiley, 2002). 7 For more details on the approach of ‘future thinking’ in the context of design education, see: Martyn Evans and Simon Sommerville, ‘Educating the future: Embedding futures thinking in the design curriculum’, DS 38: Proceedings of E&DPE 2006, The 8th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Salzburg, Austria, 2006. Martyn Evans, (2004) ‘A Design Approach to Trends and Forecasting.’ Future Ground: Design Research Society International Conference, Melbourne, Australia, 2004. 8 Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. (1913–27), trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, (Philadelphia, PA: Modern Library, 2004). 9 Student, Uchronia Questionnaire, 8 September 2015. 10 Student, Uchronia Questionnaire, 30 August 2016. 11 Student, Uchronia Questionnaire, 1 September 2016. 12 Manifesto, Student Group Two, 3 November 2014. 13 Student, Uchronia Questionnaire, 1 September 2016. 14 Joris Karl Huysmans, Against Nature (Los Angeles, ca: Green Integer, 1999).

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15 The psychiatrist Tom Wehr suggests that the natural sleep of human beings shows a biphasic pattern, in contrast to the monophasic pattern today’s society so strongly believes in. In one of his studies, electric light, or rather a lack of it, was the focus of an experiment conducted in 1990. He asked volunteers to live their regular lives, only without modern light sources. In the winter months, when the experiment was carried out, the participants’ daily routine was limited to the daylight hours. As in the premodern era, the twelve or more hours of darkness were no longer perceived as an ‘active’ time frame. After recovering from a chronic sleep depth in the first month, subjects slept an average of eight hours a night, separated in to two segments (biphasic sleep). It would seem that the homeorhythmic pattern of sleep has been overwritten by the societal concept of monophasic sleep, probably to fit better into an efficiency-driven world. See Thomas A. Wehr, ‘In Short Photoperiods, Human Sleep is Biphasic’, Journal of Sleep Research, ii, 1 (1992), 103–107. Buckminster Fuller carried this idea even further and followed the polyphasic sleep pattern Überman: 20 minutes sleep every four hours.The variation in sleep patterns are listed on the website of the Polyphasic Society, Sleep Schedule Overviews [accessed 26 January 2018]. 16–25 Student, Uchronia Questionnaires between 7 November 2014 and 1 November 2016. 26 Elias 1997, 3.

Bibliography and References: Arendt, Hannah (1998). The Human Condition, 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Bauman, Zygmunt (2002). Society Under Siege. Cambridge: John Wiley. BBC (1999). ‘Utopia, in our Time’, BBC Radio 4. [accessed 28 October 2017]. Bryson, Valerie (2007). Gender and the Politics of Time: Feminist Theory and Contemporary Debates. Bristol: Policy Press, United Kingdom. Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: MIT Press. Elias, Norbert (1993). Time: An Essay. Oxford: Blackwell Publisher. Evans, Martyn, and Simon Sommerville (2006). ‘Educating the Future: Embedding Futures Thinking in the Design Curriculum’. DS 38: Proceedings of E&DPE 2006, The 8th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Salzburg, Austria. Han, Byung-Chul (2015). The Burnout Society. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Han, Byung-Chul (2009). Duft der Zeit. Bielefeld: Transcript. Kreitzman, Leon, and Russell G. Foster (2004). Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks Which Control Every Living Thing. London: Profile Books. Laurel, Brenda (ed.) (2003). Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levitas, Ruth (2013). Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Levitas, Ruth (1990). The Concept of Utopia. NY: Syracuse University Press. More, Thomas (2010). Utopia (1516). Milton Keynes: Simon & Brown. Nowotny, Helga (1996). Time: The Modern and Postmodern Experience. Cambridge: Polity Press. Renouvier, Charles (1876). Uchronie (L’Utopie dans l’histoire), esquisse historique apocryphe du développement de la civilisation européenne tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel qu’il aurait pu être. Paris: Libraire Germer Bailliére. Rifkin, Jeremy (1989). Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rosa, Hartmut (2013). Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Rosa, Hartmut, and William E. Scheuerman, (eds.) (2010). High-speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Sargent, Lyman Tower (2010). Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Uchronia.net, Uchronia: Introduction (1991), [accessed 28 October 2017]. Wajcman, Judy (2015). Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Weis, Kurt (1995). Was ist Zeit? [1], Zeit und Verantwortung in Wissenschaft, Technik und Religion. München: Akademischer Verlag.

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PERFORMATIVE DYNAMICS IN DESIGNERLY ECONOMICS Kakee Scott

Working as designers and design researchers, we participate in circumstances of economic flux, accepting or resisting economic ideas, models and systems of organisation that come before us, in a dialogue of practice with the changes happening around us. We may feel uncertain about how to interpret these dynamics or determine what might be appropriate or ethical moves to make in response. The standards of practice we adopt and adapt in our work are often framed according to what kinds of systems of economic organisation are persistent or emergent in this context – from the industrial designer creating products for mass production and consumption, to the interaction designer helping a tech firm monetise social media platforms, or the speculative designer creating artifacts to provoke critical dialogue on the potential trajectories of emergent technologies. As we question our own implication, we may seek out resources to help us understand how we contribute to these dynamics or find new directions for practice, like Guy Julier’s recent book (2017), or maybe Jane Jacobs, Victor Papanek, Tony Fry, Ezio Manzini, John Thackara, and other familiar authors. We may become curious about alternative economic notions, models, principles, or systems of peer to peer, sharing, distributed networks, cooperativism, solidarity, commons, closed-loop, steady-state, decarbonisation, or de-growth, to name a few. If we try to incorporate such alternatives into our work, we may struggle with what it means for how we do our work. Such a path of curiosity, which reflects experiences that many peers have likely shared, led me into doctoral research exploring what it can mean to design for alternative economic practices. My research extended this path from these important questions about the economic contexts, contributions, and consequences of professional and disciplinary design, toward a concern for how acts of design are integral to how economies come to be. This includes not only consideration for the design of economic models and mechanisms by professional economists (Roth 2002), but also design acts in the broadest sense – whether ‘diffuse’, ‘non-expert’ (Manzini 2015) or ‘non-intentional’ (Brandes et al. 2009). It means recognising the significance of many implicit processes of creation, imagination, materialisation, improvisation, replication, and iteration, in giving shape to how ‘the economy’ is configured and constituted through a wide range of everyday practices. In this paper, I am sharing my own efforts to illuminate such implicit processes of design in economic practices, in order to inform efforts for alternative economic practice.

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1 Collaborative economic futuring exercise at museum festival site

My practice-based, design-led research projects from the past several years of doctoral studies have foregrounded economic practices as an explicit concern and medium for design. To support reflection on these processes and to help define ‘alternative economic practices’, I have drawn from literature on economic performativity as a resource for interpreting economic practices as ways of making the world into economies, as well as sharing insights from contextual research into ‘new economics’ as a heterogeneous field of alternative economic practice. These three research efforts have combined as a way of scoping the possibilities for what I am proposing as designerly economics, deliberate practices of strategic design configured for the purpose of enabling alternative economic practices. In this paper, I am sharing some recent work to reflect synthetically across these projects, using an exercise of diagrammatic sketching as a way to bring attention to and engender a sensibility for the performative dynamics underlying the planning and unfolding of specific projects. To demonstrate this, I will review a sample project, a collaborative economic futuring exercise involving design students and attendees at a museum festival (Fig. 1) in speculating on future clothing economies. Some additional brief examples will be shared to give a sense for the reflective approach more generally. Because this recent reflection effort comes as a culmination of prior research, I will use the first half of the paper to give a brief overview of some insights that have

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been important in reaching this point. I begin by giving a brief summary of my contextual research to highlight a range of strategic design challenges shared by many ‘new economics’ practitioners. This is followed by a discussion on economic performativity literature and an introduction to the concept of designerly economics. What I hope to offer from this cumulative review and demonstration of the sketching exercise is some provisional groundwork, or clues, about what designerly economics could entail.

Strategic Design Challenges for New Economics Since 2012, I have engaged as a participant within networks of alternative economic practice, as contextual research to gain practical knowledge and identify areas of potential application for design approaches, particularly strategic design. I focused on the practitioners of many stripes, largely in North American and Western European contexts, who sometimes associate under the mantle of ‘new economics’. This includes entrepreneurs, non-profit organisations, scholars, journalists, policy makers, artists, hobbyists, and others who have been working to enact and make sense of a range of alternative economic models, from conceptualisation to application (Simms and Boyle 2009). A broad spectrum of topics and alternative models are covered across this field and there is often a pluralist sentiment that all alternatives should be considered in concert and combination. Some recent and recurring issues include: worker-owned cooperatives; sharing economies; blockchain; digital labour; platforms, precarity, and the gig economy; localisation and de-industrialisation. What these practitioners seem to share, though not universally, is a sense that mainstream economic models – often identified as neo-liberalism as informed by neo-classical and Keynesian approaches in the discipline of economics – have failed to support ecological sustainability and social equity, as well as failing according concerns central to these models, like efficiency and growth. In my experiences with these networks, design and design research have not been well represented, as practitioners or topics – even the word ‘design’ is rarely invoked explicitly. While material and organisational configurations indicate design activities to produce visual communications, technologies, and services, the rare occasions when I heard ‘design’ spoken in relation to economic concepts and practices suggested an understanding of design as master planning for future economic systems generated by a limited set of experts. In contrast, the discipline of design incorporates methodological orientations toward iterative, collective, emergent, or evolutionary processes across many practices, as exemplified in the growth of sub-disciplines and practices like social innovation, social design, transdisciplinary design, participatory design, co-design, and co-creation, among others.

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More commonly, these practitioners employed research practices predominantly derived from evidence-based, descriptive methodologies of traditional disciplinary economics and other social sciences. Though this was my general experience, there were exceptions, including a number of practitioners applying forms of action research derived from the diverse and community economies approaches discussed in the next section (Gibson-Graham 2008; Roelvink et al. 2015). This focus on presenting evidence seemed to require alternative economic practices to present themselves as grounded and viable in relation to current conditions and familiar means of articulation, thus tended to favour or affirm established practices, configurations, conceptualisations, and incremental change over potential practices, speculative relations, unarticulated notions, and radical change. In looking for potential contributions for design, I noticed a number of strategic challenges articulated by various ‘new economics’ practitioners that seemed to suggest potential areas of application for design approaches to support re-directive, future-oriented aspirations, and experimentations. Over time, I developed a collection of these challenges as an initial set of indicators for what a strategic design for new economics might entail. Most commonly, these challenges seemed to arise from the co-occurrence in practice of intersecting and often contradictory or incompatible logics – between ‘old’, or ‘legacy’, and ‘new’ economic models – as well as from reconciling an ambition for diversity and pluralism with a drive for consensus to promote collective momentum and relevance. Other specific challenges, which will be elaborated in my forthcoming dissertation include: working in formats yet to be accounted for in policies and laws; struggling with the limitations of idealism or primitivism; enduring and nascent power dynamics; a need for longitudinal stewardship of practices and communities through processes of change and development; insufficient capacities for recruitment and messaging; or threats of corruption and co-optation by ‘old’ economy institutions, tendencies, models and values. These challenges echo many of the central challenges of design, as addressed in longstanding and contemporary discourse in the discipline, such as: issues of participation and inclusion; sequencing modes of convergence and divergence; balancing between potential futures and current conditions; addressing diversity vis-à-vis standardisation; finding strategies for working in complex systems; and staging longitudinal iterative development. While I saw these conditions as indicating opportunities for bringing designerly approaches and sensibilities to this domain, it was not obvious where, how and even if it might work to transfer and translate some of the design practices that have been developing in strategic design, co-design, and other emergent design domains. In some early efforts to discuss design or host design activities, I encountered a mix of curiosity, enthusiasm, distrust, and scepticism from researchers working with more conventional social science methods, which is certainly not an uncommon experience for interdisciplinary encounters. In searching for a way to articulate the relevance of design, I found the literature on economic performativity

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as a useful resource for conceptualisations of economic practice that bring attention to the implicit processes of design that I saw at play, although rarely if ever do these authors use the word ‘design’ in this way.

