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How Could the Future Look Like?

MA Design Futures Environment and Ethics Essay By Gaja Menari Osole Writing as: young design observer and practitioner Reading on behalf of: young design observer and practitioner By putting my thoughts on paper I am trying to sculpture and focus my design interests. I am also starting to build an inspiration platform for my future research. This is the first letter to myself and it represents a self-motivating, self-sustained process. Yet everyone who find it useful is more than welcome to read it. Printed 8th November 2012 Version 1

Hope is not discovered in the clouds of ideals that are blown away by the slightest breeze; hope is founded in the interstices of the given, and since it has a tough start in life, this hope is a survivor. 1

The world is a big place. And since we are the bird-perspective generation I find it hard to focus. There are so many fascinating things going on all the time. While starting to write this essay I had no vision of my final result. I designed a set of keywords from which I couldnt really develop a continuous thread that would guide me to the grand question. They were more like a pack of values that trigger my point of view. I commenced bygoing to the library and finding books that caught my attention. I read some and then I borrowed more. They were opening up my perspectives and I really enjoyed reading them, but I still didnt know where to start. I desided to browse the web, learning about projects, authors and terms and by the end of the day I had 100 links saved as bookmarks and a big chaos in my head. Normally, I am used to begin a project with a client and a precise brief to which I react. I was waiting for the trigger and time was quickly passing by. I was getting nervous and demotivated. There was no other way left than to start writing. Whatever, just to start. So I sat in front of the computer and wrote a text to release my tension. I named it A Complaint Department. I wrote down all of my frustrations and fears that I have as a young and educated designer. One of them caught my attention: I feel detached from reality. I suddenly realise that might be a good subject to start.

Contemporary design reformed its practice with embracing and mediating a new set of human-based values. In this writings I would like to explore: 1. The shift from disoriented imagination to imagination in place 2. Contemporary design visions and their influence on the society 3. New set of values I will use this little chaotic croquis as a starting sketch and a source of inspiration for my further research.

From Disorientated Imagination to Imagination in Place

The Lazy Fantasy If you show me a computer that makes mistakes I believe they can think like us. Computers are wrong, they do not make mistakes. We are as we were programmed to make mistakes 2 Our work and every day communication are getting highly dependant on Internet and computer technology. When we step into the virtual everything is possible and everything repairable. Once inside we can easily move back in time, start again or finish with deleting without living traces of previous moves. We can take actions without consequences. Copy, paste, move, delete, undo Digital world doesn't speak the language of causality. The phenomena of the digital is entering my perception on reality. I feel I am slowly losing the consciousness of the cause and the consequences happening in the off-screen environment. And if I look out of the window, I don't think I am alone. The virtual enables mediation of imaginative directly from our heads into our every day lives. As a living manifestation, Disneyland is an adequate example of how wrong it can get. In the age of the mechanical reproduction, digital environment became the most comfortable starting point of our creation, which allows our thoughts to be disconnected from the logic of the place of it's actual realisation. Virtual language and language of nature do not meet at any point but the scene of the crime. The result of the seemingly unconnected languages is the cacophony of aggressive manifestations, absolutely ignorant to the actual place that surrounds them.People became detached from the environment they live in. It is more likely to follow the life of 7

Britney Spears than make friends with close neighbours Likewise designers became detached from people and places they work for. Alienated and soaked with the consumerist mentality they co-create public spaces packed with groups of languages, speaking at us in different ways and reaching us on different levels. Design is considered as a problem-solving tool for a while now. Unfortunately, it frequently creates self-generated problems in order to solve them. With the mission to solve problems more and more iconic garbage is being produced. Or as Alan Chochinov defines: The presumption of design usually distinguishes from the actual product of design in many ways. 3 Technology, progress and money seem to be The Liberty Leading People of the last century. It seems like Futurist manifesto has triumphed the imaginary world. On the way towards the sci-fi reality we forgot about our social-selves. We were fascinated with the fantasy world with machines, beautiful technology, sky-touching architecture, shining images of perfection individuality and independency Design was mainly concerned with production of objects to pamper peoples lives with technological enhancements, alienating us from each other and the actual here and now. Since the industrial revolution, all of our society - our workplaces, home, transportation and communication have increasingly became infused with design Research has shown that our dishwashers, computers, radios, cars, and other products we are surrounded with, do not make us particularly happy. 4

