Speculative needs XOXO
talk – 15 min | Feb 8 – 12:25
Has anyone seen my FOMO breather?
Design is very politically correct and well behaved today. In this talk we move away from all the perfection and look at some design objects and services that aren’t solving problems. They are neither marketable nor scalable, sellable nor profitable. This might seem odd at first, but in this talk design is more concerned about the dialogue and provocation rather than the solution. Services such as attending mass on youtube for 5.99$ /month, owning a FOMO breather for Friday nights alone, and giving your DNA as a wedding present are all design objects and services that reveal and inform the future at a much deeper level. The ideological level. We explore the alternatives and future possibilities through fiction, and open them up for discussion. We will be introduced to hybrid research methods taken from design thinking and fiction writing, and the goal is to enable people to think critically and reexamine their indoctrinated assumptions and assigned behaviors to objects and services we normally interact with.
Tatiana Toutikian
Critical Design Fiction
About the speaker
Tatiana Toutikian
Critical Design Fiction
Hello there, my name is Tatiana and I am an industrial and critical designer. I design objects, services, and interactions for the near future or sometimes another now. I use design as a tool for provocation, dialogue, and a challenger of assumptions. I am currently the Collaborations Manager at the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Design Research Center and the IXDA Local Leader of Beirut. For the past year I have also been organizing the Beirut Design Week and organized with a small team the first critical design conference in the Middle East. My most recent endeavor is moving critical design away from the white wall and into the mainstream media, specifically into modern music culture through experimenting with speculative ideas through music you can bob to.
