Convergence of the Speculative

an installation based on Dunne & Raby’s idea in Speculative Everything

Overview

This project is based on the assumption that writing systems and their articulation sit at the intersection of technology, language, and culture. The ability to reproduce these systems is integral to deeply-rooted cultural notions regarding memory, power, history, the nation-state, personal identity, media and definitions of authority and knowledge.

Concept

This piece presents Dunne & Raby’s idea from their book Speculative Everything, and how the most valuable design intersects the zones of the plausible and the probable.

From the unique structural construction, the use of different colors, and the graduate convergence from ideas to concepts, this mobile represents a physical mind map of the authors’ intellectual process. It also follows the train of thoughts and shows my response to this idea - while one side of speculative design is really innovative and inspiring, the other side might involve giving designers too much overarching power that could be dangerous.

Time

Nov - Dec 2019

Project Type

Installation

Tools

Card Paper, Wood Sticks, Strings, Wires, Adobe Ai

Process

Stage 1: Choose the Text

I chose the first chapter Beyond Radical Design? in Dunne & Raby’s book Speculative Everything as the text I would work on. This piece has personal significance to me as it informed my trajectory and speaks to my overall design interests of moving forward.

Stage 2: Initial Prototyping

In this phase, I tried to experiment with different media in a fast pace to see which media can best represent the idea of the text.

Stage 3: Development

After experimenting with different media representations, I’m interested in an installation’s strong ability as a medium to convey spatial qualities and relations between ideas. I decided to further explore this medium’s potential by conducting a series of studies.