Economic Performativity, Alter-economisation and Co-performutation Scholars of economic performativity (Callon 1998; MacKenzie et al. 2007) have developed studies of economic activities taking anti-essentialist positions to counteract what is seen as a naturalistic style in economics, where the economy is treated as if it were an independent system to be observed, traced, and analysed by scientists who stand outside of the action. This scholarship illustrates economies rather as emergent entanglements of practice across collectives – or, to borrow terms from Barad, ‘intra-agential’, ‘intra-active’ (2007), or Haraway, ‘sympoeisis’, the making of worlds together (2016, 33). In this treatment, economics comes to be regarded as networks of ‘economisation’ practices, both in the discipline and ‘in the wild’, that shape the world into economies (Çalış kan and Callon 2009). Translating this perspective into design-oriented language, we can describe economics as a massive, ongoing co-creation effort involving a multiplicity of diverse co-designers, passive and active, human and non-human. Economic practices are dispersed acts of economisation, complex acts of coordination and interpretation as performances of ‘the economy’, that can be identified equally in the text of an economist as in the interactions between a farmer and soil, in the games of children on a playground or the spread of contagions between humans and other species. In this version of ‘economics at large’ (Callon 2007, 331) economic meanings are taken up and shaped within the ordinary activities that make up the conditions that formalised economic frameworks attempt to model. From this, the notion of economic practice encompasses all acts of economisation, intentional or accidental, ordinary or disciplinary. Therefore, alternative economic practices are any efforts across this field of economic practice to institute versions of ‘the economy’ – or ‘economies’ – that are seen by the actors as new, different or alternative, in relation to some reference point. These intentions play out within immediate actions as well as the economisation effects these interventions engender. We might then call this alter-economisation. Economic performativity scholars develop valuable insights around the ontological politics of practice, like much of the extended community attached to the concept of Actor Network Theory (ANT). Scholarly practices of description or measurement are treated as sense-making practices, ‘agential cuts’ (Barad 2007), which demarcate boundaries of knowledge territories and develop devices, like concepts, models, and formulas, that can travel into use through imitation across networks

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of practice (Lury and Wakeford 2012, 8). It is useful to take a moment to invoke the economic notion of the commons. If we see scholarship as producing sense-making devices for collective use, and economies as shared systems of coordination, we can see that economic scholarship acts to enclose, or territorialise, the practices of specification that undergird practices of coordination in economies. A recurring refrain among some more irreverent economists is to say that economics is ‘“organized common sense”’ or ‘“95 per cent of economics is common sense made complicated”’ (Sargent and Chang, quoted in Rodrik 2015, 147). Adapting from this, we might call it ‘the making of common sense’. Certainly, the foundations of economics arose out of particular geographic, cultural, and temporal contexts, so there is good reason to question how generalisable economists can claim this common sense to be in terms of origin. In terms of application, it is precisely the diffusion into common practice that gives traction and mobility to economic sense-making devices. Another way to put this is to apply, as a metaphor, a version of the commons that has been popularised among IT-focused designers – to treat economies as open-source operating systems. Economic notions spread, or diffuse, into practice by virtue of their applicability and flexibility to perform as sense-making devices and take new forms in many contexts. These are not straight adoptions or replications, but always adaptations in practice. Although all participants, in effect, modify the open-source code in each adaptive practice, economists are regarded to have expertise as coders in this system. Like software engineers, economists respond to observed adaptations with new interpretations and devices, or code, to feed back into the performative commons of the economy. Every practice that derives in part from these sense-making devices continues chains of economisation that both foster adaptation across new practices and generate integrations of practice that can discourage potential alternatives devices and practices from taking hold. Like technologies are described in literature on socio-technical systems (Schot and Geels 2007), economic notions build into patterns of stability that appear as dominant regimes with systemic effects like reinforcing loops and path dependencies, while niche notions and practices fumble in the margins. If performativity scholars argue that scholarship is performative, how does this inform their own ways of doing scholarship? Due perhaps to disciplinary conventions in the social sciences, many economic performativity scholars still bank upon descriptive and interpretive approaches for studying how other peoples’ practices are performative. Some explicit calls and efforts have been made among these scholars for developing forms of research that account for and appreciate researchers’ own participation in economic practices through reflexive and interventionist forms of scholarly engagement. Most recognised is the research community applying ‘diverse economies’ and ‘community economics’ frameworks which have grown out of the strains of action research put forward by the research partnership of JK Gibson-Graham and their colleagues (Gibson-Graham 2008; Roelvink et al. 2015).

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Working from their position and capacities in academia, particularly disciplines of geography and other social sciences, these researchers make intentional and explicit interventions into the systems that they study in ways that push the limits of what is allowed or considered scholarship in these disciplines. This includes a range of performances and devices, including conceptual framings, verbalisations, texts, speculative thought experiments, mappings, and field guides, among others. A core strategy in diverse economies approaches is diffraction, a demonstration and generation of diversity where dominant representations have previously homogenised understanding. In particular, capitalism is treated as a partial story that dominates economics, but only accounts for a small set of concerns while neglecting, deemphasising and marginalising the greater portion of diverse life experiences that are nonetheless clearly implicated in and affected by the working of economies. If diffraction is a core strategy, what are the complementary strategies, and the discrete local tactics and dynamics that support these strategies in implementation? In this question, there is a potential for mutual learning in bringing design together with such intervention-oriented performativity scholarship and other practices of alternative or ‘new economics’. If we – as scholars, designers, or otherwise – are interested to have effects on economic practices, it is important to extend the effort to assert that we are implicated in practices of economisation, toward examining both how this happens and how else it could happen. This is the basis of my proposal for designerly economics.

Designerly Economics The discipline and orientation of design offers fertile ground for performative forms of inquiry (Ehn 2012). Interventionist, generative, speculative, constructive, and performative modes of inquiry are baked into the discipline of design, in its methodological and theoretical foundations. Yet, like many proponents for expanding the discipline of design into new domains beyond the economically prescribed roles of established design professions, I see a promising scope of possibility for building upon these foundations to develop new modes and practices of inquiry. How might working from a designerly orientation bring broader, deeper and more subtle attention to these kinds of methodological factors? My doctoral work includes proposing the concept of designerly economics, both descriptively to make sense of the interventionist, generative, speculative, constructive, and performative qualities of economic practices, and to invoke the potential for developing a domain of strategic design practice that deliberately works from this orientation. This brings a focus on design methodologies attending to processes of co-creation together with an explicit treatment of economic models, frames, and notions not as constraints or contextual factors, but as variables and media of design practice.

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The notions of ‘performation’ and ‘co-performation’ have been put forward by economic performativity scholars to indicate that economic performativity is as much about performance as it is about formation – the emergent and collective bringing forth and shaping of economic worlds (Callon 2007). I find it useful to continue this wordplay with a derivative notion, co-performutation, to accentuate the many dynamic ways in which economic ideas and practices undergo mutation – developmental transformations across time and space. Economic models gain traction as much by adapting to and with diverse circumstances as by imposing order upon those circumstances. This idea is not excluded from the notion of performation, but deserves emphasis in designerly economics. A designerly economics could bring to the fore the dynamics of co-performutation, exploring ontological politics from the perspective of working within the dynamics of practice. This could enable forms of inquiry not only to interpret and reflect upon these dynamics, but also to devise strategies to manoeuver within them, for the purpose of supporting processes of alter-economisation. In this next section, I present a sampling of my practice-based research that begins to illustrate this proposition for what designerly economics could entail.

Scoping Through Prototyping Beginning in 2012, I have organised my doctoral studies to explore alternative economic practices through design, using a practice-based, design-led approach of iteratively developing and hosting a range of collaborative design engagements and projects. These have taken a range of forms and scales, including a number of workshops and pedagogical exercises, a gallery exhibit, and a longitudinal development and experimentation project derived from a living lab approach, which includes a collaborative economic futuring exercise featured in this paper. This applies the designerly approach of prototyping, in which rough models are developed and put into practice, as a means of scoping a zone of possibility, replacing conventions of hypothesising with processes of generative, performative questioning. These models of practice act as provisional answers to partial or even unarticulated questions about what could be possible, and through experimentation, open processes of inquiry to unexpected concerns, possibilities, and dynamics. In addition to physical tools or props, these prototypes include conceptual models, texts, procedural plans and open choreographies of interactive experience for different kinds of events, with various contexts and participants. While many of these projects remain open to development into new stages, iterations and redirections, the final effort of my doctoral studies has been to reflect synthetically on my experiences in these projects together with what I have learned from new economics practitioners and the theoretical frames of economic per-

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formativity. What has emerged in this intersection is a range of parameters that appear to be relevant across many of the situations I have encountered through my research. Remaining provisional and open to adaptation, these parameters are also presented as prototypes, flexible devices of different forms that can be transported, reinterpreted and adapted to new contexts to inform and co-perform future altereconomisation efforts. These include conceptual models, visualisations, exercises, and explanatory texts that, taken together, comprise a loose framework for reflective and strategic practice. These provide some basic and some more elaborate means for reflecting on the situations and enactments of projects, and on strategic orientations and modalities of practice that have been and could be applied in these projects. I hope to continue developing these into a next stage of research and to circulate this framework among alternative economic practitioners for their adaptations. For this paper, I am sharing only one component, which is the most recent, abstract, unordered, open-ended and flexible part of the framework – while other parts are more developed, structured, and coherent. The motivation to share this component as an idea in development is in considering potential performative effects this paper could have (Olander 2016), as a provisional representation, a sketch, that invites curiosity from others while still leaving open possibilities for development. What I am presenting here is meant to be a gesture in broad strokes to propose what a sensibility toward co-performutation in practice might entail, an indication for what could develop into a more deliberate approach to working within these dynamics, but not a prescription for practice. This shares an approach with how Anne-Marie Mol (2010) represents ANT as a sensibility that engenders carefully performative modes of interrogative inquiry while leaving room for generative possibilities.

Reflecting Upon Co-performutation in Practice The component I am sharing is an exercise in the form of diagrammatic sketches that I have been using to reflect on the various engagements and projects from my past several years of doctoral studies. These sketches are devices for considering how the unfolding of each event brought forth a complex mix of performative qualities, which I am provisionally calling ‘modes’. With these sketches, I attempt to arrange these modes into sequences, stages, sets, and dynamics, including any modes that were planned intentionally or that appeared to have emerged in how events unfolded. To demonstrate this, I am sharing a diagrammatic sketch for a sample project, together with an explanation and images of the events the diagram attempts to track. I will also briefly share some quick diagrammatic sketches for other projects as well.

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The samples are excerpts from within larger projects involving a number of components over several months, building on prior projects and extending into subsequent developments, while intersecting networks of many practices and chains of economisation. Each project was delimited by a set of particular contexts and processes, included some general strategies for engaging participants in practices of alter-economisation, and developed through discrete tactics in activities tailored to the circumstances. Innumerable variables were presented by the differences of each site, each component, each participant, each interaction and each choice made in the process, among other factors, leading to many unique experiential pathways. While it is possible and useful to pay attention and give significance to many variables, what I am highlighting in the diagrammatic sketch deliberately omits many standard variables of who, what, when, where, why, though I will give some background on these in the summaries. The sketched diagram isolates a particular version of how – interpreting activities as chains of economisation, broken into stages of co-performutative modes. This makes the primary concern of design the mutation and transport of economic notions in practice – their shaping and negotiation, or ‘mangling’, to borrow Pickering’s term (1995), through definitions, translations into application, and vice versa. There is some similarity in form with how ANT scholars have accounted for the performative processes of collectives, but I am not attempting to build on these. In this case, my focus is on examining the processes that I facilitated, and this sketch is intended to help me, and others who might join me, to open up and expand an approach of methodological exploration. Although this process is analytic, it is highly interpretive and abstract, and there is no intention to make any solid claims about any of these modes or identifiable patterns, since it is only possible to develop these post-hoc interpretations very speculatively. The contribution lies not in accuracy or consistency, but proposing a means for recognising, cultivating, exercising, and adapting this sensibility for co-performutative dynamics. As a visual representation, it is not designed to communicate a story, but hopefully conveys reflection in progress. The sample case comes out of a project that was initiated at the beginning of my doctoral studies in 2012–2013. The focus of the project was to develop a strategic design research and development process for engaging a range of participants in forming communities of experimental practice to explore and enact possibilities for future clothing practices within a scenario of post-carbon, resource-constrained conditions. Methodologically, the project was driven by an intention to demo­ cratise economic futuring by inviting non-economists to work creatively with economic ideas, to move beyond tendencies for adopting economic ideas as givens. In other words, if we are implicated in the creative process of economisation – economics as the making of economies – we should make this explicit, intentional, and democratic by developing co-design approaches attuned to how economies are co-created.

