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Parsons
Crisis of Imagination
Earthlings are in a state of climate emergency, and yet we struggle to make meaningful impact. Our emerging climate crisis is a crisis of imagination, to paraphrase Amitav Ghosh. After decades of stagnation, experimentation with new approaches is imperative. Over the course of the past semester, students made time to question the fundamental roles of design. They examined design not as a solutions-oriented act but rather a means for generating discourse, questioning our realities and extending the imagination. Students in this course prioritized methodological experimentation as a necessary step toward preferable climate futures.
Thanks to: Elliott Montgomery
Participating Students
- Darcy Keester, Mohammad Sial, Vaidehi Supatkar, Raissa Xie
- Eriko Hantani
- J'Aboo Duet
- Jinyi Li and Arata Shimizu
- Jonathan Hung
Darcy Keester, Mohammad Sial, Vaidehi Supatkar, Raissa Xie
Darcy Keester (playing Dr. Cassia Lepo) is a design strategist currently pursuing her Master's degree in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design. She puts humans at the heart of her design practice and is passionate about creating change within the realms of healthcare and alternative economic and political structures. Her background is in environmental design and community development where she has extensive experience with design-build projects. Check out her portfolio here or get in touch via LinkedIn.
Mohammad Sial (playing Marlow Ono Ferrera) who defines himself as a "design surgeon", is also currently pursuing an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design. With experience in systems and visual communication, he endeavors to introduce participatory design strategies to unfamiliar spaces. You can find more of his work here.
Vaidehi Supatkar (playing Myra Nair) is a Multidisciplinary designer enrolled at MFA Transdisciplinary design at Parsons School of Design. Working at the intersection of design, social science and technology: Vaidehi engages with complex problems to plurally design nudges that nest within systems, experiences and futures . With a background in User Experience Design, Service Design and Design Research, Vaidehi pose's a unique experience working with clients ranging from leading international companies, Non-profit and The Government. You can Reach out on Linkedin or view her work on Vaidehi's portfolio.
Raissa Xie (playing Iris Young) is a designer and researcher currently pursuing an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She previously worked in digital product design and research for various technology companies, before joining Parsons to explore how design can be adapted as a decision-making and advocacy tool to facilitate conversations at the intersection of policy, technology, and social sciences to create more equitable futures. Raissa can be reached on LinkedIn or on her website.
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Speculative Design Process
Our design process consisted of multiple iterations of diverging and converging. We started by collecting signals which spoke to emerging possible futures and then considered different lenses through which to frame societal challenges. We worked to build out an imagined future by defining a system of values and a history using those signals and problem frames. Finally, we worked to bring people into our world and foster dialogue around these imagined futures.
Signals from the Past and News From the Future
Our climate efforts are doomed by our framing. We see the crisis as external and imagine ways to shape the world around us but can hardly imagine different ways of living, empowering politicians who suffer from a crisis of imagination, and seek short-term, surface-level bandaids to climate issues . This project presents problem framing as a crucial piece of the solution and explores how entangled societal factors—politics, economics, culture—can become the material for innovation.
World Building: Creating a Hierarchy of Values
Our imagined future was built on a set of values that reflect the signals we saw emerging from different parts of the country. In both, data-driven, seemingly objective truths have become prioritized societal values as a response to the destructive post-truth era, which ended with the dismantling of the federal government. The data begins to deconstruct notions of truth that drive decision making around climate related issues that have become paramount to political discourse.
Vote for LAKA
New technologies have enabled interspecies communication and created trees that are capable of deep learning. In Hawai?i, a city-state that values the climate first and then the future health of all species, LAKA, a 500 year old super-intelligent bioborg Banyan tree, has emerged as a front-runner in the latest election. LAKA crafts policy from collective interspecies health data. In this imagined future, people are willing to put the health of their planet above their own.
SAM Interface
SAM, an artifactual intelligence built on San Franciscan's collective data is the mind to a body of smart devices known as ION (Interface of the Network). SAM makes complex administrative decisions using the "objective truths" embedded in their data. As daily interactions with ION compose a portrait of the population, their true will is translated by SAM into policy, which can then only be shaped through behavior. What becomes of collective responsibility and blame? How will it be manipulated?
Global News Network: Your Fact-Checked, Grassroots Approach Towards Computational Journalism
In our imagined future, both the societies of Hawai?i and San Francisco become increasingly unhappy with short-termism politics that rarely create meaningful change, particularly with long term challenges like climate change. Hungry for true representation, residents create local governments that reflect their values. Hawai?i is letting climate take precedence over themselves and San Francisco is letting their actions speak louder than their words. Will either society create positive change?
