Design at the Earview: Decolonizing Speculative Design through Sonic Fiction Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira Introduction As indicated by the rhythmic, bass-driven thumping that precedes any moment of suspense in movies, or the high-pitched crescendo 1 Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld, that suddenly drops into silence with a boom in every THX-driven “Sound Studies: New Technologies and blockbuster film these days, music is a very powerful means of Music,” Social Studies of Science 34, no. 5 (2004): 635–48; and Jonathan denoting the future. In audio culture—that is, in the study of Sterne, “Sonic Imaginations,” in The sound, listening, and its practices—that one can understand much Sound Studies Reader, ed. Jonathan about any social or political situation by looking at the sounds that Sterne (New York: Routledge Chapman populate it is a given. Within these disciplines, music is examined & Hall, 2012), 1–17. to its very core, taken apart and scrutinized under philosophy, 2 Holger Schulze, “Über Klänge Sprechen,” sociology, politics, media theory, and many other practices of [To speak about sounds] in Sound Studies: Traditionen - Methoden - scholarly knowing. Desiderate: Eine Einführung [Sound The growing interest in sound studies as an academic field Studies: Traditions - Methods - Desider- is a direct consequence not only of social and technological devel- ata: An Introduction], ed. Holger Schulze, opment, but also of the ubiquity of these technologies in everyday 1st ed. (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008). life.1 Sound is observed in its aesthetic and functional qualities, its Original quote in German: “Sound Studies [sehen sich auch] als ein offenes effects and affects, its distribution and archiving; all these sonic Feld von Desideraten, die sich anders discourses and epistemologies inform the constitution of an audi- verstehen und anders angelegt sind als tory culture. The environment of sound studies is hence a trans- traditionelle Disziplinen im engeren disciplinary one—an “open field of desiderata [...] arranged and Sinne” (translated by the author). understood differently from proper traditional disciplines.”2 Sterne 3 Sterne, “Sonic Imaginations,” 5. remarks that what differentiates a “sound studies approach” from 4 This relatively young practice has been given several different names to reflect other scientific, sociological, or artistic practices on sound is a different but similar approaches: These strong critical bias toward the subject.3 include critical design, design fictions, Similarly, speculative and critical design (SCD),4 as a adversarial design, and speculative branch and/or epistemology of design research, projects its design, among others. I deliberately efforts onto the future as a means of discussing the immediate choose to use the term “speculative and critical design” because the approach present. As a reflexive practice, it allegedly inquires about the serves the purpose of investigating status quo of society, about the status quo of technology, and near-future projections while maintaining about how the former relates to the latter; by removing “com- a critical nature. mercial constraints,” the practice seeks to stretch the limits of 5 James Auger, “Speculative Design: the possible as a way of re-imagining the world as it could be.5 Crafting the Speculation,” Digital Dunne, one of the pioneers of this approach, calls for an explo- Creativity 24, no. 1 (March 1, 2013): 11–35, doi:10.1080/14626268.2013.7672 ration of the poetic and aesthetic qualities of objects, arguing 76; and Anthony Dunne, Hertzian Tales: that the electronic object could “surprise and provoke [in order to] Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experi- ence, and Critical Design (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005). © 2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi: 10.1162/DESI_a_00381 DesignIssues: Volume 32, Number 2 Spring 2016 43 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00381 by guest on 28 September 2021 provide a complex experience, critical and subversive.”6 The power of these poetic layers of apprehension of material culture lies in an “aesthetics of use”—that is, all of the intricate agendas that orbit around the cultural and social roles these objects play in life and that extend beyond issues of industrial manufacturing.7 As a critical practice, SCD aims to offer perspectives outside the “mainstream” of industrial design by crafting scenarios, prod- ucts, and situations through which “a future” is hypothesized for provocation, reflection, and discussion. For Dunne and Raby, spec- ulative and critical design projects “provide a space where new ideas about how we interact with each other, technology, and cul- ture can be tested, presented, and communicated.... In them, we catch glimpses of how things could be if industry was a bit more imaginative and in tune with how people actually are.”8 As Auger puts it, by “observing and taking advantage of mundane, subtle, quirky but ultimately familiar behaviors or perceptions, the specu- lative designer can take the viewer on a journey to a technological future or alternate present that, whilst potentially alien, makes 6 Dunne, Hertzian Tales, 35. 