PRZEGLĄD KULTUROZNAWCZY NR 1 (43) 2020, s. 55–69 doi:10.4467/20843860PK.20.004.11932 www.ejournals.eu/Przeglad-Kulturoznawczy/ W KRĘGU IDEI http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4867-1105 Joanna Jeśman BIZARRE BIO-CITIZENS AND THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE.… THE WORKS OF ALEXANDRA DAISY GINSBERG AND AGI HAINES IN THE CONTEXT OF SPECULATIVE DESIGN AND BIOETHICS Abstract: The article concerns speculative design in the context of bioethics. The author analyzes and interprets projects by designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Age Haines in relation to modern biotechnologies, future scenarios of medicine and machine ethics. Keywords: speculative design, bioethics, bio art, biotechnology One of the key features of the Speculative Turn is precisely that the move toward realism is not a move toward the stuffy limitations of common sense, but quite often a turn toward the downright bizarre.1 Speculative design, critical design, discursive design, these are just some of the names used to describe designing practices that very strongly resemble art & science. The three terms used here are not synonymous and will be defined further in the text but they do have certain things in common. The projects are mostly exhibited in art galleries and museums, their main purpose in not commercial, they refer to the future rather than the present and they are strongly embedded in science and technology. When we think about the mainstream design like industrial, fashion, software, in- terface, graphic or communication designs they share some features, they have to be useful, and that means practical, functional, utilitarian, pragmatic and applicable. Whereas the projects analyzed in this text are the exact opposite of practical, func- 1 L. Bryant, N. Srnicek, G. Harman (eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, Re-Press, Melbourne 2011, p. 7. BIZARRE BIO-CITIZENS AND THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE… 55 Joanna Jeśman tional, utilitarian, pragmatic and applicable and yet they are definitely useful, but in a whole different meaning of the word. In the book entitled Discursive Design. Critical, Speculative and Alternative Things, designers Bruce and Stephany Tharp make an attempt to draw a cartographic scheme of different kinds of design, depending on the role it plays, the outcomes it gives, and what the designing process looks like. The word attempt is used here be- W KRĘGU IDEI cause even the authors themselves repeatedly say that the lines they draw are often very blurry, stating that their aim is “not about confining boxes within which design- ers are expected to operate”2 but rather about “making better sense of the activities designers are already engaging in.”3 According to the Tharps there are certain roles design plays and many different factors that influence designing practices. To answer the question why are certain kinds of design produced the Tharps propose a four-filed framework stating that com- mercial design is mostly focused on profitability; responsible design is related to social responsibility and puts minorities in the center of its attention; experimental design is a way to explore potential and further possibilities, whereas discursive de- sign provokes reflection – “Just as objects act as prostheses, they can also be deliber- ately designed as intellectual prostheses.”4 So rather than shaping people’s activities and routines, discursive design provokes critical reflection, influences the way people think and how they can perceive reality from different perspectives. According to the Tharps discursive design is a wider category, or rather as they call it genus in relation to taxonomic ranks. The species that fall into the category are adversarial design, anti-design, contestational design, critical design, critical jugaad, design fiction, dissident design, guerrilla futures, interrogative design, radical de- sign, reflective design, speculative design, speculative re-design, tactical media and un-design.5 The Tharps define all the subcategories but for the purpose of this text just the two will be elaborated on and that is speculative design, which in line with the authors developed as a critique toward critical design. The former being more fo- cused on imagination, softer in its criticism as the projects are usually set in the future and do not give specific answers or points of view but rather give the viewers space for speculation. The latter being more straight forward and opinionated, intellectual rather than creative and relating to the present. In his book Critical Design in Context Matt Malpass also characterizes both crit- ical and speculative design defining a method for each category of design but also analyzing the type of satire used, type of ambiguity and object relation. Malpass sees critical design as creating a narrative that situates the object in a certain context, so the narrative is part of the project and is designed in advance. Whereas in speculative 2 B. Tharp, S. Tharp, Discursive Design: Critical, Speculative and Alternative Things, The MIT Press, Cambridge–London 2018, p. 146. 