Darcy Keester, Mohammad Sial, Vaidehi Supatkar, Raissa Xie
Darcy Keester (playing Dr. Cassia Lepo) is a design strategist currently pursuing her Master's degree in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design. She puts humans at the heart of her design practice and is passionate about creating change within the realms of healthcare and alternative economic and political structures. Her background is in environmental design and community development where she has extensive experience with design-build projects. Check out her portfolio here or get in touch via LinkedIn.
Mohammad Sial (playing Marlow Ono Ferrera) who defines himself as a "design surgeon", is also currently pursuing an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design. With experience in systems and visual communication, he endeavors to introduce participatory design strategies to unfamiliar spaces. You can find more of his work here.
Vaidehi Supatkar (playing Myra Nair) is a Multidisciplinary designer enrolled at MFA Transdisciplinary design at Parsons School of Design. Working at the intersection of design, social science and technology: Vaidehi engages with complex problems to plurally design nudges that nest within systems, experiences and futures . With a background in User Experience Design, Service Design and Design Research, Vaidehi pose's a unique experience working with clients ranging from leading international companies, Non-profit and The Government. You can Reach out on Linkedin or view her work on Vaidehi's portfolio.
Raissa Xie (playing Iris Young) is a designer and researcher currently pursuing an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design in New York. She previously worked in digital product design and research for various technology companies, before joining Parsons to explore how design can be adapted as a decision-making and advocacy tool to facilitate conversations at the intersection of policy, technology, and social sciences to create more equitable futures. Raissa can be reached on LinkedIn or on her website.
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Eriko Hantani
A Documentary about the Flow-Stock System
This Japanese documentary shows the future world where global warming has progressed and focuses on the experience of an individual in this future. In this world, people are divided into two groups; Flow and Stock.
In the near future, some countries will certainly lose their living places by the sea level rise. Rather, some people have already suffered it or the increase of natural disasters by global warming. Can people who don't experience many natural disasters caused by global warming imagine these people's crisis? How?
In the world in this documentary, some countries and lowlands in some countries were sunk under the sea due to the sea level rise. Other countries need to accept people who can't live in their countries. However, at the same time, global warming caused not only the expansion of areas of tropical infections but also increase new infections because melting ice in the arctic area or Greenland released unknown viruses or bacteria. Nations decided to disperse people to avoid concentration, and each city/country set the limitation of the number of people. People who were confirmed that they have antibodies to current widespread infections move among cities. They are classified as Flow people and have a special passport to move around areas. Other people who have no immunity remain in one particular place to prevent infections as Stock. Everyone could be affected by disasters by global warming in this future.
This documentary is not a dystopian future because each country can cooperate. The international organization works well to keep this Flow-Stock system. Everyone can get antibody tests by developed medical care systems. However, we cannot help but think about our existing system through this documentary. Would we accept people who lost their living places by only humanitarian reasons? Would countries be able to cooperate under the initiative of an International organization so that human beings survive? How would policies look like in this future and affect each individual? Or, can we see other futures by countermeasures to climate change in the current world?
Through this fictional documentary, I want the audience to think about what could happen to their own experiences and other's experiences by the effect of the existing system and the current world itself.
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The Process of This World
The Scene of an Airport in the Future
Certificate of Immunizations
Eriko Hantani
A Documentary about the Flow-Stock System
This Japanese documentary shows the future world where global warming has progressed and focuses on the experience of an individual in this future. In this world, people are divided into two groups; Flow and Stock.
In the near future, some countries will certainly lose their living places by the sea level rise. Rather, some people have already suffered it or the increase of natural disasters by global warming. Can people who don't experience many natural disasters caused by global warming imagine these people's crisis? How?
In the world in this documentary, some countries and lowlands in some countries were sunk under the sea due to the sea level rise. Other countries need to accept people who can't live in their countries. However, at the same time, global warming caused not only the expansion of areas of tropical infections but also increase new infections because melting ice in the arctic area or Greenland released unknown viruses or bacteria. Nations decided to disperse people to avoid concentration, and each city/country set the limitation of the number of people. People who were confirmed that they have antibodies to current widespread infections move among cities. They are classified as Flow people and have a special passport to move around areas. Other people who have no immunity remain in one particular place to prevent infections as Stock. Everyone could be affected by disasters by global warming in this future.
This documentary is not a dystopian future because each country can cooperate. The international organization works well to keep this Flow-Stock system. Everyone can get antibody tests by developed medical care systems. However, we cannot help but think about our existing system through this documentary. Would we accept people who lost their living places by only humanitarian reasons? Would countries be able to cooperate under the initiative of an International organization so that human beings survive? How would policies look like in this future and affect each individual? Or, can we see other futures by countermeasures to climate change in the current world?
