#prototypingmargins

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[Prototyping the Margin] Eniac Girlz

My sketch!

//Better explanation to come

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Prototyping the Margins: Week 3 - Reading responses

The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto

Martine Syms

“This dream of utopia can encourage us to forget that outer space will not save us from injustice and that cyberspace was prefigured upon a "master/slave" relationship.“

This particular quote stood out to me a lot - especially since I’ve been somewhat following the news about major Programming languages pulling out their “Master/Slave” terminology out of their documentation. I remember being in class for Computer Systems in my undergrad and the ‘master/slave’ terminology still being used by the instructor really casually, which felt really uncomfortable. Pulling this term out of official documentation is a good first step, but I wonder what it takes for people to ditch these titles entirely, especially when there’s backlash for pulling out these terms as “overly SJW”, etc.

Imaginary computational systems: queer technologies and transreal aesthetics

Zach Blas, Micha Cárdenas

Capital is now fully organized under the sign of modularity. It operates via the algorithm and the database, via simulation and processing...to study image, narrative, and visuality will never be enough if we do not engage as well the nonvisual dimensions of code and their organization of the world’’ 

As someone who’s been doing work on the User Interface-side of computing for a while, this was super interesting to me. It makes me think about how much designers use the illusion that all computing can be seen at face value in the form of an interface, as a way to obscure other processes and maintain a system of control. Makes me think about how Instagram/Facebook allow you to “hide” ads, or feel like you have control over what you see, but in reality the algorithms that are making them pop up are just continuing to run in the background and devising new content to put on your feed. I don’t know if that’s the best example.

I think this concept of UIs as a facade for more complex processes is something that American Artist engages with. I heard them talk at a conference at Pioneer Works in the summer and they had a lot of ideas that resonated with this. One of their concepts/questions is: “Why do we assume “white” to be the visual default of computing?”

“One can hope that new models of computation that have autonomist and sustain-able interests at their core will arise from these movements, but queer new media artists are already imagining and prototyping other possible futures for computing.”

I just really like this quote that concluded the paper. It feels inspiring for thinking about thesis and I think aligns really well with what kind of work I want to do (speculative, engages with computation, has queer/feminist values) and why (hopefully inspire large-scale change). I dunno.

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Prototyping the Margins: Week 2

This week we read Chapters 1-3 of Speculative Everything. Here are some of my responses to specific quotes while reading:

“Designers feel an overpowering urge to work together to fix them, as though they can be broken down, quantified, and solved.” 

This directly relates to a discussion we had in class, where we were asked “what’s a way we might try to fix these ‘wicked problems’?” and I responded with perhaps a divide-and-conquer type of method, which clearly has some issues in terms of large-scale, societal problems. Reading this section in the book made me reflect on why that was my go-to instinct, and I think it was coming from an engineering background where the basis of a lot of our problem solving *was* in a divide-and-conquer approach (specifically thinking of the two semesters I had to take in algorithms...  honestly a set of very difficult and stressful experiences that are clearly affecting my psyche years later).

“To find inspiration for speculating through design we need to look beyond design to the methodological playgrounds of cinema, literature science, ethics, politics, and art to explore, hybridize, borrow, and embrace the many tools available for crafting not only things but also ideas….”

I’ve always been super drawn to speculative design, and reading this made me sort of understand why: I think I’ve always been a very interdisciplinary person who doesn’t like to settle down on any particular field, so maybe spec. design is really conducive to the way I like to learn/create.

“What is excellence in critical design? Is it subtlety, originality of topic, the handling of a question? Or something more functional such as its impact or its power to make people think? Should it even be measured or evaluated? It’s not a science after all and does not claim to be the best or most effective way of raising issues.”

This really hit home to one of my experiences as an undergrad in helping a master’s student who did their Media Lab thesis defense for a project that was speculative/critical in nature. I remember there being some push-back from reviewers for it not being “Media-Lab-y” enough - i.e., inherently technical in its making, which a lot of the engineering-aligned (rather than art-aligned) projects in the Media Lab happen to be. The project did end up winning awards and getting a lot of press in the real world, though!

I think this comes to show how unequipped people can be in terms of trying to evaluate (if at all) critical design, especially if they are used to having an engineering mindset that is focused on performance/efficiency/quantifiable impact.  

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[Prototyping the Margins] Week 1

Link to Presentation about my previous work: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Fgb9o6iEEnuaI4Hko4gvdyvbRTqVEOSQzlmoufkChRk/edit?usp=sharing

Reading response: The Extrapolation Factory

I’ve been interested in speculative design/design fiction for a while, but one of my biggest questions around the field is it can be more accessible to a larger audience of people. I think it’s really easy for speculative design to stay within an academic bubble - in its nature, I think speculative design isn’t easy to consume in the normal way we consume other types of design, like through advertisements or purchases or by functional, everyday use.

I felt the Extrapolation Factory’s emphasis that “engaging communities in speculative design and futures thinking can provide real benefits in the present through opening new pathways of problem-solving and discussion” was an interesting step into a more accessible direction, bringing it outside of an academic bubble.

The reading - and especially the way it lays out a framework for thinking about futures in terms of “Grow, Collapse, Disciple, Transform” - made me think about how my previous projects might fit into this taxonomy. Last semester I worked on a speculative pillow concept called The Body Pillow, that was inspired by thinking about how designers might leverage the use of bioprinted, synthetic but realistic human skin in product design to solve an emotional and physical need for human skin-to-skin touch. I think my intentions for this project were under “Transform” - I wanted this technology to correspond to a cultural shift where people were more cognizant about their emotional needs and could take on practical ways to satisfy it.