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The component in focus here is a participatory economic futuring exercise that was developed as a culmination of several months of research, interpretation and concept development work, including the contributions of several design students working within a university course on design research and sustainable practices, as well as visits from a number of external advisors. A design brief framed the larger project, the course and the futuring exercise, for students and other contributors to consider how alternative economic relationships could be imagined by recognising a wide range of skills, employed in clothing and style practices, but falling outside the conventionally economic realm of garment production – such as composition and fit, posture and movement, everyday maintenance – and then develop speculations in which these networks of skill are re-configured into alternative value chains. The futuring exercise was developed in consultation with the students, extending from the insights that emerged in the course and my prior research on alternative economic models, as a way for participants from outside the course to contribute visions for future economies. These insights were formatted into a set of prompts, including two card sets, worksheets with exercise instructions, and supplementary signage to welcome and orient participants to the project. The first card set included a set of propositions for future economies that had been developed and curated from a number of sources, and framed according to the perspectives laid out in the design brief. This includes basic introductions to notions like steadystate or distributed economies, as well as more open questions and discussions about possibilities for how ethical principles can be embedded in currencies or how peer-to-peer or human-scale commerce can be reprioritised in the face of wealth accumulation, corporate concentration, and commercial globalisation. The second card-set organised a wide range of emerging practices in clothing patterns or trends, as interpreted by the class from insights gathered in our research. These included bio-fashion, whole garment knitting, branded second-hand, wardrobe services, niche style networks, among others. The futuring exercise was first offered to external participants during a threeday museum festival at the end of the term, in two formats and three sites. Festival attendees included New York residents and visitors. The first of the two formats took the form of a participatory installation within both an off-site storefront and a street festival location, as one of many exhibitor and activity tents. The participatory installation was staged alongside an exhibit of students’ proposals, modeled as speculations for future practices, organisations, and communities, which aligned with prompts from the exercise. Participants had the flexibility to limit their visit to a few seconds or to stay for an extended time, to participate quietly alone or col­ laborate in discussion with others, and to be flexible, spontaneous, inquisitive, as suited their level of interest and available time. The second format was a workshop held in a nearby special events space, over a 90-minute facilitated series of activities for a group of about 15 participants, organised into individual, paired, and whole group activities.

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2 Preparing installation 3 Participants completing quick exercise at festival site 4 Student sharing speculative models alongside installation at festival site

The photo documentation of these events (pictured) gives some indication of how economic notions have been materialised by multiple participants and situated in these contexts. Detail of the content would speak to the particular notions, but these would invoke a different discussion than is intended here. The diagrammatic sketch (Figure 9) is an attempt to indicate something these photos do not capture – the happenings of co-performutation. This sketch shows a set of modes sequenced, grouped into nested clusters representing stages within processes that extend beyond the image edge to represent prior and further development. While this sketch is one partial interpretation and cannot cover the full range of modes that could have contributed to the co-performutation of economic notions and practices, it gives a sense for how sketching these modes can be used to deconstruct and reconsider the process over time. It should also be acknowledged that in developing and presenting this sketch using digital tools, and making it legible for publication, it has lost some of the conventional visual indicators of a sketch. I ask readers to suspend any instinct that this diagram is concretised in its digital format, and view it as a flexible form.

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5 Participant concept on display at festival site 6 Participants selecting cards at workshop site 7 Workshop worksheets and cards in use 8 Workshop poster making in process

The words I have chosen to identify modes are also worth addressing. There is a noticeable predominance of words using root verbs with the -tion suffix (e.g. ‘identification’). This was a stylistic decision to emphasise the developmental or formative results of actions, over using the bare infinitive (‘identify’) or the gerund form (‘identifying’) that can indicate momentary actions or the concepts of verbs, in isolation from effects. Though many of these words, like ‘translation’, ‘problematisation’, or ‘diffusion’, have been elaborated in ANT or studies of technology and innovation more generally, the word choice here is much more ordinary and particular to my own thought process, as I recommend for anyone else who might want to try this exercise. The upper section of the sketch outlines some of the modes involved in the development stages. These are derived from reflections upon activities in which I was centrally involved. Identification, association, selection: The students and I collected and filtered a large set of research insights on emerging clothing practices to identify examples that could be relevant to the exercise in accordance with the design brief. Formulation, curation, exemplification, categorisation: With students’ input, I

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applied processes of framing and organisation to these examples and alternative economic models from my research to generate two sets of conceived prompts. Conformation, articulation, compilation, objectification: I developed these prompts into completed artifacts – cards with titles, supportive text, and images – that could stand alone as leaflets representing ideas adhering to the concerns in the design brief. The lower section of the sketch covers the first applications of the exercise, aggregating the experience from all three sites. The darker text shows an outline of what modes were embedded in the intended process, with some variation. Transplantation, exhibition, consideration, deliberation, selection: The prompts previously developed into cards were transported to the context of the festival and arranged within the multiple sites. For the tent and store installation, we constructed a display board that would show a front title side for every card and hold cards in place against disruptions from wind. In the workshop, a matching set of cards were scattered loosely across a table with the title side up. As participants entered each space, we invited them to browse the two cardsets and select one of each as well as worksheets with instructions. Combination, projection, hybridisation: The worksheets prompted participants to consider how the propositions and emerging developments on the cards might evolve and develop into future contexts. Translation, imagination, exemplification, manifestation, articulation, visualisation: The worksheets led participants through a set of scripts and choices to generate concrete manifestations from these hybrid futures, specifically, by describing and creating a graphic illustration or story for a future business reflecting these speculative developments. In the installation format, this was a short process on a single worksheet that participants posted for other visitors to see. In the workshop, worksheets included more steps and led into poster-making and verbal presentations for other participants. The pathways marked with light grey text begin to map speculatively two alternate pathways and diversions, based on observed and imagined responses of various participants to the exercise steps and prompts. Association, validation, augmentation: Participants made selections based on their coherence with concepts they had considered or experienced previously. This appeared to be commonplace based on verbal reactions people gave to the prompts. In these cases, participation served as an exercise in reinforcement or amplification of previously encountered notions. Friction, minimisation, negation, destabilisation, problematisation, reconciliation: In other cases, the exercise might have provoked resistance and tension from participants who struggled with or rejected the notions they encountered. These two alternate clusters represent contrasting but potentially intersecting pathways. In both cases, routes are included to represent instances when participants departed before completing the exercise or reconsidered the options. In all cases, some residue of their experience of the exercise or the various notions is assumed to have circulated and mutated across practices in other contexts, to some degree. This effort for diagrammatic sketching can only hint at and vaguely imagine these dynamics;

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clothing practices research

alternative economics research

categorisation

identification

curation

association

conformation articulation

formulation

compilation

selection

exemplification

objectification

development of prompts

transplantation exhibition

trivialisation friction

consideration

unknown contexts

invalidation

deliberation

destabilisation problematisation

selection unknown contexts

combination projection hybridisation

association validation

augmentation

reconciliation

imagination exemplification

translation

diffusion

future research and exercises

articulation

manifestation visualisation

participatory exercise

9 Diagrammatic sketch for collaborative economic futuring exercise, aggregating experience from three sites and formats

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while it has been useful to consider performative dynamics around a specific point of intervention, it leaves open questions of how to account for the performative, residual effects circulating beyond the boundaries specified in the sketch (Olander 2016). There is nothing definitive here. I have undertaken this sketching effort while revisiting this project years later, and many such sketches could be created – if I invited participants from that time to share their interpretations, if I was to revisit the project at another time with another perspective, if I was to shift focus to different aspects of the exercise, or modify the granularity and scope of the sketch. I have described a range of variables – formats, contexts, prompts, participants, and weather. All of these have changed as the project has continued and developed into different iterative forms in the years since. Variants and expansions on this same basic process have been applied in five more contexts with their own contingencies, producing what might be seen as a data set of 96 different documented participant contributions. Many conventional empirical questions can be posed to this data set. What prompts were the most popular? Did the concepts produced by contributors present any patterns? How did format and context influence outcomes? While these questions might be useful to ask for developing the approach, I am not primarily or even much interested in treating these applications as controlled experiments to test how particular variables might present causal relations. I am less interested in how to steer participants onto particular pathways than in how to foster and manoeuver within the multiplicity of modes and pathways implicated in alter-economisation. The goal is to grow and diversify ways of enacting alternative economic methodologies and, by attending to the co-performutative dynamics of a wide range of processes of alter-economisation, to inform future efforts. A great deal of interpretation and speculation is still necessary to support the divergent quality of this goal, and temptations to evidence factual claims could result in premature convergence. For this reason, I keep this approach in its sketchy form, motivated by a continued curiosity instead of reaching for confidence. Certainly, while this analytic abstraction deconstructs stages of a process in terms of modes of economisation that might normally be ignored, it also orders complex and convoluted dynamics into more simplified representations. Each effort can change, expand, and deepen indefinitely with continue reflection. What is valuable in these diagrams is the process of reflection and interrogation that is engendered in their production, and the sensibility that arises from this exercise, far more than the visualised outcomes as representations (Yee 2017, 160). To offer some additional examples of this effort, I am sharing some early, quick diagrammatic sketches in progress for several other projects, in Figures 10– 12, though with very limited specification of the projects. Figure 13 shows an inventory of modes used across these applications, which I am beginning to arrange into affinity clusters to consider commonalities and variants. These are included here to indicate some of the flexibility and range of detail that I am applying at this early

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compilation categorisation

fragmentation perturbation

diffraction

selection

variation

transplantation

adaptation

translation

formulation

execution

formulation

translation

articulation 10 Sketch in process: a pedagogical exercise introducing diverse alternative economic models in relation to design

abstraction

spatialisation distinction negotiation

identification association selection

contestation

differentiation

11 Sketch in process: co-production of an exhibit piece about the commons with undergraduate design management students

deliberation adaptation hybridisation synthesis combination variation fragmentation compilation appropriation selection association curation identification categorisation rationalisation explication speculation proposition formulation articulation specification definition improvisation

explication illustration 12 Sketch in process: a strategic design exercise on developing urban commons

disintegration disruption perturbation friction agitation obfuscation fracturing deconstruction destabilisation problematisation rejection contestation association reconciliation exemplification improvisation execution integration conformation patternisation conglomeration manifestation validation abstraction

differentiation diffraction wildering queering diversification distinction cultivation incubation facilitation maintenance stewardship restriction isolation minimisation negation projection dislocation translation transplantation circulation objectification spatialisation illustration formulation

13 Affinity clusters: commonalities and variants in co-performutative modes

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stage and I expect this approach to evolve, perhaps dramatically. I have also begun inviting others working in alternative economic practices of different kinds to apply this open approach, to bring forward a range of interpretations and applications. Design-led, practice-based research often endeavours to validate makings as findings, while ANT research often endeavours to demonstrate that findings are always makings. Working at this intersection, I am concluding this paper with makings as findings in the making. Sharing these sketches in development, I mean to call attention to the co-performutative dynamics of economic practices in which processes of design are distributed across the many ordinary moments and activities that constitute economies. By focusing on cases of deliberate intervention, I have sought to emphasise the potential of taking a designerly approach which aligns methodology, or process, with an attention to emergent dynamics. Along with other learning from my doctoral research, these sketches serve as provisional groundwork for developing designerly economics, to reflect upon, interpret, give language to, and inform strategic design for alternative economic practices.

