The Role of Fiction in Experiments within Design, Art & Architecture EVA KNUTZ, KOLDING SCHOOL OF DESIGN [email protected] THOMAS MARKUSSEN KOLDING SCHOOL OF DESIGN [email protected] POUL RIND CHRISTENSEN KOLDING SCHOOL OF DESIGN [email protected] ABSTRACT airliners transporting people across the Atlantic. The ability to use design fictions for speculating about This paper offers a typology for understanding design alternative presences or possible futures is at the core of design practice. What is new is that it is now fiction as a new approach in design research. The claimed also to be a viable road for producing valid typology allows design researchers to explain design knowledge in design research (Grand & Wiedmer, 2010). fictions according to 5 criteria: (1) “What if scenarios” as the basic construal principle of design fiction; (2) the In this paper, we argue that in order to establish design manifestation of critique; (3) design aims; (4) fiction as a promising new approach to design research, materializations and forms; and (5) the aesthetic of there is a need to develop a more detailed understanding of the role of fiction in design design fictions. The typology is premised on the idea experiments. Some attempts have already been made. that fiction may integrate with reality in many different DiSalvo (2012) thus accounts for two forms of design fiction in terms of what he calls ‘spectacle’ and ‘trope’. ways in design experiments. The explanatory power of While DiSalvo makes a valuable contribution, his the typology is exemplified through the analyses of 6 treatment is too limited for understanding other forms of design fiction. Grand & Wiedmer (2010) propose a case projects. method toolbox for practicing design fiction in design research, but in fact they say very little about the particularities of this approach. Only that it may take INTRODUCTION the form of ‘criticising existing technologies’ as in Within the last couple of years there has been an critical design, ‘asking unanswerable questions’ or increased interest in Design Fiction as a new practice ‘reinterpreting the past’ by transforming what is into or approach within design research (Bleecker, 2009; what could be. DiSalvo, 2012; Grand and Wiedmer, 2010). Ever since the advent of modern design, designers have used We offer a typology, which allows us to explain design fiction as a technique for experimenting with fictions according to 5 criteria. The typology is alternative models for society or for criticising existing premised on the idea that fiction may integrate with ones. The imaginary urban projects of the Futurists reality in many different ways in design experiments. proposed a city where machines enabled radically new Since design fictions can take many forms and forms of architecture and infrastructure, and in the variations, it is simply impossible to cover them all in 1920s Norman Bel Geddes envisioned what at that the stroke of one paper. Our typology is built up from 6 time must have looked like an utopian idea: gargantuan case projects, all of which use fiction in design experiments offering alternative models for designing 1 the urban environment. This typology should be will look exactly like humans – so much that we can thought of as an initial first step towards building a fall in love with them? (Blade Runner, 1982) What if more exhaustive framework. the Earth will get too polluted to live on – and we will have to build new cities elsewhere in the universe? We start out by defining design fiction and discussing (WallE, 2008). the role of fiction in relation to experiments in design research. Next, we account for how design fiction is Design fiction raises the question of how what-if manifested in the 6 case projects. On the basis of our scenarios set up conditions for experimenting with and case analyses we present a table offering an overview. prototyping of possible futures in design practice as Finally, we critically discuss our typology in relation to well as in design research. To answer that question it related work. seems fruitful to inquire into the relation between fiction and experiments. How to prototype the future through experimentation? DEFINING ‘DESIGN FICTION’ PROTOTYPING THE FUTURE THROUGH It is the sci-fi author Bruce Sterling who originally EXPERIMENTS coined the term Design Fiction. In Shaping Things Sterling (2005) makes the observation that designers Experimentation is an essential human skill useful for share many interests with science fiction writers, most understanding our images of reality and the validity of importantly a deep engagement with imaginary objects scientific theories about the constitution of the world. and speculations about the future to come. But there is Experiments played a crucial role in Galileo’s rejection of Aristotle’s law of gravity. Also the works by for a core distinction as well between design and science example Newton, Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci were fiction: “Science fiction wants to invoke the