9 7 Ibid., 48. perceptual sense.” 8 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, “Fic- Even though a myriad of speculative projects raise ques- tional Functions and Functional Fictions,” tions that would allow for a sound-based approach, seldom is this in Digital by Design: Crafting Technology path chosen. The intersection between SCD and sound studies is for Products and Environments, ed. Conny still just beginning to be explored, with only a few practitioners Freyer, Sebastien Noel, and Eva Rucki attending to how sound and listening give strong signals about (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 265. 10 9 Auger, “Speculative Design,” 26. possible futures. Tahiroğlu et al. have recently argued for a closer 10 See, e.g., Amina Abbas-Nazari’s “Across relationship between sound studies and design studies, claiming the Sonic Border,” http://di14.rca.ac.uk/ that sound as design might “spread the cognitive load between project/across-the-sonic-border-varia- sensory modalities, thus reducing the amount of information tions-on-50hz/ (accessed September 3, required on screen for visual processing.”11 Similarly, Franinović, 2014), and Elliott P. Montogmery, “Vehicular Acoustics Monitoring,” and Serafin point out the lack of attention paid to how artifacts www.epmid.com/w/monitoring.html sound, and hence propose a sound-based approach to interaction (accessed September 3, 2014). design—that is, to interaction paradigms conveyed through audi- 11 Koray Tahirogˇlu, Ogˇuzhan Özcan, and tory rather than visual cues.12 Both of these approaches, while in Antti Ikonen, “Sound in New Media themselves necessary and very fruitful, mostly concern design of and Design Studies,” Design Issues 30, sound at the frequency level—that is, design of proper sound no. 2 (Spring 2014): 59, doi:10.1162/ DESI_a_00262. waves and their affordances. 12 Karmen Franinovi´c and Stefania Serafin, Instead, I argue that, when speculating on how the future Sonic Interaction Design (Cambridge, could or will be devised, two approaches are necessary. First, a MA: MIT Press, 2013). stronger focus on how sound is designed is needed; and second, 13 Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than the designers must look at the sonic narratives of designed artifacts Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (London: Quartet Books, 1998); Steve Goodman, that produce, mediate, and convey listening practices. In support Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the of the latter, I turn my object of study toward sonic fiction, a Ecology of Fear, 1st ed. (Cambridge, MA: rather idiosyncratic and poetic methodology for sound and cul- MIT Press, 2010); and Holger Schulze, tural studies conceived by theorist Kodwo Eshun and further “Adventures in Sonic Fiction: A Heuristic expanded by Goodman and Schulze.13 Sonic fiction approaches for Sound Studies,” Journal of Sonic auditory experiences from the bottom up, extracting theories of Studies 4, no. 1 (2013), http://journal. sonicstudies.org/vol04/nr01/a10 sound and listening from record sleeves, liner notes, beats, and (accessed September 3, 2014). 44 DesignIssues: Volume 32, Number 2 Spring 2016 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00381 by guest on 28 September 2021 vibrations as a means to construct an augmented experience of sound. Even though Eshun focuses strongly on one specific medium—records from U.S.-American Afro-diasporic artists— I argue that such an approach could and should be used by SCD researchers, particularly by those from the global South. I examine the core characteristics of both practices, empha- sizing at first their similarities; my intention is to propose sonic fiction as a cogent epistemology (following Schulze) for SCD prac- tice. However, more than just indicating how similar they might be in principle, I develop my argument toward addressing the question of whose futures are at stake in SCD projects, insofar as they differ significantly from those of sonic fictions. I do so by identifying several problems found in the current discourse in SCD literature. Hence, I argue not only that sonic fiction offers novelty to SCD when proposing a sound-driven approach, but also that it does so from a decolonial perspective. Sonic Fiction as a Decolonial Epistemology of Sound Sound is perhaps the most powerful vector for communication. It reveals a good deal about the world, and yet the messages it is able to convey often