References Barad, Karen (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. Brandes, Uta, Sonja Stih, and Miriam Wender (2009). Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things. Basel: Birkhäuser. Çalışkan, Koray, and Michel Callon (2009). ‘Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization’. Economy and Society 38, No. 3, 369–398. Callon, Michel (ed.) (1998). Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell. Callon, Michel (2007). ‘What Does It Mean to Say That Economics Is Performative?’ In Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa and Lucia Siu (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 331–357. Ehn, Pelle (2012). ‘Returning the challenge: Designerly ways of doing ANT’. Abstract for paper presented at the 4S and EASST Annual Meeting, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark, 17–20 October. Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). ‘Diverse economies: performative practices for “other worlds”’. Progress in Human Geography 32, No. 5, 613–632. Haraway, Donna J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Julier, Guy. 2017. Economies of Design. London: Sage. Lury, Celia, and Nina Wakeford (eds.) (2012). Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. London: Routledge. MacKenzie, Donald, Fabian Muniesa and Lucia Siu (eds.) (2007). Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Manzini, Ezio (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. Translated by Rachel Coad. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mol, Annemarie (2010). ‘Actor-Network Theory: sensitive terms and enduring tensions’. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychology. Special issue, 50, 253–269. Olander, Sissel (2016). ‘Texts as events – or how to account for descriptions as intervention’. STS Encounters 8, No. 1. Pickering, Andrew (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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Rodrik, Dani (2015). Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Roelvink, Gerda, Kevin St. Martin, and J. K. Gibson-Graham (eds.) (2015). Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Roth, Alvin E. (2002). ‘The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics’. Econometrica 70, No. 4 (July), 1341–1378. Schot, Johan, and Frank W. Geels (2007). ‘Niches in evolutionary theories of technical change: A critical survey of the literature’. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 17, No 5, (October), 605–622. Simms, Andrew, and David Boyle (2009). The New Economics: A Bigger Picture. New York: Earthscan. Yee, Joyce (2017). ‘The Researchly Designer / The Designerly Researcher’. In Practice-based Design Research, edited by Laurene Vaughan. London: Bloomsbury.

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CULTURAL STEREOTYPES IN LETTER FORMS IN PUBLIC SPACE Irmi Wachendorff

Introduction Typographic signs in public space can be regarded as visual acts and expressions of cultural knowledge. The letter forms of written text differ from the verbalised text content and contain independent knowledge resources. The visible information of materialised text – typography – is not only important for the everyday person in order to orientate her- or himself in social situations and to understand communicative interactions, but it also serves as valuable social science data. The objective of my ongoing doctoral research is to analyse the contribution of multilingual and multi-scriptural typography in public spaces to acts of identity creation, social belonging and social recognition. Lettering in the urban environment (by laypeople and professionals alike) is analysed as an activity of communicative construction of social realities. The research draws from the academic fields of typography, linguistics, and sociology. It is part of an interdisciplinary research project that investigates the visual multilingualism of the Ruhr area, Germany. Visual multilingualism is apparent in all forms of text in public space ranging from traffic signs to commercial displays and graffiti tags. The particular focus of this paper is on how cultural stereotypes are represented through typography, either by letter forms mimicking writing tools from different script systems or by using scripts that were particularly popular at certain times and places. The conceptual framework of this paper is, on the one hand, based on the notion of culture as coined by Herder and discussed in relation to approaches by W. Welsch, G. Hauck, W. Whitmann, M. de Montaigne, and E. W. Said. On the other hand, stereotype as a sociological term is presented on the basis of work by W. Lipp­ mann, R. Steel, F. W. Dröge, T. Petersen, and C. Schwender. Furthermore, the concepts of ethnic typography by P. Shaw and national typography by J. F. Schopp are discussed. Evaluated empirical data from a corpus of 25,500 photos of vernacular typography from four cities in a tagged geo-referenced database are part of the presented state of the research. The paper presents the results of a typographic Stroop-test on culturally connoted restaurant typography in the Ruhr area (developed on the basis of the original test by J. R. Stroop in 1935). The paper follows up on the notion of P. Shaw that ‘ethnic type[s] […] are shortcuts, visual mnemonic devices’ (Shaw 2008, 109) and poses the questions whether

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these fonts work in referencing regional affiliation, whether perceivers of these fonts decide on the ethnic reference through the shapes of the letters or through the word content and whether perceivers are faster to determine an ethnic reference if ethnically stereotypical fonts are applied.

Research Background – The Signs of the Metropolises Research Project The research project Signs of the Metropolises investigates the visual multilingualism of the Ruhr area. Visual multilingualism is apparent in all forms of non-moving text in public space ranging from traffic signs, commercial displays, advertising billboards to graffiti tags and stickers. The structure of the project is multidisciplinary. There are collaborating researchers from the academic fields of linguistics, sociology, urbanism, integration sciences, and design studies.1 One central aspect of the multi-method approach is the evaluation of the role multiple languages play for acts of identity creation, multi-culturalism, social belonging, and social recognition.2

The Data A corpus of 25,500 photos has been generated from four cities (Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, and Dortmund) in the Ruhr area. Eight urban districts (two in each city) have been selected for being a combination of residential and commercial areas (Ziegler 2013, 4). In each of the districts, every single text item visible along one street has been photographed individually, geo-referenced and tagged in a database.3 All 25,500 photos have been tagged by the following categories: location, languages, information management (which part of a multilingual text is translated), text and image combinations, types of discourses (commercial, transgressive, regulatory, infrastructural, commemorative and artistic), type of institution (restaurant, shop, party, etc.), size of the sign, material (sticker, plate, signpost, printed, painted, embossed, engraved) and typography (type style).4

Location, Languages and Scripts The Ruhr is a culturally diverse area and part of the federal state of North RhineWestphalia. It is the biggest locality of labour migration in Germany, having experienced three major migration phases from 1850 until today.5 In our data base generated between 2012 und 2013 we found 52 different languages6 in 13 different script systems7.

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Theoretical Conceptions: Culture – a Term from Social Sciences The two Dimensions of Culture According to the philosopher Wolfgang Welsch the term culture has two dimensions: one applies to its contents and the other to its extensions. In terms of content, culture, as a collective concept, stands for all practices by which people create a life. Culture encompasses everyday routines, competences, forms of social interaction, world views, etc. The second, the extensional dimension, describes the geographical (or even national or ethnic) scope of these practices. The extensional dimension delineates the extent to which the content dimensions (practices) are reflected in groups, societies or civilisations (Welsch 2009, 39).

Culture as Closed Sphere The traditional understanding of culture, as it was coined at the end of the 18th century by Johann Gottfried Herder (1774; 1784–91), is above all to be criticised in its extensional regard.8 Herder defined culture as a monolithic closed sphere: ‘Every nation has its centre of happiness in itself like every sphere its centre of gravity’9 (Herder 1967, 44). Inwardly, the sphere model demands a reductive social homogenisation, because culture should mold the life of all people in a way by which all activities and all objects become the unmatched part of this one national culture. Moreover, it is ethnically founded and bound, because every culture should be that of one very specific group of people (Welsch 2005, 42). Outwardly, the sphere model dictates absolute demarcation, since, according to Herder’s understanding, the culture of a nation gains its specificity mainly by differing clearly from other cultures (Welsch 2009, 41). The concept of a culture as a closed sphere is inwardly radically unifying and outwardly separatist and xenophobic. There is no place for diversity in the sphere model.

The Concept of Transculturalism The sphere model does not fit onto today’s cultural landscapes, neither in terms of content nor in terms of its extensions. Cultures permeate each other and become an increasingly hybrid fabric. Cultural determinants transversely go through nations and lead to interweavements and growing commonalities – on a macro and a micro level. Wolfgang Welsch proposes the concept of transculturalism, in which the closed sphere model is replaced by one of an open meshwork (Welsch 2009, 42).10

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On a macro level, today’s cultures are characterised by external interconnectedness and internal hybrid characteristics. In global capitalism connections and interrelations are growing due to accelerating traffic and communication systems.11 Life forms no longer end at national borders.12 Transcultural developments can equally be observed at an individual micro level: More and more people have several cultural origins, have cultural patchwork identities and describe themselves as cultural hybrids and transcultural within themselves (Welsch 2009, 46).13

Culture as an Exclusion Criterion Edward Said emphasises: ‘All cultures are hybrid; none is pure; no one is identical with a “pure” nation; none consists of a homogenous tissue’ (Said 1996, 24). Nonetheless, until today (exactly in the sense of a closed monolithic sphere-like understanding of culture) the term culture is used as an argument for exclusion. ‘The concept of culture has replaced the concept of race as a central justification argument for discrimination and oppression of all kinds’ (Hauck 2006, 8). Culture is described as something substantial and unalterable while the opposite is true: culture is not natural, but made by people.

Cultural Aesthetics Wolfgang Welsch points out how much the ‘regional-specific’ is expressed by ‘decor, surface and aesthetic staging’ and that the ‘rhetoric of regional cultures is highly simulative and aesthetic’ (Welsch 2005, 49). In a transcultural world in which there is nothing ‘foreign’ anymore, because everything is accessible and visible, the question is how to set cultural references in competing economic markets. A series of items can be found in the Signs of the Metropolises data base where extensional and content-related cultural references are set in different ways. A common reference to a regional affiliation is the placement of national flags, colours, or symbols (like a cedar tree for Lebanon), the use of other geographical references such as photographs of locations and the use of ornaments. Furthermore, there is a range of examples where culture is represented solely in the typographic shapes and letter forms. One way to represent a culture is to refer to a script system, writing style, or writing tool that is (or was) prominent in a certain geographical area. Formal script characteristics (usually applied to another script system though different strategies) become stereotypical indicators of an extensional, regional, or ethnic affiliation. How these ethnical connotations and stereotypical letter constructions come into existence and operate will be explored in the following section.

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Theoretical Conceptions: Stereo/type/s – from Letterpress to Public Opinion and Back The Term Stereotype in Social Sciences Walter Lippmann was a journalist and coined the term stereotype for social sciences in his book Public Opinion in 1922.14 Lippmann, who worked in propaganda during World War I, was concerned with mass media, i.e. how public opinion could be fabricated, how images in people’s minds were created and how humans form decisions about things they have mostly no direct experience with (Steel 1997, xii). Lippmann refers to the analogy of Plato’s cave15 where the inhabitants forever see the world through a shadow or a reflection only. In this regard, it is understandable how he came to borrow the term stereotype from a fixed image and text reproduction tool in printing and started using it to describe the repetition of fixed ideas and images in people’s heads.

Cause and Functioning of Stereotypes The construction of stereotypes as defined by Lippmann is a process of reduction of the complexity of the world that would otherwise not be manageable for the individual. Stereotypes are ‘economized attention’ (Lippmann 1997, 60), ‘short-cuts’ (Lippmann 1997, 64), and generalisations, the application of known patterns onto unknown situations or persons. They are ‘an epistemological-economic defensive device against the necessary expense of a comprehensive self-made detailed experience’ (Dröge 1967, 134). Stereotyping is a highly effective way of treating phenomena not as individual incidences but classifying them according to known criteria. This classification makes them much easier to deal with, simpler to remember and accelerates decision processes (Petersen, and Schwender 2009, 10). On the upside stereotypes are highly efficient for human perception, on the downside they are not very accurate. ‘Our stereotyped world is not necessarily the world we should like it to be. It is simply the kind of world we expect it to be’ (Lipp­ mann 1997, 69). The reductive effect of stereotypes also creates blind spots: ‘For these blind spots keep away distracting images, which with their attendant emotions, might cause hesitation and infirmity of purpose. Consequently, the stereotype not only saves time in a busy life and is a defense of our position in society, but tends to preserve us from all the bewildering effects of trying to see the world steadily and see it whole’ (Lippmann 1997, 75). Stereotypes are designed to allow humans to deal with high quantities of information, because every stereotype comes with a bulk of unexpressed messages. ‘A few words must often stand for a whole succession of acts, thoughts, feelings, and

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1 Public protest orga­ nised by Chinatown Community Development Center and the Stanford Asian American Student Association outside Abercrombie & Fitch store at Fifth and Market in San Francisco, 200217

consequences’ (Lippmann 1997, 42). In the same way, every visual stereotype brings with it a plethora of connotations. The stereotype in itself is not a judgement and can be positive, neutral or negative. In prejudice, it usually manifests itself in a negative. The problem with a stereotype is that it ‘censors out much that needs to be taken into account’ (Lippmann 1997, 74). ‘Real space, real time, real numbers, real connections, real weights are lost. The perspective and the background and the dimensions of action are clipped and frozen in the stereotype’ (Lippmann 1997, 100). Petersen and Schwender allude to the spontaneous and prompt working of images as compared to the slower text perception and point towards the necessity to analyse the role images play in creating stereotypes (Petersen, and Schwender 2009, 10). In this context, the shapes and forms of letters can be seen as the image part of letters as opposed to their text part (that creates the word content by combining the letters). The question is: Are cultural stereotypes as well as ‘ethnic’ or culturally stereotypical fonts problematic? Lippmann states: ‘A great deal of confusion arises when people decline to classify themselves as we have classified them’ (Lippmann 1997, 97). The outcry and street protest that followed an Abercrombie & Fitch release of T-shirts in 2002 (Fig. 1), where typefaces played a significant role in referencing Asian culture, shows that it is not only confusion that arises but also pain, anger, public opposition, and personal offence.16

Observable Strategies to Form Cultural Stereotypes in Letter Shapes in the Ruhr Area Cultural stereotypes in letter shapes are present in the public space of the Ruhr area on transgressive stickers, movie and festival posters, sports club, restaurant and shop signs.18

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Paul Shaw defines cultural stereotypes in letter shapes as ‘“ethnic” type, lettering or type that suggests the culture of a specific ethnic or religious group’ (Shaw 2008, 109). The design community widely agrees on the fact that these shapes are culturally, ethnically, and racially insensitive and inappropriate (Helfand 2007) and come with ‘deficient aesthetics’ and ‘derogatory qualities’ (Shaw 2008, 109). It seems relevant to have a closer look at the different ways in which type is created to function as code and representation for an entire (imagined) community19. Shaw points towards different approaches for the construction of ‘visual short hand[s]’ (Shaw 2008, 109) through ethnic lettering that shall be developed into five different strategies observable in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus.