How the image of technological progress influences our perception of the future? I made a little test by typing the key word FUTURE CITY or FUTURE WORLD in the Google images search engine. The result was a collection of computer rendered pictures. Little people and colossal monster-like grey buildings and roads, enlightened in the dark foggy atmosphere. It is suggested that the digital is only the virtual copy of the actual, but really goes both ways. We started to create reality after the imagery of digital. It would be interesting to follow how the image will change by the time.
Maybe it the next conclusion is not so relevant but I find it quite interesting. My first attempt was to search the imagery of the keyword FUTURE. When I started my research the results were very similar to the key words I decided to use in the end. Unexpectedly, while I was writing, a new rap star was launched, by the name Future. He became the temporary representative of the visual future. (Word kidnaping as a new form of advertising?)

The visionary imagination of our age has been both liberated and disoriented. It has been liberated by its discovery that social worlds are contingent in a more radical sense than people had supposed; liberated to disengage the ideas of community and objectivity from any fixed structure of dependence and dominion or even from the determinate shape of social life. It has also, however, been disoriented by a demoralising oscillation between a trumped-up sanctification of existing society and would-be utopian flight that finds in the land of its fantasies the inverted image of the circumstance it had wanted to escape. 5

How Does it Work? While browsing the Internet I found a book written by Fred Polak, called The Images of the Future. On the first page he wrote: Man's mental capacity to categorize and reorder reality within the self (present reality) and in relation to perceptions of the non-self (the Other) enables him to be a citizen of two worlds: the present and the imagined. Out of this antithesis the future is born. 6 It seem like the content was closely connected with my point of interest, so I explored further The concept of vision that guides the action of men is very old. One of the first to invent the future imagery were Sumerians and Babylonians, which believed their actions were guided by gods hidden in the night sky, stars and planets. In the ancient civilization the movement of the stars was perceived as the divine image writing. Throughout history, concepts of determinism have given way to the concepts of probability. There were several shifts from more passive dreams toward a Future Kingdom of Heaven to more human-dependent visions that led to the inventions of agriculture, medicine or discovering new continents in the development of the Western civilization. Nineteenth century liberalism emphasized the doctrine of self-interest and Marx saw the proletariat as an instrument that will guide us towards perception.7 When constructing the future man has confronted the concepts of value, means and ends. The image of the future is nothing but a reflection of ideal values that were mediated with practices of magic, religion and science in order to deal with natural or supernatural phenomena. 8 10

The Waste of The Past For the past forty or fifty years it seems that the public relations team of the capitalistic system had the privilege to govern the world of images, to manipulate western perception of the future and feed us with the pleasures of consumerist culture. Attacking with the highly level of awareness of the fact that human beings are more easily persuaded with the aesthetic, spiritual and emotional appeal of the images than the rational and intellectual. The capitalistic value system (detached from the actual environment, producing never ending wishes and false needs) with its distorted ethics was constructed to feed the desires of a rich minority. What are the consequences? It destroyed the cultural and economical balance and impoverished the rest of the society. In the last four years many local products and services in developing countries were shut down. Public spaces are increasingly trapped by commercials that are becoming the main information boards in the cities. People from the countryside are now going to supermarkets to buy imported chicken and have advertisements on the facades of their houses to get money, instead of running a farm. And all the while, the media are supporting this negative atmosphere. Without even knowing, we embraced the image of paradox, pretending it has the face of normality. Western society is torn between science and technology achievements that are constantly changing the perception of the world and of the actual decay of economical, ecological and cultural systems. We are confronted with complex problems, with which politicians are not coping efficiently. It seems we are entering the times of crises and confusion with the speed of light. 11

Old systems don't work anymore. They became empty frames from which pictures run away and are now standing in front of us, naked and cold. A big bare form and a seemingly invisible content coexisting at the same time, fighting for their vote. We are beginning to recognize that the old and smelly frame stalking us as a big phantom of paradox is slowly but surely imploding into the forgotten land. We recognized that we need to be reminded and educated that good things were, can and are coming true. The lack of a clear vision decays the culture. In times of crises it is necessary to dream, imagine, envision, plan new alternatives. It is important to make our dreams attainable. I am happy to see that the journey of setting up a new value system has started.

