The difference between a triangle and a circle

By proposing cautionary tales of future prospects, Speculative Design (SD) strives to adopt a critical position, the same way Karen Barad’s Agencial Realism entails a rethinking of the responsibilities of being within and as part of the world. Considering a different perspective on the present-future dichotomy, I propose a framework for contextualising speculative endeavours.

The capillary distribution of the global affair requires constant attention and calls for innovative solutions to its intrinsic hyperobjects and entanglements. In an effort to comprehend the complexities of the present, feminist scholars have pushed forward theoretical and methodological endeavours promoting more inclusive reworkings and re-evaluations of philosophical thoughts. One of these contributions goes further into the methodological rabbit hole. Karen Barad’s Agencial Realism diffracts from Quantum Physics in general and from Bohr's philosophy-physics in particular and incorporates epistemological, ontological and ethical considerations that attempt a new perspective in regards of both the natural and the social.

Under Agential Realism, each reconfiguration of the world is generated by entanglements of phenomena of both matter and discourse, actively intra-acting. The notion of intra-action is a key element in Barad’s framework. In contrast with the concept of interaction, that assumes separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, intra-action suggests that agencies do not precede, but rather emerge though their intra-action. Instead of considering sets of pre-existent and autonomous phenomena (material nature of practices), Barad goes beyond matters of representationalism (and the nature of representations), focusing directly on how these phenomena intra-act within.

Art and design also find themselves in the front line when it comes to finding alternative metaphors to present circumstances. Speculative approaches in design aim to open up various pluralities and justified distortions, focusing on some unlikely but not difficult to envision future dimensions. Given their propensity for inclusiveness, these scenarios strive to make the spectator part of the apparatus of a future-fiction by means of suspension of disbelief. 

In an attempt to delineate where SD situates itself, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby evoke “The Futures Cone”, a diagram first introduced by futurologist Stuart Candy and later adapted by the two designers under the name“ PPPP”. The diagram illustrates a horizontally positioned cone, whose vertex is designated by the Present and from where different future possibilities take off.

Traditional design mainly operates in the Probable cone, as it extrapolates on what is likely to happen and is conditioned by current trends and constraints. 

The cone of Plausible futures designates what could happen through scientific discoveries or alternate social practices. 

The widest cone represents the Possible future, the field of the speculative culture—writing, cinema, science fiction, social fiction. 

Intersecting a part of both plausible and probable futures, a Preferable area delineates where SD should be deployed in order to collectively define a preferable future.

Dunne and Raby suggest that “[…] we need to shift from designing applications to designing implications by creating imaginary products and services that situate these new developments within everyday culture.” In my reading of this quote, SD needs to operate with(in) the present and I believe PPPP does not convey to this intention, as it is limited by a wrong perspective. 

The way in which in the rays spring out from the present-point seem to delineate projections (mirrorings) of the present without any possibility of affect. Moreover, the projects diligently referenced throughout the book "Speculative Everything" (2013) as examples of speculation, seem to cast the core of SD further away from reality. 

SD’s play with the uncertainty of the future should include that much of this uncertainty advances an urgency to trouble time and to produce collective imaginaries able to directly stir up the present, instead of proposing future projections of the world.

When it comes to understanding the position that SD wants to assume, we have to start by addressing our susceptibility to view art and design as purely representational. Usually, this perspective sees creative outcomes as only reflections of the world, without having an actual effect on it.

Representationalism has constantly been contested by post-humanists, as it takes for granted the idea that representations reflect (social or natural) reality and mediate the relation between presence and representation, and in so doing they submit thought to a proper relation to an outside rather than to a direct engagement with it. Karen Barad points out how representationalism fails to take account of the practices through which representations are produced, saying that “images or representations are not snapshots or depictions of what awaits us, but rather condensations or traces of multiple practices of engagement.” 

Donna Haraway found a substitute to the metaphor of reflection in the phenomenon of diffraction. Diffraction is a physical phenomenon exhibited by waves, as they pass through an aperture or around objects. A classical example of diffraction would be the water ripples that occur when throwing a pebble in a pond. For Haraway “[…] diffraction patterns record the history of interaction, interference, reinforcement, difference. Diffraction is about heterogeneous history, not about originals. Unlike reflections, diffractions do not displace the same elsewhere, in more or less distorted form, […] rather, diffraction can be a metaphor for another kind of critical consciousness.” 

Barad adopts Haraway’s diffractive viewpoint within her Agencial Realism, suggesting that a diffractive methodology can provide a better understating and a deeper insight to the world’s entanglements. Her diffractive methodology is therefore to be seen as a critical practice of engagement that allows us to learn about how phenomena come to matter and how they participate in the ongoing reconfigurings the world. Barad also points out how “making knowledge is not simply about making facts, but about making worlds, or rather, it is about making specific worldly configurations - not in the sense of making them up ex nihilo, or out of language, beliefs or ideas, but in the sense of materially engaging as part of the world in giving it specific material form.” 

Looking at SD from this point of view, a lot of projects seem to be detached from the present, existing in their own speculative bubble (out of language, beliefs or ideas), somewhere in the future. This strategic placement makes difficult any meaningful way of direct engagement and subordinates them to a reflexive standpoint.

I believe that by addressing its positioning and by advancing a stable methodology, SD can function as a contemporary form of forward-thinking intervention. I want to propose a new perspective over “The Futures Cone” proposed by Dunne and Raby: rather than viewing it horizontally as a triangle, I suggest a frontal circular view which depicts the present-point diffracting into future probabilities. Situating ourselves in the middle of the circle and acknowledging the implication of our position, should facilitate a direct engagement with applied apparatuses of speculation.

Each SD practice should unfold a specific possible reconfiguration of the present and within the present. A configuration is designated by a specific pattern of diffraction produced by an applied SD apparatus (that is, a specific narration), that delineates a specific entanglement that consequently exclude any other configuration or narration. Beyond the mere imprint of provocation, the patterns of difference between the present and the suggested future should be able to activate more inclusive forms of criticism against the dimensions of our society and within our globalised context. If we consider that dealing with future scenarios is nevertheless a matter of reconfiguring the world, identifying the diffraction trajectories mapped out by fictional scenarios as well as the performative quality of these narratives can reveal the flexible and adaptable role of speculation in art and design.

Although SD generally deals with registers of possibility, by analysing these practices through a stable framework we can see how, when applied correctly, SD can summon the social emergencies we need to address in the present, by means of interference. While recognising SD as part of the present, we approach speculative phenomena as fields of capacity and power that can be creatively diffused in a variety of viewpoints under different intra-actions within and as part of the world.