🗓 Week 11 / 19 December 2022

first design dialogues

Sparks of the Design Dialogues I (December 2022)

(1) The Traveller

during the preparation of what to present, Myrto and me came up (quit spontaneously the night before) with making a sculpture that would carry all the questions our research evolve around (binary-system thinking, post-nature, concepts of transitioning, and speculative fiction). We had printed them to business card size and now all we had was a bundle of wool and a stack of cards. Two stools formed the basis for our mesh, which began to spin around and into the structure-giving poles. At the end we clipped the cards with pins carefully onto the strings. Next to the question-sculpture, we had left a short explanation of these questions and a QR-code that would lead to a digital space in which these questions were asked again but now with room for reaction. The QR code takes the scanner to an Etherpad webpage and a Miro board, both of which are editable to readers and invite them to engage with it in any way they wish. The attempt with bringing our quests into a digital space is to inspire exchange about our topics of interest (post-humanism, binary system thinking, more-than-human intelligences) within a wide and open (human) community that expands the bubble we are moving in in our everyday life. After engaging in conversations with the visitors on that Monday afternoon, the idea sparks to let tis sculpture travel places to raise its attention. We gave it the name “The Traveller”.

(2) The Idea of a Conference

The Catalunya-based Esbrina Research Group published an open-call in October to take part with a research-paper on a conference about speculative fiction. I was very intrigued by that and was about to apply with some texts about what I see are potentialities of storytelling in and what the shortcoming of current educational contexts are. Exchanging thought about that with Myrto, I saw it as a too big of a challenge that I was not ready for. Yet together, we matched a lot of our ideas and came up with the plan to organize a conference ourselves and invite inspiring people that deal in their practice with speculative storytelling. Based of what we read about the Esbrina Research Group conference, we imagined it a fruitful idea to put together various thinkers and let them share their experiences. Then during the Design Dialogue, our mentor Oscar asked me about whether I continued with that application. I denied and realized I could not explain why so in a satisfying way (for me neither him). The next morning, I called Myrto and told her I am about to write a proposal and that I would include her and still apply.

A few days later we got a yet and the quest to hand in a paper by the beginning of January and prepare a presentation to share on the conference mid-January. So, I spend the Christmas vacations on reading, writing, rereading and rewriting thoughts on the importance of storytelling and situational mapping techniques in educational contexts.

(3) Plantiversal Mapping

Based on our thought-exchange with Oscar Tomico, it appeared that the interests of the three of us overlapped when it came to more-than-human narration of past(s), present(s), and future(s) and the investigation of ways to capture, document, live-with them. Myrto and me are interested in ways to map the interrelations we live in, we live-with to decentre the self and thus enable storytelling that deal with the complexities of life-forms and their realities. Oscar is investigating what it means to cohabitate with plants as equal members of his home to prototype how human can (re)create a connection to “nature” in urban environments. He invites us to come to his house and try out our mapping ideas within the setting of his more-than-human home.

what is my (updated) fight?

I started this course with the design of a first ‘my fight’ poster (left) and are now updating this according to the transformations I was going through (right)s. about this transformation there is a more detailed account in the following chapter.