grandeur and credibility of science for its own hand-waving based on experimental approaches. Experiments are hocus-pocus”, while design fictions are typically more central for many sciences, yet, we know very little practical, more hands-on. More precisely, Sterling about the role of fiction in these experiments. Fiction is defines design fiction as “the deliberate use of diegetic not restricted to some whimsical ideas of the authors prototypes to suspend disbelief about change…It mind. A “wormhole”, which is a concept in Einstein’s means you’re thinking very seriously about potential theory of relativity (the correct scientific label is the objects and services and trying to get people to ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridge’), is as fictitious as the notion concentrate on those - rather than entire worlds or of “cyberspace” in William Gibson’s novel political trends or geopolitical strategies. It’s not a Neuromancer. kind of fiction. It’s a kind of design. It tells worlds However, the purpose of using fiction in experiment in rather than stories (Sterling, 2009). natural science is different from design, art and Examples of such diegetic objects would be Auger & architecture. Here experiments are carried out with the Loizeau’s proposal for a battery laden with energy goal of verifying, falsifying, or establishing the validity made up from acid left in the stomach of deceased of a hypothesis (Koskinen et al., 2011; Steffen, 2012). family members from their last supper, which relatives The experiment can thus be seen as a method of testing are given instead of a urn. Or Eduardo Kac’s gene - with the goal of explaining – a scientific view of how manipulated rabbit Alba that glows up in a green the world is. fluorescent colour, because it has been cloned with the In design, art and architecture the experiments take on GFP gene from deep-sea jellyfish. In the first instance, a different role. In these practices the experiment is design fiction speculates on energy being a hollow used primarily to construct images of future realities or force and suggests changes to our culturally entrenched opportunities in contrast to present realities. In design rituals. In the second, design fiction is used to question practice experimentation can serve a range of the limits and consequences of gene modification and functions, for instance (i) trying out ideas about how to biotechnology. shape the future into a preferred state (Simon, 1969); Common for all design fictions is that they can usually (ii) criticising how capitalist interests, technology or be described according to a basic rule of fiction, an design ideology constrain our everyday life (Dunne and imaginary, sometimes even impossible "what if"- Raby, 2001; Dunne, 1999); (iii) as a central tactic in scenario. These scenarios are fictitious worlds that give urban interventions for promoting social change utopian or dystopian images of a possible future that (Markussen, 2013). In design research and artistically we as humans could end up in – or be challenged by. inclined research practices, experiments typically serve Try to think of sci-fi films and the ”What if”- an additional purpose, namely that of shedding light on scenarios”, they play out: What if we were able to specific research questions (Brandt and Binder, 2007; Niedderer and Roworth-Stokes, 2007). For instance, in predict crime before they are committed? (Minority Auger & Loizeau’s Audio Tooth Implant experiments Report, 2002) What if we can travel into an alternate presence by downloading human consciousness into a were used to explore a post-humanist future where the computer? (Avatar, 2009) What if everything in our human body has been augmented through technology. world is information? (Matrix, 1999) What if women But they were also addressing a design research loose the ability to give birth? (Children of Men, 2006) question: What are the ultimate consequences of What if next generation robots took command on shrinking mobile technologies? planet Earth (The Terminator, 1984) What if robots 2 It is through the experiment that designers, architects qualities – but are at the same time critical. The and artists can explore critical questions, or address question is: critical in relation to what? What types of particular phenomena or aspects of our lives, fiction do they represent? investigate problems or remove problems. Sometimes Design Fiction whether in the form of utopian or these experiments lead to a better world, a higher dystopian experiments deals with the imagination and quality of life. Sometimes they seem to do the materialization of possible futures. But what is the role opposite: create new problems. This paper will not of fiction in these possible futures? We are aiming at evaluate this aspect of the experiment. Our aim is developing a more detailed understanding of the role of instead to increase knowledge of how fiction can be fiction in design experiments by using the following 5 used as part of experimenting in design research.