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New Hope Poetry + Pragmatism = Possibility A good Bosnian friend once said to me: What exist are not the problems, but situations.. I like to think about it in the context of design and everyday life in general. The point of inters is shifted from the finding a solution to a problem (design as a problem-solving tool) to the relational character of situation, directly linked to its surroundings. Designers are slowly realising, with the help of natural and cultural crisis, that we are living in dynamic problem spaces of flows and negotiations, where the consequences are holding the weight of our decisions. 9 The new vision of design practice, proposed by the theorist John Forester, is born out of the logic of making-sense. As he explains: Sensemaking activity is not simply a matter of instrumental problem solving, it is a matter of altering, respecting, acknowledging and shaping people's lived worlds. 10 We live in a visual culture, where designers, architects and artists are the most skilful professionals to create and mediate messages through visual images. In the past years design has gone through tremendous transformation (still is), branching form the advertising and style generating industry, and is on the way to become a self-sustained opinion and change making initiative. One of the reasons why design, as a meta-practice, seems to be so successful as the change agent profession is the fact that it is still young and loosely defined. For that reason it has the flexibility to find links between the practices which allows it to be quick enough to engage into the here and now of the real world.11 13

As a result of the need to make things work again, a set of self-organized creative individuals and groups all over the world started to form various interdisciplinary initiatives. With direct communication of real-life actions they are creating and promoting bottom-up projects, which work through experience, vision and engagement. 12 Transforming public spaces into shared spaces, working with participation of local communities, re-designing political, economic and education systems and creating self-sustained systems to help improve peoples' lives. Human-centered design is gaining back its importance, design is turning towards appreciation of the actual, engagement of our bodies, social and physical skills. Socialy-responsive design is setting up new rules of play, shifting from market-led towards purpose-led ways of intervening and improving our ways of living. People are becoming participants in co-creating and decisions and changes. New design approaches enable empathy, belonging exchange and engagement - all important ingredients for social cohesion. 13 A sensitive fibre of solutions is a result of many decisions and many truths constructed of: Truth lies not in one dream but in many dreams. (Pasolini, Arabian nights) Ethics are becoming relevant again as people begin to realise that they are not creating for themselves but for each other. It seems like a new era of pragmatism has emerged. We are witnessing a huge handcraft and DIY revival, often defined as the maker movement, as an answer to the human alienation and detachment form the nature and our actual environment. The knowledge of making is reviving in a form of a pragmatic revolution that is gently knocking on the consumerism downfall door.In order to re-define our (value) system the future guided projects are functioning as messengers, ex14

amples of attainable utopias. Real-life performances coming from the future in packs of poetic pragmatism, creating potentials, possibilities. This imagination, therefore, is not the imagination of the detached dreamer; it grows out of the real, fuelled by the very uncertainty that the rationalists and utopists found so threatening. It is an imaginative vision that both projects new futures and also embraces their imperfections. 14 The imaginary is now free to be mended with a tissue of reality, since reality became a newly discovered place of tangible dreams - experiences. Like the history of art went through transitions from the illusionistic art to abstract art to mild Concretism, which became more and more concrete, until it became non-art, anti-art, nature, reality, that is where design and architecture are headed in the future. 15

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Contemporary design visions and their influence on the society

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I work in a group of Slovenian designers, architects and artisans called G-R-U-P-A,actively involvedin the effort for the improvement of socialentrepreneurship in Slovenia and real-life experimentation on the future of living. Sometimes people ask me if our projects really make a the desirable change. In most of the cases they havent. In some they have. We Are still in the beginning. I consider them as first mindsets agents, spreading the seeds, giving suggestive examples of what might work better. At this point I see the role of imagination in proposing an educational dimension of the possible change. Designing a posters, a product or a house means designing a statement imposed by the author or the client. Designing an inclusive process is making a statement, including the place of change. Designing is not about imposing a value but finding one within in the actual. In the following part I wolud like to present some practical propositions of the future of living. I chose this design projects in order to link my thoughts with an existing and insure a better understanding and representation. I use selected examples as sources of inspiration and useful connection between theory and practice.

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Experimental Laboratories of the Future of Living In times of insecurity the role of art is more than important. Art speaks an open language and is not obliged to please. It can be used as an engaged and safe space for experimenting and sharing new concepts of living. Labor celebration Last week I went to the White Cube Gallery. I decided to see the exhibition based on its title: The Labour is My Protest by Theaster Gates. He exhibited various projects. One of the rooms was transformed into a Johnsons Editorial Library (2012) containing literature of AfricanAmerican history, artists and musicians. I see down and browsed through some books. On my way out I found a bookshop with a publication on dOCUMENTA (13) called 12 Ballads for the Huguenot House. It presented an art project by Theaster Gates. A performance involving the renovation of an abandoned house in Kassel and an on going project of house renovation in Chicago. Gates enlivened two abandoned sites with accessible materials and with help of the crew. He transformed the house into a community home for the crew during the time of the exhibition. The renovation is based on the Re-Doit-Yourself idea and with showing the traces of usage and labour as indexes of the materials previous lives. He planned the house as an open space for new social activities and experience. He exhibited the process of revitalization and saluted the labour in the form of a performance, spectacle. The form of the exhibition was used to suggest that art could generate new economies and practices. It was a pure representation of how making-sense is possible. Gates 18