Through this fictional documentary, I want the audience to think about what could happen to their own experiences and other's experiences by the effect of the existing system and the current world itself.
- Thumbnails
J'Aboo Duet
J'Aboo Duet
J'Aboo is a design collaboration between Lebanese designer/tomato scientist Nour Abou Jaoude and Polish tomato engineer/designer Julia W. Szagdaj. Their speculative design practice is guided by rigorous design-led research, creating through lenses of situated-knowledges from their own cultures, and their appreciation of humor in discursive design. They met at Parsons School of Design and will graduate from MFA Transdisciplinary Design in 2021.
Tomatown 2050
The crisis at the center of this work is the projected amplification of global food scarcity as a result of climate change, as experienced in a specific town: Tomatown. The whole project takes place in a post-GMO-debate, society where there are no regulations for creating bioengineered food.
As the name suggests, this town is known for growing tomatoes and for being the first agriculturally self-sufficient city in the world. They grow not just any kind of tomatoes, but genetically modified tomatoes that take the shape, taste, or molecular structure of disappearing foods like banana, and chocolate.
The town's foundation for progress is a collaboration between agriculture and sciences. This is why the scientist-farmers of this town, in partnership with the municipality, host yearly town-hall meetings "Tomato Visions" where they discuss predictions of soon to be extinct foods, and to pick the new tomato that they will start engineering. In these meetings, they also raise regular issues like water scarcity and the harsh frosty winters that might destroy the tomato fields.
In these convenings, scientists, farmers, and residents come together to suggests solutions. In the last town-hall meeting two new ideas were presented; the fluorescent-rice-tomato and the coffee tomato. Both had very reasonable reasons to be produced, but the citizens picked coffee tomato.
This project takes a humorous approach by hero-ing the tomato and making it a sacred town's emblem. The town takes pride in naming the new tomatoes, mimicking playfully the act of bioengineering two species together, almost like a marriage.
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TOMALATE 2030
Tomo-Late is the first genetically modified tomato produced in this town. It's a tomato that contains creamy chocolate taste and texture due to the injection of a chemical catalyst. It has been exported to more than 700 towns and is the main source of income in Tomatown. Used as anti-diabetes medicine. Called the "longevity secret" and memory enhancement "magic bite".
TOMANANA 2035
Tomanana, the tomato-banana, was first engineered in 2030. Resistant to pests and diseases due to cross-breeding with Hrap and Pflp genes. Increased nutritional value, natural oils, carbohydrates, and vitamins. When processed, used in shampoos that benefit the hair and keep them clean for up to a month, saving the water resources of Tomatown.
TOMAFEE 2050
"Tomato Visions" townhall proposal, 2050.
TOMASSENT 2050
"Tomato Visions" townhall proposal, 2050.
TOMASSENT 2050 technical drawing
"Tomato Visions" townhall proposal, 2050.
TOMAFEE 2050 technical drawing
"Tomato Visions" townhall proposal, 2050.
J'Aboo Duet
J'Aboo Duet
J'Aboo is a design collaboration between Lebanese designer/tomato scientist Nour Abou Jaoude and Polish tomato engineer/designer Julia W. Szagdaj. Their speculative design practice is guided by rigorous design-led research, creating through lenses of situated-knowledges from their own cultures, and their appreciation of humor in discursive design. They met at Parsons School of Design and will graduate from MFA Transdisciplinary Design in 2021.
Tomatown 2050
The crisis at the center of this work is the projected amplification of global food scarcity as a result of climate change, as experienced in a specific town: Tomatown. The whole project takes place in a post-GMO-debate, society where there are no regulations for creating bioengineered food.
As the name suggests, this town is known for growing tomatoes and for being the first agriculturally self-sufficient city in the world. They grow not just any kind of tomatoes, but genetically modified tomatoes that take the shape, taste, or molecular structure of disappearing foods like banana, and chocolate.
The town's foundation for progress is a collaboration between agriculture and sciences. This is why the scientist-farmers of this town, in partnership with the municipality, host yearly town-hall meetings "Tomato Visions" where they discuss predictions of soon to be extinct foods, and to pick the new tomato that they will start engineering. In these meetings, they also raise regular issues like water scarcity and the harsh frosty winters that might destroy the tomato fields.
In these convenings, scientists, farmers, and residents come together to suggests solutions. In the last town-hall meeting two new ideas were presented; the fluorescent-rice-tomato and the coffee tomato. Both had very reasonable reasons to be produced, but the citizens picked coffee tomato.