Strategy a) Letter Substitution Between Scripts One way to make a reference to another region or ethnicity is to substitute familiar characters from a foreign alphabet into the Roman alphabet (Shaw 2008, 109). This is observable in the Ruhr area in Greek restaurant lettering, where the Greek letter sigma (Σ) stands substitute for the capital Latin letter ‘E’ (Fig. 2). In the Ruhr area, we find further examples of applying the principle of substituting letters from one writing system for letters in another. In the following example (Fig. 3), Arabic individual letters like the ‫( ﻆ‬Zā) stand in for a Latin lowercase ‘b’, the final ‫( ﺎ‬Alif) for the Latin uppercase ‘L’, the Arabic ‫( ﻖ‬Qāf) for a Latin ‘g’, something that resembles somewhat the Arabic letter ‫( ﻤ‬Mīm) to a Latin letter ‘a’. The further applied Latin letters ‘i’ and ‘h’ look scriptural, but do not have an Arabic shape equivalent. They only ‘look like’ Arabic script, which is strategy b).

Strategy b) Letter Shape Resemblance Between Scripts In the shown example of the Greek restaurant (Fig. 2) one also finds the second way of creating a reference by mimicking individual characters from non-Latin writing systems and apply principles in shapes and forms to parts of Roman letters (Shaw, 2008, 109). In the Greek restaurant sign (Fig. 2) the usually round curves in the letters (C, G, R, S) are also shaped in a 45-degree angle that resembles the middle part of the sigma (Σ). A further example that shows letters with features that derive from another script system is the Wafa Orient sign (Fig. 4) where the initial capital Latin letter ‘W’, as well as the lowercase letters ‘e’ and ‘n’, with pointy line ends resemble letters and letter combinations from an Arabic script.

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2 Greek Restaurant (SMC20 image 17754)

3 Habibi Grill, Gelsenkirchen, July 2017

4 Oriental restaurant (SMC image 26602)

Strategy c) Transfer of a Particular Writing Style An additional way of creating a resemblance to another culture is to mimic a different writing style. This is realised by applying a certain aesthetic property (which is usually achieved with a specific writing tool like a brush) from one writing system and transferring it to the overall construction of letters of the other script system. This approach is very common for scripts that reference ‘Asianness’ through applying ‘curved and pointed wedge strokes’ (Shaw 2008, 110) that superficially resemble Chinese calligraphy. One might think there are only a few of these fonts – since they all look somewhat alike – but there are actually quite a lot of them.21 We find ten variations of it in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus (Fig. 5–10). Two of the ten have a looser, more scriptural stroke (Fig. 10). It is particularly noteworthy that this way of proceeding is not exclusive to an application to Roman letters, as we find a version of applying the ‘Asian’ curved and pointed wedge-shaped strokes to the Arabic script system in our data (Fig. 11). All these fonts go under the nick name of Chop Suey fonts, which Shaw declares to be quite appropriate since the dish Chop Suey is equally an American

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5–10 Chop Suey typefaces in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus (top left to bottom right: SMC images 120, 14314, 18226, 24501, 26866, 26314)

invention and ‘neither the food nor the fonts bear any real relation to true Chinese cuisine or calligraphy’ (Shaw 2008, 110).22 It might have been a famous and widely distributed poster, A Trip to Chinatown designed by William Nicholson and James Pryde in 1899 (Fig. 12), that helped the Mandarin and other so-called Chop Suey fonts to their fame (Shaw 2008, 110).23

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11 Latin and Arabic Chop Suey typefaces (SMC image 4091)

12 A Trip to China Town, William Nicholson and James Rryde, poster design, 1899

Strategy d) Aesthetic Association and Learned Connotation Through Use In the three previous strategies type designs were intended to have an ethnic connotation. This is not the case in this group. The following two scripts were not designed with the aim of referencing a specific ethnicity or region, but their forms gave way to certain region specific aesthetic associations and through repeated use throughout decades on widely spread items, such as book covers (Fig. 13–15) or movie posters (Fig. 16 and 17), viewers learned these connections and that is how the stereotypical cultural references were created.24 The example here is the typeface Neuland by Rudolf Koch from 1923 that throughout time became associated with Africa, and African-Americans (Giampietro 2004) (or possibly even the unknown ‘native & wild’ as the use on the movie poster Jurassic Park [Fig. 17] may want to suggest).

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From left to right: 13 Black Anger by Wulf Sachs, book cover design, 1937, 14 Negro Slave Songs in the United States by Miles Mark Fisher, book cover design, 1953, 15 July’s people by Nadine Gordimer, book cover design, 1981, 16 The Lion King, musical poster, Broadway NY, 1997, 17 Jurassic Park, movie poster, 1992

Neuland’s particular shapes are reported to stem from Koch’s decision to cut the letters directly into the metal without doing any preliminary sketches (Shaw 2008, 109).25 Even in the Ruhr area the typeface Neuland is present referencing African culture as can be seen here in the flyer of the restaurant Cape Town (Fig. 18) in Düsseldorf. Another example of learned connotation visible in the Ruhr area are shops and restaurants that use the font Arnold Böcklin in the context of ‘Oriental’ or Indian restaurants (Fig. 19 and 20). The decorative art nouveau floral shapes of the typeface do not resemble any Arabic or Indian script. Yet the swirly ornamental shapes might have triggered a

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18 Restaurant flyer, Cape Town, Düsseldorf, 2013

19 + 20 Indian restaurant and Turkish restaurant in the Ruhr area (SMC images 18156 and 16997)

certain ‘oriental’ aesthetic association. Another reason for this cultural reference may be that a rip-off version of the original Arnold Böcklin font under the name Arabia was included in the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite software.26

Strategy e) Historic and/or Local Reference One further way of referencing a culture, that is apparent in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus, is to use a writing or printing style that was particularly famous in a certain time and place. One example for that would be the use of black letter in Germany. According to Jürgen F. Schopp, the ‘national’ associations that a script can provoke either rely on the fact that a whole group of fonts stands stereotypically for a nation as a language and cultural community or that a nation often uses a script as a sign of a ‘national identity’ (Schopp 2011, 76).

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From left to right: 21 Infrastructural sign, Luther perish, Bochum (SMC 330), 22 Infrastructural sign, Education Certificate, Bochum (SMC 4551), 23 Commemorative sign, Dortmund (SMC 1676)

The discussion about black letter in Germany standing for Nazi-Germany, the Third Reich and neo-Nazis is a broad one (see e.g. Bollwage 2010; Koop 2012). The recurring reference on the part of type historians and linguists to the fact that the Nazi authorities forbade the use of black letter in 194127 does not lead to the fact that the associative force between black letter and Nazi Germany decreases in the slightest. This again proves that a learned connotation can go a long way and has a functioning of its own. Overall, we find 412 black letter fonts in our corpus of 25,500 items – 354 of them are in German, 85 in English, 2 in Italian, 1 in Latin and 1 in Dutch. Ten of the signs are infrastructural, like the signs of a Luther perish and an education certificate (Fig. 21 and 22), two are commemorative signs, for example referencing the construction of a building (Fig. 23), 305 are commercial and 106 transgressive signs; however, there are no black letter fonts used in regulatory and artistic signs.

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From left to right: 24 German Pharmacy Logo (SMC 10953), 25 Regional German beer brand (SMC 267), 26 Traditional German restaurant (SMC 2784)

In the 305 commercial signs, black letter is mostly apparent in the German pharmacy logo (Fig. 24) with 171 items and German beer brands (Fig. 25) apparent on all sorts of restaurant signage with 81 items. Another big group using black letter fonts are German restaurants (Fig. 26) with 15 items.28 But there are also 10 items using black letter fonts that reference other nations (or are used without a reference to Germany per se), like an English Fashion brand, Italian restaurant lettering, an Austrian traditional costume store, a Lebanese fashion store, and American Tobacco packaging. This means black letter is mostly, but not solely applied to reference ‘Germanness’ in our data. In the 106 transgressive signs found in public space using black letter most of them (38 items) are stickers supporting local soccer teams (Fig. 27). Interestingly, 8 of them explicitly use the script (black letter) to signify political opposition (to right wing nationalism). This happens with different strategies. The St. Pauli soccer team sticker (Fig. 28) shows the words ‘GEGEN RECHTS’ (against right) in the bottom line. The word RECHTS (right) being set in black letter. Word content (right) and letter forms (black letter) in this case become a cumulated synonym for fascism. The ‘Love Football Hate Germany’ sticker (Fig. 29) shows another example of black letter being used in relation to Nazi ideology by the so called Rijkaard Jugend, an amateur soccer team from the Pfalz region.29 In this case the black letter font and the word content do not become synonyms, but the letter shapes still clearly reference Nazi-ideology without having to make the point any clearer in writing. The typographic forms alone are capable of making this connection.

Writing Tool References Interestingly enough, most of these strategies rely on referencing historic or region-specific writing tools. We find the imitation of an Asian calligraphic brush strokes (Fig. 5–9). On the Greek restaurants (Fig. 2), we see shapes that have (through their diagonal angles) more resemblance to early Greek lapidary letters than a Greek

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27 Sticker supporting a local soccer team in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus (SMC images 21359), 28 Anti-fascist soccer team sticker (SMC 5830), 29 Love football hate Germany sticker (SMC 7773)

alphabet of today. In the Latin letter shapes that are supposed to have an Arabic or ‘Oriental’ connotation, there is either an Arabic calligraphic reference with pointy stroke ends and curved lines (Fig. 4) and/or the letters show a shift of the line width from the traditional Latin emphasis on the vertical line to the traditional Arabic emphasis on the horizontal line (Fig. 3). Which again has to do with a writing tool and in this case with the angle the pen is cut in.30 Lastly, the broad nip pen is very visible in the varying black letter typefaces (Fig. 24–29).

Research Question Paul Shaw notes that ‘Ethnic type […] survives for the simple reason that stereotypes, though crude, serve a commercial purpose. They are shortcuts, visual mnemonic devices’ (Shaw 2008, 109). I would like to challenge that and pose the following questions: Do these fonts actually work in referencing regional affiliation? Do perceivers of these fonts decide on the ethnic reference through the shapes of the letters or through the word content? Are they really a visual short cut: Are perceivers faster to determine an ethnic reference if ethnically stereotypical fonts are applied?

Typographic Stroop-Test – an Experiment on Urban Restaurant Lettering The posed research questions were tackled with the invention of a typographic Stroop-test. Hypothetically designed typographic artifacts where the content (restaurant names Shanghai Bar, Bayern Stube, etc.) and the formal typographic form (various regional/national/ethnical connoted fonts) are mixed up were used to determine whether recipients would capture the set references on national or cultural affiliation on the basis of the scriptural form or the text content.