is just one of the authors who use art to mediate images of the alternative ways of living. What is nice about the new nature of creative projects is that that act like silent revolutions. Instead of performing a passive critique to existing system they are showing their disagreement with propositions of the possible alternatives. Their representation frequently includes the process as a recipe with instructions for realisation. The idea of the project might be compared as a representation which does not carry the connotation of uniqueness and ownership due to a basic fact that they proposing to be reproducible. Users are welcome to participate and are allowed to access the data. They are invited to embrace the model and create a copy. This may even lead to a new theory of sustainability in the generalized context of the social consumption theory. 16 Shared spaces Community Gardens are another phenomena that emerged from the need to create human friendly environment. They became new places for learning through making, building stronger communities, growing organic food, shared ownership, self-sustainability, setting a living example of resilience and biodiversity. They appear almost as a reconstruction of the image of Eden. As political spaces they are defending the human rights and proposing a new philosophical model for alternative architecture and design practice as well as social improvement. The gardens are also used for educational purposes in order to teach children and adults how to grow vegetable and fruits by the principles of permaculture. The model was adopted by several artists from Nils Norman to Marjetic Potr, education institutions (edible schoolyards) and urban communities all over the world. 19

Money alternatives A great example showcasing alternative economies is the project of an Australian photographer Shantanu Starick called The Pixel Trade. The author is travelling around the world, exchanging his services as a photographer for shelter, transportation and food. Instead of searching for random clients the author asks each customer to introduce him to the next one. Shantanu is the student of architecture left school for one year in order to see the world. The project is a nice example of the gap between the theoretical institutional knowledge and the need for the real life experience of the young generation. It embraces the new tendencies of fair, direct trade: service for service, product for service. In that way it successfully avoids the capitalistic trade system and brings back and revitalises the value of labour and knowledge. It uses the modern technology to their advantage. I was incredibly inspired by the attainable nature of project, wanting to share it with my friends and discuss about it. All of them, including me, wanted to recreate it for himself. Learning to think anew The design education system is also metamorphosing as an echo of the current needs. Many old programs are being revised and new schools are being established in order to prepare new students to cope with actual issues and the issues of our near future. Some pioneering schools are already spreading their vision of re-establishing the education system to become a new safe place to explore, experiment and share the interdisciplinary knowledge. This week I visited a visual anthropology, an architectural and a design lecture. All the lecturers were speaking about the same things. Perhaps the new education programs might be based on the place of 20

the investigated interest rather than the rigid academic profession. It seems like we are finally trying to step on the same boat and head in the same direction. A thought for the future Based on this research I can conclude that a new value system is on the way to reform our society. I am happy to be the part of the generation that has the power to make changes and contribute to improve our ways of living. There is just a small detail that I think we should be aware of. The old systems, though ready to be renovated, should not be disposed as useless garbage. There is some wisdom in their forms which can be used to spread the new messages. I think it is important not to forget the aesthetic value of our intentions. Plenty of the socially-responsive projects are designed without a special care. I understand that this generates a certain statement, but it is demolishing the power of the mediated messages in attracking a bigger crowd. Here, I see still a lot of possibilities for improvement, and a new opportunity for realisation of future graphic designers. So I can ask myself again, how could the future look like?

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I would like to finnish this piece of writing with a short revision of my thoughts. Like a little manifesto to intensify the happy end. It goes like this: Just like Lynch movies get stuck, somewhere between reality and dreams, our society is caught in a moment when the real is no longer realistic and also the imaginary has lost its meaning. Thats how it looks through the oculus of accepted perception. But the time has come when its simply not worthwhile to watch with dull faces and to receive without processing. The status of the global depression and constant mirage cant only numb us. Garbage is just mental waste of western civilisation. In reality it is an integral part of cyclic system. Out of the chaos slowly germinates a new thought. In current situation which many people find terribly unpleasant, I see a challenge and an opportunity to build direct systems and experiences by man-made criteria. I am thinking about updating and actualisation of human action in society, time and space. I accept the creation as an interactive process in a given environment. As a process, not as a status. Everything revolves and everything runs. I would like to change static into dynamic, and try to build open systems which would allow unwinding scenarios following their own logic. A blank sheet is an artificial construct that doesnt exist in reality. All that is new has grown from a given old. Therefore, my work depends on people and the environment in which I act. I see people as active users and contributors of our services. As a consumer generation, we are faced everyday with mass-produced objects without an identity or a true value. Therefore, we accept them 22