This project takes a humorous approach by hero-ing the tomato and making it a sacred town's emblem. The town takes pride in naming the new tomatoes, mimicking playfully the act of bioengineering two species together, almost like a marriage.
- Thumbnails
Jinyi Li and Arata Shimizu
Jinyi Li: A First-year student from the M.F.A program of Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design, currently in New York City. In Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA), China, as an undergraduate, she studied Visual Communication Design with a specialization in branding.
Arata Shimizu: A visiting scholar at DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab, Parson School of Design. He holds a Master's degree in Interaction design from Tokyo Metropolitan University.
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Balanced Symbiosis
This project invites viewers to re-think the relationship between personal activities and viruses by speculating on a possible way of going outside. What kind of alternative human-virus relationships could we design, and how would we share living spaces with viruses, as peaceful neighbors? What if ancient viruses from thawing glaciers reached human civilization? How would public spaces change? What new policies, social norms, products, services, and agencies would emerge under these conditions?
Relationships with viruses
Glacial melting is bringing numerous problematic health issues. Some animals and insects spread new viruses that humans don't currently have the immune system against. The relationship between humans and viruses has become increasingly tense. We believe there is a need to focus on not only how many people might die, but how many will survive. This situation will be seasonal and random until we establish a peaceful "contract" with these viruses and living in harmony with the human body.
New Social Norm
Cities are attractive to humans for economic opportunities, but also attractive to viruses because of density. It's possible that we might face multiple viruses with various and unique characteristics. In the future, an ancient airborne virus is released from an Atlantic glacier. People are banned from speaking loudly in an indoor public. Residents inhale the bottled air to avoid contracting the virus, by going out to catch the fresh air in balloons or garbage bags.
AIR RATION STAMP | TAX = AIR POLLUTION = HUMAN ACTIVITY
Clean virus-free air is a scarce resource. The government has introduced an AIR RATION SYSTEM requiring each citizen to use AIR RATION STAMPS to get their allotted amount of safe air for their monthly outgoings. The new system demands its citizens to take responsibility for their rate of activity. Citizens are required to report their monthly mobility and time outside. The Tax Department calculates the amount of AIR RATION STAMPS, which will allow them to receive clean virus-free air.
VIRUSTOPIA
A newly- established company named "Virustopia" devotes themselves to new DIY immunization technology that enables people to stay home to strengthen their immune systems. They successfully modified the DNA of COVID-19, the disastrous respiratory virus, and transplanted it to their previous invention of SUPER MUSHROOMS as a safe virus incubator. The genetic modifications allow these mushrooms to weaken the virus. People can stay home and gradually develop immunity living safely with the virus.
NEW PSYCHOTHERAPY APPROACH
Staying at home for so long causes many people to have psychological problems such as cabin fever and claustrophobia. A&J, a world-renowned psychological research institute, has developed a partnership with the Virustopia to launch a new psychotherapy approach. By growing their own super mushrooms, patients can learn to regulate their mental state and gain confidence in the harmonious coexistence of viruses. Virustopia was named the most popular and valuable enterprise in the world.
Jinyi Li and Arata Shimizu
Jinyi Li: A First-year student from the M.F.A program of Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons School of Design, currently in New York City. In Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (GAFA), China, as an undergraduate, she studied Visual Communication Design with a specialization in branding.
Arata Shimizu: A visiting scholar at DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) Lab, Parson School of Design. He holds a Master's degree in Interaction design from Tokyo Metropolitan University.
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Jonathan Hung
Timebox is a space for reckoning with certain and uncertain futures.
It approaches the futility of any one person to try to reckon with, and plan for, what the world will be like 5-10 years from now.
It attempts to bring large scale uncertainties into human scale.
It is a space for mapping complexity and consequence, visualizing the future, and orienting collective action towards preferable visions.
At its most simple, Timebox a framework: a sequence of steps to help groups orient towards emerging futures.
The framework is currently being stress-tested and researched in corporate design settings.
I hope that this project and subsequent research builds momentum for dedicating more resources towards thinking in the long-term.
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Jonathan Hung
Timebox is a space for reckoning with certain and uncertain futures.
It approaches the futility of any one person to try to reckon with, and plan for, what the world will be like 5-10 years from now.
It attempts to bring large scale uncertainties into human scale.
It is a space for mapping complexity and consequence, visualizing the future, and orienting collective action towards preferable visions.
At its most simple, Timebox a framework: a sequence of steps to help groups orient towards emerging futures.
The framework is currently being stress-tested and researched in corporate design settings.
I hope that this project and subsequent research builds momentum for dedicating more resources towards thinking in the long-term.
- Thumbnails