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For this first test, the focus was set on the biggest group of ethnic stereotypical lettering that can be found in our data base: restaurant signage. Among the 89 German restaurants in our database, 10 (11%) use black letter typefaces. Among the 13 Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, and Mongolian) 5 (38%) use Chop Suey typefaces. Of the 4 Greek restaurants 2 (50%) use typefaces that have sigmas (Σ) substituting the Latin letter ‘E’ as well as the discussed script resemblance with angular letters as discussed in strategy b). And of the 10 ‘Oriental’ Restaurants 4 (40%) use ornamented typefaces with protruding and floral swooshes.31

Stroop-Test as Research Methodology for Typography The Stroop-test is an experimental method of cognitive psychology and was invented by John Ridley Stroop in 1935 (Bäumler 1985). It is a method for measuring the socalled individual interference tendency. In the course of the test, participants are given visually simple and conflicting information, in order to subsequently measure response times. In the classical experiment, the participants are to name the colours of displayed words. The results show that whenever these words reference colours which do not correspond to their display colour, reaction times and error numbers increase. This demonstrates the dominance of automated processes. The reaction times do slow down as test persons encounter discrepancies in given information; e.g., if the word ‘red’ is written in the colour blue, or possibly if the name of the restaurant Shanghai Bar was set in the black letter font Fette Fraktur which is more often found in lettering of traditional German pubs. The Stroop-test could therefore serve to show that typographic forms make a measurable difference in the perception of the recipients. And in case there was a significant difference in the perception of various national, cultural stereotypical fonts, this would also indicate the functioning of typographical means as a tool for social positioning.32

The Experiment Set-up The concept of the Stroop-test was applied to four of the stereotypical restaurant typefaces found in the Signs of the Metropolises corpus – each representing one regional cuisine (Fig. 30). The task for the participants was to sort the cards according to word content. A set of 48 cards was designed. Eight cards were neutral showing the restaurant’s name and an associated regional dish (Fig. 31 and 32).33 Eight cards were showing the same word content (restaurant names and dish)34 in stereotypical but non-conflicting fonts. The word content would fit the traditionally connoted ethnic stereotypical letter shapes (Fig. 33 and 34).

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30 Stroop-test card design, restaurant name cards, shape and content non-conflicting, regional connoted typefaces (left to right: Fette Fraktur LT STD, Adonais, Shanghai, ArabDances)

Figure 31 – Stroop-test card design, restaurant name cards, shape and content non-conflicting, neutral typefaces

32 Stroop-test card design, dish name cards, shape and content non-conflicting, neutral typefaces typefaces

33 Stroop-test card design, restaurant name cards, shape and content non-conflicting, regional connoted typefaces

34 Stroop-test card design, dish name cards, shape and content non-conflicting, regional connoted typefaces

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Eight cards were showing a neutral word content Speisekarte (menu) in a variety of eight stereotypical fonts (two for each region). And since the word content was not region specific, this information was also non-conflicting (Fig. 35). The second half of the 48 cards showed conflicting information – the word content would not fit the letter shapes. The restaurants’ names and dishes were each printed in non-suiting ethnic fonts like Shanghai Bar in black letter and the German dish Brezel in the so-called Shanghai font, for example (Fig. 36). The hypothesis was that if the reaction time with conflicting information would rise, this would then mean that the font form effectively plays a serious part in referencing ethnicity.

Experiment Participants and Procedure Ten participants were invited for this study. Five were men, five women in the age range 22 to 50. Six of them were students or university graduates and four were non-academics. Six had German as their first language, four were fluent in German as their second language (with first languages in Polish, Chinese, and twice Turkish). None of the participants were part of the research team or graphic design students.35 First, the participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire that verified that all participants were familiar with the word content – such as restaurant and dish names – that would be in the card stack presented to them later on. They also agreed on their hands being filmed and voices being recorded. Secondly, they were verbally given the following operating instructions: ‘We want to invite you to play a card sorting-game. You see laying out in front of you four cards that name a restaurant type: Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, and German. In the covered stack of cards before you, you find restaurant names, dish names, and one neutral word. Please turn around one card at a time, read the word and sort the card according to the word content. While doing that please feel free to verbalise your thoughts. There is no “I do not know how to sort this card”-stack. All cards must be allocated to one of the restaurants. Please take your time.’ Thirdly, the participants sorted the cards (Fig. 37). Their hands and the card stacks were filmed, which allows a precise time tracking from picking up a card (from the upside-down stack) to laying down a card (underneath one of the four regional restaurant types at choice). The film registered the allocation of cards and it gave access to the audio of the thoughts verbalised by the participants. After the test, the participants were interviewed on how they have decided to sort the conflicting cards and their overall experience. Finally, they filled out a questionnaire on their social data (age, education/profession, language proficiency, travel habits/how often per year they travel abroad, and which of the countries in question they had visited).

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35 Stroop-test card design, neutral word cards ‘Speisekarte’ (menu), shape and content non-conflicting, regional connoted typefaces

36 Stroop-test card design, 24 cards with restaurant names and dishes, shape and content conflicting, regional-connoted typefaces

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37 The experiment set-up of the typographic Stroop-test, University Campus Essen

Results The time tracking showed that it took the participants an average of 2.75 seconds to allocate the eight cards showing the regional dishes and restaurant names in the ‘neutral’ typeface Helvetica (Fig. 38, row 2). The following group of eight cards showing the same word content in stereotypical but non-conflicting typefaces (Fig. 38, row 3) took the participants an average of 2.83 seconds to allocate, that is slightly (0.08 seconds) longer. The third group of 24 cards showing conflicting information where the word content does not fit the connoted ethnic reference in the letter shapes (Fig. 38, rows 4–6) took the ten participants an average of 3.59 seconds to allocate, that is 0.84 seconds longer than the neutral information and 0.76 seconds longer than the cards where content and ethnic font combination were matching. All participants were instructed to read the text content and assign the cards to a restaurant according to the word content. Despite this very clear instruction, six out of ten participants sorted an average of five cards according to a matching stereotypical font – they, for example, put the German dish Brezel to the Chinese restaurant when it was set in the Shanghai font. Throughout the test ten participants laid down 40 cards with restaurant and dish names each, which leads to a total of 400 decisions made about allocating a card. In total 43 cards were misplaced: four of the neutral cards set in Helvetica, four with non-conflicting information and 35 showing conflicting information. The 35 ‘mistakes’ (in allocating the word content correctly) were made, because participants allocated the cards according to the regional references the shapes of the letters were implying, and not according to the word content. This indicates that the

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38 Stroop-test results overview for all 48 cards

participants have been distracted and seduced by the letter shapes, which shows that these letter shapes are indeed an effective force in guiding recipients’ attention towards an associated cultural and regional reference. A similar effect could be observed with the eight cards that had the neutral word content Speisekarte (menu) set in eight different stereotypical fonts. Five out of ten participants have matched 35 of 40 cards ‘correctly’ by the regional connotation of the letter shapes to the matching restaurant nationality. They put Speisekarte (menu), set in the black letter typeface Wilhelm Klingspor Gotis, on the stack of the German restaurant, whereas they placed the same word set in the typeface Diogenes in the stack of the Greek restaurant.36 This shows how a regional affiliation was recognised correctly in 87.5 per cent of the cases solely on the basis of the shapes of the letters.37

Conclusion This paper discussed how culture and cultural stereotypes are represented in typographic letter forms. Culture was defined as a term with two dimensions: content and everyday practices on the one hand and a geographical extension on the other.

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The historic concept of culture as a closed, monolithic, homogenised sphere was criticised and the concept of transculturalism by Welsch, an idea of an open transnational meshwork that allows hybrids between cultures (on a macro level) and within individuals (on a micro level), was presented. It was discussed in which way cultures are represented in the Signs of the Metropolises data base, and a focus was set on the big number of typefaces apparent that mimic other script systems (and, through this, cultures). In the following, the term stereotype as coined by Lippmann was defined as a process of reducing the complexity of the world, a generalisation and categorisation that is highly efficient but not very accurate. Looking at the public protest provoked by a series of Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts that used Chop Suey typefaces in 2002 to reference Asian culture, the question was raised whether ‘ethnic fonts’ are offensive. The first central research questions on how these fonts work in referencing regional affiliation was answered by the definition of five strategies as well as the observation that four of these strategies have the referencing of historic or regionspecific writing tools in common. The five different strategies of creating cultural stereotypes in typographic letter shapes were defined and exemplarily analysed on the basis of the Signs of the Metropolises data base. The applied strategies include letter substitution between scripts in Greek and Arabic restaurants, letter shape resemblance between scripts in Oriental restaurants, the transfer of a particular writing style in Asian restaurants, sports clubs, and tea packaging; moreover, aesthetic association and learned connotation through use was discussed with the example of Koch’s Neuland typeface referencing African culture, and historic and local references were debated on the example of black letter fonts in use in the Ruhr area referencing German tradition in public lettering or in anti-neo-Nazi transgressive stickers. The second central research question whether perceivers are faster to determine an ethnic reference if ethnic stereotypical fonts are applied was answered by conducting a typographic Stroop-test. Ethnic stereotypical fonts were read almost equally fast as neutral fonts (+0.08 sec), which is an impressive result since they are formally much more complex and less common, whereas conflicting information given (font and word content not matching) slowed down the recognition process drastically (+0.8 sec). This allows to conclude that the answer is yes, participants are fast to determine an ethnic reference and are confused and slowed down if the perceived ethnic stereotypical fonts do not match the culture referenced in the word content. The confusion was measurable in the time assessment but also through the observation that (although participants were instructed to assign the cards according to the word content) six out of ten participants sorted almost all cards according to a formally matching stereotypical font. A further observation was that in six individual instances, participants first sorted a card by letter shapes, secondly realised the word content, verbalised they

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had made a mistake and then corrected themselves. This shows how the visual form on such short words is perceived before the word content and how the participants have been seduced by the cultural connotations in the letter shapes. This answers the third research question, whether perceivers of culturally stereotypical fonts decide on the ethnic reference through the shapes of the letters or through the word content in order to attribute them. It also indicates that these letter shapes are indeed an effective force in guiding recipients’ attention towards an associated ethnic or regional reference. One conclusion is that the typographic Stroop-test showed that typographic forms cause an empirically measurable difference in the perception of culture for the recipients. The shorter reaction time in culturally stereotypical fonts that matched the word content indicates that they do work and are indeed visual short cuts. This outcome may not be terribly unexpected, but it does turn a tiny piece of the vast implicit knowledge of the graphic design trade into empirically proven explicit knowledge. More importantly these observations and results in the perception of culturally stereotypical fonts do indicate the functioning of typographical means as a tool for social positioning and this makes letter shapes in public space an important stakeholder in the construction of social space. Another conclusion is that some of the stereotypical typographic shapes (like the ever-same Chop Suey or Greek restaurant fonts) looked at in this paper are like a formal equivalent of the repetitive sameness of the closed homogenised sphere Herder used as a metaphor to describe a nation in the 18th century. A possible formal plurality of scriptural shapes is cut down to a narrow repetition of the same shape variations (like a least common denominator in the tiny gravity centre of a cultural sphere). Accordingly, the diversity of the forms of cultures is repelled in the same way the culturally closed sphere of the 18th century repelled everything foreign. It is a graphic designers and typographers task in today’s transcultural and transnational world to break this repetitive sameness in the representation of cultures with visible plurality. Graphic designers have the power to make things – such as cultural variation, diversity, authenticity, and individuality – visible. In my ongoing PhD research, the next step on a qualitative level is to conduct interviews with the sign producers (restaurant owners, sign makers) as well as sign perceivers on the streets (passers-by, customers) to learn more about their motives and perceptions; moreover, how they feel about their cultural representation, and whether they see type that sets cultural affiliations as a ‘short cut’ to successful business.