as they are by themselves, liberated from aesthetic and symbolic value. And here begins our work. We cut the roots, so we can freely sail into a new tomorrow.

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Notes 1. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press), p. 193. 2. Mark Cousins, Where is Everyday Life?, 2nd AA Lecture: 19.10.2012 (http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture. php?ID=1995). 3. Allan Chochinov, At Your Service? From the Presumptions of Design to the Products of Design, Pivot: AIGA Design Conference: 13.10.2011 (http://www.aiga.org/video-pivot-2011-chochinov). 4. Marco van Hout quoting Delft Institute of Positive Design in the article: Hannah Johnes and Anette Lundebye, Socially Responsive Design, Connecting the Dots (Yearbook Dutch Design London, September 2012), p. 49 5. Unger, Social Theory, p. 47. In Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press), p. 193. 6. Fred Polak, The Image of Future (Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1973), p. 1 7. Ibid., p. 11-20 8. Ibid., p. 10 9. Allan Chochinov, At your Service? From the Presumptions of Design to the Products of Design, Pivot: AIGA Design Conference: 13.10.2011 (http://www.aiga.org/video-pivot-2011-chochinov) 10. 1. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press), p. 168. 11. Liminal Objects I: Introduction, Design-in-Practice, The Harvard GDS Lecture: 5.11.2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVmlSs Kk9aA&feature=plcp). 12. Marjetica Potr, A vision of the Future City and the Artists Role as 24

Mediator, The Harvard GDS Lecture: 18.4.2012 (http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=94O6ulr75_Y). 13. Hannah Johnes and Anette Lundebye, Socially Responsive Design, Connecting the Dots (Yearbook Dutch Design London, September 2012), p. 49 14. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press), p. 192. 15. Julia Robinson, Pollocks Concreteness: Painterly Performance or Performative Painting, Explosion! Painting as action (Koenig Books, London), p. 157 16. Loe Feijs, Steven Kyffin, Bob Young, Design and semantics of form and movement (2005 Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.), p. 48

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Bibliography Chochinov, Allan, At Your Service? From the Presumptions of Design to the Products of Design, Pivot: AIGA Design Conference: 13.10.2011 (http://www.aiga.org/video-pivot-2011-chochinov). Cousins, Mark, Where is Everyday Life?, 2nd AA Lecture: 19.10.2012 (http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1995). Feijs, Loe, Kyffin, Steven, Young, Bob, Design and semantics of form and movement (2005 Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.). Johnes, Hannah and Lundebye, Anette, Socially Responsive Design, Connecting the Dots (Yearbook Dutch Design London, September 2012). Phillips, Sam: Last chance: Theaster Gates at White Cube Bermondsey: 05 November 2012 (http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/ blog/last-chance-theaster-gates-at-white-cube-bermondsey,311,BAR. html) Polak, Fred, The Image of Future (Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, 1973). Potr, Marjetica, A vision of the Future City and the Artists Role as Mediator, The Harvard GDS Lecture: 18.4.2012 (http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=94O6ulr75_Y). Robinson, Julia, Pollocks Concreteness: Painterly Performance or Performative Painting, Explosion! Painting as action (Koenig Books, London). Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press). Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Social Theory, p. 47. In Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press). Van Hout, Marco: quoting Delft Institute of Positive Design in the 26

article: Hannah Johnes and Anette Lundebye, Socially Responsive Design, Connecting the Dots (Yearbook Dutch Design London, September 2012). Liminal Objects I: Introduction, Design-in-Practice, The Harvard GDS Lecture: 5.11.2012 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVmlSsKk9a A&feature=plcp).

Other web sources http://spatialagency.net http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/nils-norman/ http://whitecube.com/channel/in_the_museum/theaster_gates_12_ ballads_for_huguenot_house_documenta_13_2012/ http://www.cooperhewitt.org/exhibitions/now-in-production http://www.thetoasterproject.org http://thepixeltrade.com/

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