3 Ibidem, p. 146. 4 Ibidem, p. 7. 5 Ibidem, p. 84. 56 BIZARRE BIO-CITIZENS AND THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE.… Joanna Jeśman design he notices two important features and these are hybridity and technocratic vis- W KRĘGU IDEI ualization. Hybridity is defined here as situating an object in a certain context other than real, and this way a new narrative is created or some scientific tools can be used to rationalize the object placed in a certain context.6 When defining speculative design Malpass also emphasizes the relation to the technoscientific realm and designer’s cooperation with researchers and scientists, creating future scenarios as well as “the domestication of up-and-coming ideas in science and applied technology.”7 Critical design, on the other hand, is rather ground- ed in the present and critically reflects upon what already exists. Through mechanism of defamiliarization and estrangement, designers extend the critical distance between the object and the user; in so doing, they make striking comment on current sociotechnical, economic, political, cultural, and psychological concerns and find new forms of expression for complex issues.8 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, who coined the term critical design, describe what it meant to them in the mid-nineties, how it evolved and what it might mean now. In general their views are a lot less deterministic than the ones stated above and in many ways they are contradictory to what the Tharps and Malpass offer. For Dunne and Raby critical design was more an attitude than a certain methodology and they coined the term in contrast to affirmative design that was more about strength- ening the existing situation. Over the years the way thay perceive critical design has changed and now they clearly state that critical design might as well relate to the present as to the future, that it has nothing to do with Frankfurt School or criticism in general. They rather recognize it as a language and thought translated into material- ity, and created to engage people. What they also emphasize is how powerful design can be as means for protests and boycotts as well as a tool to raise social awareness. In their reflections about design Dunne and Raby put a spotlight on conceptual design and they differentiate it from the popular definition. Conceptual design is not about a project that has not yet been realized or an early phase of the designing process, it is rather about designing ideas, thus conceptual design in a way relates to conceptual art. Design and art are very closely related, it might not be very true with commercial design, although many might disagree, the similarities are certainly visible when it comes to conceptual design in the sense that Dunne and Raby describe.9 What the authors of Speculative Everything… do instead of looking for clear cut definitions of what critical or speculative design is, they show where the inspiration comes from, what is valuable in different projects, how those project are useful for 6 M. Malpass, Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practice, Bloomsbury, London–New York 2019, p. 119. 7 Ibidem, p. 100. 8 Ibidem, pp. 107–108. 9 A. Dunne, F. Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, The MIT Press, Cambridge–London 2013, loc. 138–192/1596 (Kindle edition). BIZARRE BIO-CITIZENS AND THE FUTURE OF MEDICINE.… 57 Joanna Jeśman the society and how designers themselves create ideas and ideals rather than projects within certain rules and regulations. Similarly to art history, aesthetics and art theory, some divisibility is useful but then at some point it becomes so absurdly detailed that it is counterproductive. Hence Speculative Design is a W KRĘGU IDEI […] form of design that thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called wicked problems, to create spaces for discussion and debate bout alter- native ways of being, and inspire and encourage people’s imaginations to flow freely. Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality.10 Body enhancement CRISPR Emoji, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg In 2017 a British design magazine Disengo asked eleven designers to create an emoji that would be useful in 2018. Each designer was also asked to write a 100 words to explain their choice. One of the designers was Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg who designed a CRISPR emoji. It depicts a pair of scissors, a double helix and a piece of DNA that will be inserted in the helix. To justify her choice Ginsberg wrote a short story as a text message that contained the emoji. It is a message from one partner to the other about a doctor visit concerning having a CRISPR baby instead of a natural one. The procedure seems to be quite costly but probably a good investment as gen- om editing would help avoid many problems and the baby would be perfect.