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1 The Research Project Signs of the Metropolises – Visual Multilingualism in the Ruhr Area at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Ruhr University Bochum is funded by the MERCATOR Foundation (GZ MERCUR: Pr-2012-0045) and runs from 8/13 to 12/17. The project is headed by Prof. Dr. Evelyn Ziegler. Co-Heads are Prof. Dr. Heinz Eickmans, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmitz, Prof. Dr. Klaus Peter Strohmeier, and Prof. Dr. Haci-Halil Uslucan. The research assistants are Dr. Ibrahim Cindark, Dr. David H. Gehne, Dr. Tirza Mühlan-Meyer, Sebastian Kurtenbach, and myself. The student assistants are Nilgün Aykut, Felicitas Clerehugh, Sebastian Opara, David Passig, Jonas Weiler, and Michael Wentker. I thank everyone involved for their great support, particularly my PhD supervisors, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmitz and Prof. Dr. Evelyn Ziegler, for their unremitting advice and the big group of student assistants who spent years to create our database. 2 I have previously written about the Signs of the Metropolises research project in Wachendorff i.p. and Wachendorff 2016. 3 There has been no restriction with regard to size, materiality, or provenance of the discrete text items. They range from an embossment of a 6 pt DIN regular on the side of a dustbin to building-high graffiti letters, and from small handwritten notices fixed with scotch tape on a local shop door to high-gloss advertising billboards of well-known international companies. 4 The tagging of the typographical aspects relates to the type styles which are used in Latin and Arabic scripts. The classification of Latin scripts is based on the DIN classification No. 16518 from 1964 (Schauer 1975) and includes the groups serif, sans-serif, slab-serif, scriptural, display/decorative, and black letter. 5 First, between 1850 and 1915, due to industrialisation, more than 500,000 workers were recruited from Silesia, Masuria, Russia, and Austria-Hungary to the Ruhr area to work in the newly founded coal mines and steel works. During the second migration phase after World War II (between 1950 and 1973) about 20 million workers from Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, and former Yugoslavia relocated to Germany. The third migration phase continues until today. Due to multiple global incidents (like the collapse of the socialist states, EU expansion, globalisation, and wars), an average of 400,000 people migrates to Germany every year (Cindark/Ziegler 2014, 1). In 2015, over one million refugees where registered in Germany, the three biggest groups thereof fleeing from countries writing in the Arabic or Persian script. 428,000 fleeing from Syria, 154,000 from Afghanistan and 121,000 from Iraq. Due to the Königsteiner Schlüssel, the biggest percentage (21%) is allotted to NRW (Asylum statistics, December 2015, German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Link: http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Meldungen/DE/2016/201610106-asylgeschaeftsstatistik-dezember.html [retrieved 8.2.16], Königsteiner Schlüssel, German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Link: https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Glossareintraege/DE/K/koenigsteiner-schluessel. html?view=renderHelp%s5BCatalogHelp%5D&nn=1363258 [retrieved 8.2.16]). 6 Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijanian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Latin, Lingala, Malaysian, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Shona, Singhalese, Slovakian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian. 7 Abugida, Arabic, Chinese (Han/CJK characters – CJK stands for characters used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages) Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese (Kanji und Kana), Korean (Hangul), Latin, Singhalese, Tamil, Thai. 8 In regard to content Herder included every form of everyday culture in his concept and did not separate ‘high culture’ and ‘lower civilisation’ (Welsch 2009, 39). 9 All quotes from non-English sources in this paper translated by Irmi Wachendorff. 10 trans (lat.): beyond. In the sense of: Transculturality goes beyond the former concept of culture. Interestingly enough Welsch does not consider the terms multiculturalism or interculturalism a true renewal of the old concept, since both are still based on the sphere model. Multiculturalism is concerned with the relations of cultures within a society. Nevertheless, the individual cultures remain clearly separated from one another and do not mix. Interculturality is concerned with relations between societies. But here, too, these cultures are still understood as closed systems like disparate islands (Welsch 2009, 43). 11 What once was the cultural content of other countries is increasingly becoming an important domestic resource – this goes for populations, goods and information (Welsch 2009, 43). The changes take place in many cultural dimensions between everyday cultural practices (like eating Ayurvedic or doing Yoga) and artistic high culture (like movies and music). Important cultural factors (such as the gender debate, an increasing ecological awareness, and the fight against climate change) go diagonally through many societies (Welsch 2009, 45).

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12 Transculturalism is nothing completely new for that matter. Historically, it was probably even the rule. Only in certain periods, cultures were depicted as ‘pure’ when it was convenient. Actually, this was rather rare and limited to comparatively short periods of time. Greek culture, for example, can hardly be understood without Egypt, Asia, Babylonia, and Phoenicia. About 40 per cent of the Greek words have a Semitic origin. In this sense, the idea of the totally closed cultural sphere is a romantic fiction (Welsch 2009, 50). 13 And this idea of inner plurality is not new either. Walt Whitman writes in the mid-nineteenth century, ‘I am large […] I contain multitudes’ (Whitman 1985, 84), and Michel de Montaigne declares in the middle of the 16th century, ‘There is nothing fully correct, unambiguous and sound, that I could say about myself. […] All of us are made up of colourful tatters, which hang so loosely and frail together, that every one of them flutters at any moment as he likes; so there are just as many differences between us and ourselves as between us and the others’ (Montaigne 1998, 167). 14 As editor of the journal The new republic, Lippmann was very familiar with stereotypes in printing where a solid metal plate was cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mold that was taken from the surface of an arrangement of movable type to a fixed page inside a chase called a forme (OED 1919, 925) in order to reproduce many copies of identical print from that same stereotype instead of the original case. 15 The republic of Plato, Book seven (Lippmann 1997, vii). 16 Of course, in this case the cultural reference is not solely created through the typographic forms, but also through the use of images and the text content. Nonetheless, the working of the connotative power of the letter shapes in this combination cannot be neglected. 17 The case of the ‘racist T-shirts’ was discussed widely in the media (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ asia-pacific/1938914.stm, https://www.dailyemerald.com/2002/04/24/abercrombie-shirts-spark-controversy-protests/) and Abercrombie & Fitch withdrew the T-shirts and apologised publicly (http://www. sfgate.com/news/article/ABERCROMBIE-GLITCH-Asian-Americans-rip-2850702.php#photo-2227087). (Links retrieved 17.9.17). 18 They are also visible in public space on coffee cups, food packaging, book covers, and T-shirts but those movable items are not part of our tagged and georeferenced Signs of the Metropolises data base. 19 Benedict Anderson coined the term ‘imagined communities’ for nations since an inhabitant of a nation simply cannot meet all other members of that community in person, hence he/she has to imagine them. This is part of how the understanding of a nation is constructed (Anderson 2006, 201). 20 SMC (Signs of the Metropolises Corpus) stands for all images coming from the Signs of the Metropolises research project data base. 21 Dafont.com has 160 fonts listed under ‘Chinese, Japanese’ of which 40–50 per cent are constructed in the discussed manner. http://www.dafont.com/de/theme.php?cat=201 (retrieved 4.9.17). 22 According to Shaw the first appearance of one of these type styles was a font first named Chinese created and distributed by the Cleveland Type Foundry in 1883. In the 1950s the font was renamed to Mandarin. 23 It might also have been the burning down and bodacious rebuilding of San Francisco’s China Town in 1906 where a lot of these fonts where applied (Shaw 2008, 110). 24 For this reason, they are to be called ‘learned connotations’ here. Although of course, the three previous groups as well as all connotations of ‘scriptural dispositives’ (Wehde 2000, 119) are indeed learned connotations through repetitive occurrences of typical fonts in certain usage contexts. 25 The resulting shapes were possibly interpreted as having a certain woodcut aesthetic resembling African woodcut sculpture and were thus applied in these contexts by graphic designers. 26 http://m.font.downloadatoz.com/id/font,113208,arabia/ (retrieved 4.9.17). 27 The forbidding of black letter happened due to power politics since greater problems of legibility and reading efficiency were recognised inside and outside of Germany. Antiqua fonts under the designation Normalschrift became regular for printing (Koop 2008). 28 Further usages of black letter referencing German culture and tradition are signage of a German history association, a carnival flag, bakery advertising, a traditional letter box, a Bavarian Lebkuchen heart, etc. 29 The name of the team as well as the picture refers to the moment of the Soccer World Cup 1990 when the Dutch player Frank Rijkaard spat at the German player Rudi Völler. The interesting contradiction is the fact that the anti-fascist hobby kickers put the name of the spitting ‘Rijkaard’ in a black letter font (in this case Cloister Black) but not the name of the German national soccer hero Völler. What they might want to express here is that neither Rijkaard or Völler nor themselves as a soccer team follow the Nazi ideology but that they rather spit on it the way Rijkaard’s spit flies not only in the direction of the back of Völlers head, but also in the direction of ‘Germanness’ or the neo-Nazis (in regional soccer clubs). Checking the Rijkaard Jugend website confirms that they clearly identify themselves as ‘anti-fascist soccer team’ (http://rijkaardjugend.blogsport.de/aber-uns/ [retrieved 15.9.17]) (see Wachendorff i.p.).

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30 The connection of the letters in Arabic leads to an emphasis on the horizontal lines. In the Latin writing system, the vertical lines are emphasised. This originates historically from cutting the calligraphic writing tools at a different angle. In the first Arabic Koranic manuscripts, an angle of the pen of almost 45° (to the left) is observable, resulting in the horizontal lines being thicker than the vertical lines. This has profoundly influenced the formal appearance of Arabic writing and the rhythm of the text on a page because the kashidas (connecting lines) and ligatures create a horizontal emphasis. In the Latin calligraphy, it is exactly the opposite: The nibs were usually cut to the right (with an angle varying depending on the writing style), which means the vertical lines are the thicker ones, creating a rather vertical rhythm (Rjeily 2011, 62). 31 The data samples here are yet too small to make a valid statement of the percentage distributions. Surprisingly enough, our data base that contains 25,500 photos does not include more than 13 Asian, 4 Greek and 10 ‘Oriental’ restaurants. This is due to the fact that in each of the four cities, two streets were picked out and photographed from beginning to end. And the streets were selected to show a balanced combination of enterprises and not for having mostly gastronomy. The next step of my PhD research will be to take photos of all individual German, Asian, ‘Oriental’, and Greek restaurants in all streets of one of the four cities (Dortmund) to see if what is indicated in our eight streets from four cities is valid for all streets in one city. The detailed analyses in Dortmund should result in 20 to 40 items in each restaurant category. 32 The typographic Stroop-test in this paper was developed, designed, and conducted by the author of this paper. I thank the psychologist Dr. David Tobinski from the doc(research)forum at the University Duisburg-Essen for giving me insight into the Stroop-test, the intern Sissy Schneider for assisting with the video-recording of the experiment and the measurement of the time sequences as well as the research assistant Felicitas Clerehugh for assessment of the time durations. 33 The typeface Helvetica was decided to be the ‘neutral’ one. It is debatable if a typeface can ever be neutral since all forms come with connotation, but in this context Helvetica seemed comparably neutral enough. 34 The restaurant names each contain eleven letters in two words, the dishes five (and once six) letters on two syllables in order to avoid differing word lengths influencing the reaction time. 35 This study with ten participants is a pre-test for the big PhD concluding Stroop-test and serves the purpose to gain insight into test procedures and possible results. The final test will of course include more participants. 36 The other five participants had, according to their statements in the interviews, decided that Speisekarte (menu) is a German word and it therefore belongs to the German restaurant. 37 Observations from the data assessment: (1) The reaction time was always higher in the first three to five cards, until the participants had figured out what this ‘game’ was about. This might have influenced the results, since there were almost always non-conflicting cards at the beginning. Therefore it might make sense to put in a few ‘blank’ cards at the beginning that are not counted into the results. (2) The put down cards laying visible on the table sometimes seem to have influenced the decision making process of the participants. They put a card where they put a similar one before. It might therefore make sense to either have the participants throw the cards into a sealed box or move the test to the computer and just have them click buttons for allocations. (3) The presence of a person filming in the room (and at times giggling alongside the participants choices) is an influence. Participants should be alone in a room. (4) The time tracking from video tape is time consuming. It might be faster to take this to the computer. (I thank Felicitas Clerehugh for discussing the data assessment observations with me.)

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References Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bäumler, G. (1985). Farbe-Wort-Interferenztest nach J. R. Stroop. Göttingen: Verlag für Psychologie. Bollwage, M. (2010). Buchstaben Geschichte(n). Graz: ADEVA. Cindark, I., and Ziegler, E. (2014). ‘Mehrsprachigkeit im Ruhrgebiet. Zur Sichtbarkeit sprachlicher Diversität in Dortmund’. In Ptashnyk, S., et al. (eds.). Gegenwärtige Sprachkontakte im Kontext der Migration. Heidelberg: Winter, 133–156. Dröge, F. W. (1967). Publizistik und Vorurteil. Münster: Verlag Regensberg. Giampietro, R. (2004). ‘New Black Face: Neuland and Lithos as Stereotypography’. In Letterspace – Journal of the Type Directors Club. Link: https://www.linedandunlined.com/archive/new-black-face (retrieved 4.9.17). Hauk, G. (2006). Kultur – Zur Karriere eines sozialwissenschaftlichen Begriffs. Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot. Helfand, J. (26.6.07). ‘Why is this font different from all other fonts?’. In Design Observer. Link: http://designobserver.com/feature/why-is-this-font-different-from-all-other-fonts/5597 (retrieved 4.9.17). Herder, J. G. (2017) [1784–91]. Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Berlin: Hofenberg. Herder, J. G. (1967) [1774]. Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp. Koop, A. (2008). NSCI: Das visuelle Erscheinungsbild der Nationalsozialisten 1920–1945. Mainz: Hermann Schmidt. Koop, A. (2012). Die Macht der Schrift. Eine angewandte Designforschung. Sulgen: niggli. Lippmann, W. (1997) [1922]. Public Opinion. New York: Free Press Paperback. de Montaigne, M. (1998) [1533–1592]. Essais. Frankfurt/M.: Eichborn. Oxford English Dictionary, 1ed., vol. 9, 1919, part 1, 925. Petersen, T., and Schwender, C. (2009). Visuelle Stereotype. Köln: Herbert von Halem. Rjeily, R. A. (2011). Cultural Connectives. New York: Mark Batty Publisher. Safadi, Y. H. (1978). Islamic calligraphy. London: Thames and Hudson. Said, E. W. (1996). ‘Kultur und Identität – Europas Selbstfindung aus der Einverleibung der Welt’. In Lettre International 34, 21–25. Schauer, G. K. (1975). Die Einteilung der Druckschriften. München: Heinz Moos. Schopp, J. F. (2011). Typografie und Translation. Wien: Facultas. Shaw, P. (2008). ‘stereotypes’. In print magazine, August 2008. Cincinnati, OH: F&W Publications, 109–110. Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, H. (2001). Arabic typography – a comprehensive sourcebook. London: Saqi Books. Steel, R. (1997). ‘Foreword’. In Lippmann, W. (1997) [1922]. Public Opinion. New York: Free Press Paperback, xi–xvi. Wachendorff, I. (2016). ‘Social Recognition through Multilingual Typography in Public Space – Global, Local and Glocal Texts in Dortmund Nordstadt’. In Amado, P., Quelhas, V., and Pereira, J. B. (eds.). 6.º Encontro de Tipografia: Livro de Atas. Aveiro: Universidade de Aveiro, 53–82. Wachendorff, I. (i.p.). Identitätskonstruktionen durch skripturale Variation mehrsprachiger Typografie. Duisburg: Universitätsverlag Rhein-Ruhr. Wehde, S. (2000). Typografische Kultur. De Gruyter: Tübingen. Welsch, W. (2005). ‘Transkulturelle Gesellschaften’. In Merz-Benz, O.-U., and Wagner, G. (eds.). Kultur in Zeiten der Globalisierung. Neue Aspekte einer soziologischen Kategorie. Frankfurt/M.: Humanities Online, 39–67. Welsch, W. (2009). ‘Was ist eigentlich Transkulturalität?’. In Darowska, L., and Machold, C. (eds.). Hochschule als transkultureller Raum? Beiträge zu Kultur, Bildung und Differenz. Bielefeld: transcript, 39–66. Whitman, W. (1985) [1855]. Leaves of Grass [Song of Myself]. New York: Penguin Books. Ziegler, E. (2013). Vollantrag im Rahmen der Projektförderung des Mercator Research Center Ruhr (MERCUR), Metropolenzeichen – Visuelle Mehrsprachigkeit in der Metropole Ruhr, Antragsbegründung. Essen.

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Image Sources Figure 1: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Abercrombie-recalls-T-shirts-many-found-offensive-2849480.php, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1938914.stm (retrieved 17.9.17). Figures 2, 4–11, 19–29: Images from the Signs of the Metropolises research project data base, University of Duisburg-Essen. Figure 3: I thank my friend Dr. Ulrike Pospiech for taking this photo and sending it to me. Figure 12: http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-53473.html (retrieved 4.9.17). Figures 13, 14, 15: https://www.linedandunlined.com/archive/new-black-face (retrieved 4.9.17). Figure 16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_King_(musical) (retrieved 2.3.18). Figure 17: https://www.jurassicworlduniverse.com/jurassic-park/images/posters/ (retrieved 2.3.18). Figure 18: https://www.yelp.de/biz_photos/capetown-düsseldorf-3?select=qCILsRaHsmtaK_arv6bWyA (retrieved 4.9.17). Figures 30–36, 38: Stroop-test card design, Irmi Wachendorff. Figure 37: Screenshot of the experiment set-up, Irmi Wachendorff.

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AUTHORS MICHAEL ERLHOFF holds a PhD in German Literature from the University of Hannover. He is an author, guest professor, and lecturer at many national and international universities. He was founding dean and professor of Design Theory and Design History at the Köln International School of Design, TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences, CEO of the German Design Council, co-founder of the St. Moritz Design Summit (Switzerland) and founder and president of the Raymond Loewy Foundation. He is one of the directors of be design, a design consultancy office based in Cologne. Since 2016 he has been an honorary professor at the Braunschweig University of Art (Germany). He lives in Cologne. SAJITH GOPINATH holds a postgraduate degree in Industrial Design and was working as a faculty in Industrial Design at National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India, from 2006 to 2017. He is interested in understanding the concept of playfulness and its application in concerns associated with social design. He has worked on various design sensitisation as well as product development projects with a focus on social sustainability. Currently, he is doing his doctoral research at Braunschweig University of Arts in the area of ageing, social design, and playfulness. SUSANNA HERTRICH works at the intersection of conceptual design and contemporary art. She studied at the Peter Behrens School of Art in Düsseldorf and Tokyo University of the Arts. She received a Master’s degree from the Royal College of Art in London (2008). Her artworks are exhibited internationally and appear in numerous publications. Along with her artistic practice, she has been a researcher at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel FHNW, Switzerland, since 2016. Her artistic research investigates extensions of the human senses and the role of the physical body in relation to technology-driven environments. MAX PIETRO HOFFMANN is an Art Director and photographer working and living in Berlin, Germany. In 2017 he opened his studio and is working for clients such as Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator, Eigen + Art LAB, HundHund, Städelschule Frankfurt, and ZEITmagazin. He graduated with his final bachelor project in 2016 at the Köln International School of Design, for which he won the Kölner Design Preis 2016. His works have been shown at Museum of Applied Arts Cologne (2016), Cologne Fine Arts Contemporary, Cologne (2016), Bunker k101 – Lange Nacht der Museen, Cologne (2017). WOLFGANG JONAS holds a PhD in Naval Architecture from TU Berlin and the postdoctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation) for Design Theory from Wuppertal University. He has been professor of Process Design in Halle, of Design Theory in Bremen, and of

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System Design in Kassel. Since 2010 he has been professor of Designwissenschaft and head of the Institute for Design Research at Braunschweig University of Art, where he runs the Master in Transformation Design. His main working areas are systems thinking and methodology, futures studies and scenario approaches, and the development of the concept ‘Research through Design’. MELANIE LEVICK-PARKIN. After abandoning a teenage crush on photography, Melanie studied Visual Communication and Graphic Design and then re-incarnated as an Art Director for a number of years before sidestepping into an academic career. As a design educator, she is passionate about the relevance of creative education and practices beyond the ‘Art School’ setting. Her research interests revolve around design anthropology, human making practices, and ‘making’ agency. She is exploring these through a variety of projects, ranging across design for social innovation, intangible cultural heritage, archaeology and cultural tourism, amongst other things. All her endeavours are grounded in her feminist positionality. SHINTARO MIYAZAKI is since 2014 a Senior Researcher of the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel FHNW, Switzerland. He obtained a PhD in Media Theory at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (2012). His works are oscillating between scholarly work and practice-based research projects with a focus on media technology. His current interests include cybernetics, design theory, fictional world-building, complexity, and diffractive design. OTTO PAANS studied Landscape Architecture at the Erasmushogeschool Brussel, Urban Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts and the Utrecht Graduate School for Visual Art and Design as well as Philosophy at the Open University (UK). He worked as a landscape designer, as well as a consultant and graphic designer on multiple European funded research proposals. Since then, he has contributed to several European FP7 and H2020 projects in fields as diverse as urban design, renewable energy, resource recycling, and materials development. Presently he is PhD student at the Technical University of Berlin, specialist field professor Pasel/CODE. In 2014 he published the monograph Situational Urbanism (Berlin: JOVIS, 2014) in collaboration with Ralf Pasel, on the transformation of postwar neighbourhoods. LAURA POPPLOW holds diplomas in Cultural Studies (University of Hildesheim) and Media Design (Academy of Media Arts Cologne). She published and exhibited in the context of locative media, site-specific/community art, bio-electronics and participatory design. After an excessive research into the transformative potentials of fungi and mycelium (FUNGUTOPIA) she is working on a PhD titled ‘Design Participation in Transformation?’ at the University of Art and Design Linz since 2014. In 2016 she was co-founder of the urban co-design consultancy co.city lab.

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SUSANNE RITZMANN is a design researcher and process designer with a strong focus on concepts and strategies of sustainability. Since 2014 she has also been teaching design theory, design methods, and design research. In 2018 she gained her PhD at the University of the Arts Berlin inquiring on sustainability in design education. Currently she is working as post-doc design researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) leading a project on sustainable mobility in Berlin, Germany. SØREN ROSENBAK is a design researcher currently finishing his PhD in Industrial Design at Umeå Institute of Design, Sweden. Situated within the research programme Prototyping Practices, his research concerns the prototyping of a pataphysically infused critical design practice. Søren has a background in visual communication (KADK, Copenhagen), interaction design (Aalto ARTS, Helsinki), and film-making. HELGA SCHMID is a designer, researcher, and lecturer. She teaches at the Royal College of Art in London, where she completed her PhD in Design Interaction and Visual Communication. She has worked internationally as a designer and researcher (Museum of Modern Art), and her work has been exhibited worldwide (V&A, Dia Art Foundation). She received a number of awards and scholarships (Art & Type Directors Awards, DAAD and Fulbright Scholarship) as well as a residency at the Design Museum. She has a background as a communication designer, holding a postgraduate degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, and a Master’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. KAKEE SCOTT is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design (USA), where her research explores the intersection of design and alternative economic practice. She has taught design research, design for sustainability, and consumption studies within the Strategic Design and Management and Environmental Studies programmes at Parsons the New School for Design in New York and Paris. Kakee has also worked with a number of sustainability advocacy initiatives and organisations. She has Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Wesleyan University (USA) and an MSc in Industrial Ecology from Delft University of Technology and Leiden University (Netherlands). IRMI WACHENDORFF is a graphic designer, typographer, and art and design scientist. Currently she is sponsored by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation to complete a PhD in Sociolinguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where she explores cultural representation through multilingual and multi-scriptural typography in the Ruhr area. Irmi has worked in Paris (Studio Apeloig), Sydney (Frost*Design), and Zurich (G+A) and taught at the Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen and the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, UK.

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Project management: Nora Kempkens Production: Sven Schrape Layout and typography: Sven Schrape Design Concept BIRD: Christian Riis Ruggaber, Formal Paper: 110g/m2 Offset Lithography: bildpunkt, Berlin Printing: Beltz Grafische Betriebe, Bad Langensalza Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954261 Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. Image rights if not otherwise indicated belong to the authors. ISBN 978-3-0356-1680-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-0356-1742-9 © 2018 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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