Author: ingridha

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News

Project update

New IMAGINE researcher and project coordinator

Sociologist Atle Wehn Hegnes will join the IMAGINE team from the 15th of August 2022. Atle will be responsible for coordinating the project in the coming year.

WP1 – Mine – Identify dominant imaginaries in documents, media and essays

•An initial list of what the team members suggested as useful objects to study

•Narrowed down the movies for the analysis to those who deal with space travel. Work in progress to systematize findings from the movies

•The WP1 team has gathered and read different theories of imagination and sorted them into categories

•Emphasis on Ricoeur’s theory through a feminist Marxist perspective has been initially developed and will be presented to the team in the workshop on the 9th June

WP2 – Explore

•Developed questionnaire for the data collection of everyday stories about the future – inspired by a similar data collection at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm (January-February)

•Finalisation of the collection site at www.minner.no

•Application to and ethical approval from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) (April-May)

•Pilot testing of the questionnaire (April)

•Public dissemination about the data collection (May)

•Launch date 19th May

•Collection period: May 2022 and until we get 100 stories

WP3 – Design

•New WP3 team member: James Lowley, PhD Candidate at OsloMet.

•Masters course MAPD5000, Technology and Design at OsloMet will start in November and includes 15 students. A pilot has been conducted

•10 Master students at TU/e are working on representations of futures of “moving”

•4 Bachelor students at TU7e are working on representations of “dressing” and several more on “eating”.

•Master and Bachelor students working on how we relate to time and how that affects our thoughts about the future

WP5 – Exchange

•Present workshop is the first of three during the project period

•Second half of the workshop will be arranged on the 30th August

•ESA conference roundtable discussion

•Anticipation conference in November

WP6 – Disseminate

•Established and updated this website

•Established and updated social media profiles:

•Imaginesustainability on Instagram

•@ImagineSustain1 on Twitter

Contact: ingridha@oslomet.no / harth@oslomet.no

Categories
Publications

New article – Skinny as a Bird: Design fiction as a vehicle for reflecting on food futures

IMAGINE-researchers Marie Hebrok and Henry Mainsah have published a paper about design fictions, Skinny as a Bird: Design fiction as a vehicle for reflecting on food futures, in the journal Futures (sciencedirect.com).

Abstract

This article explores the use of design fiction as a vehicle for critically reflecting on the complex issue of sustainable food consumption and production. The paper presents the design fiction Bird, a food delivery service that provides food rations to its customers based on their exact nutritional needs and self-improvement goals. The service makes food consumption sustainable by design, leveraging individual lifestyle ambitions to circumvent the need to translate sustainability awareness into action. We discuss what it means to embed provocation, critique, and reflection in a design fiction that highlights potential preferable and non-preferable trajectories of change related to imaginaries of technocentric food futures. Through a design fiction artefact that reflects a complex set of ethical, social, cultural, political, and environmental issues related to food consumption, the aim is to examine how design fiction can serve as an entry point for imagining and critiquing possible futures.

Click here to read the full article (sciencedirect.com).

Categories
Events

Workshop – Towards a Conceptual Framework for Contested Imaginaries of Sustainability

Work package 5, EXCHANGE, arranged a workshop on Zoom over the span of two days last week. The workshop’s theme was ‘Towards a Conceptual Framework for Contested Imaginaries of Sustainability’.

The workshop on June 7th started with an introduction by Dan Welch and Nina Heidenstrøm with an update on all of the work packages. The first session was Jo Cramer‘s presentation on Fashion and Imaginaries. She introduced literature on contested futures, theories and definitions of fashion.

The second session of Tuesday’s workshop was about speculative design and design fiction, and was led by Dan Lockton, Marie Hebrok, and Nenad Pavel. They discussed how speculative design can be used to make imaginaries tangible and open for critical discussion, and argued that speculative design has the potential to democratise future imaginaries by involving more people and distributing the power to define. After a presentation by Dan, Marie, and Nenad the attendees imagined an ordinary Tuesday in a more sustainable future in groups and visualised and presented it by using an online whiteboard. The aim was to increase our own awareness of how we are influenced by imaginaries of sustainability.

Examples of results from the session

Day 2 of the workshop, Thursday, began with an introduction of Ricœur through the concepts of memory and imagination, by Rick Dolphijn. Tamalone van den Eijnden followed with a presentation of (re)productive imagination as processes with different economic and social values and the (Marxist) feminist critique of this. The session ended with a discussion of how a theory of careful imagination could enrich the project. We also discussed how the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey reproduced older narratives and influenced science fiction movies, and used an online whiteboard to examine how space odysseys are (re)produced.

Nina Heidenstrøm and Dan Welch led the next session, where they talked about sociology and the future historically, and through practice theory and socio-temporal rhythms. They also presented results from the project Imagined futures of consumption (manchester.ac.uk).

Thursday’s final session was led by oral storyteller Heidi Dahlsveen, and it was a combination of storytelling and practical exercises like memory games and reflections on first time experiences – Kairos moments, that touched upon and summarized the themes from the previous sessions.

Through the workshop, we also talked about the next steps, reading lists and groups sessions and our next meeting and roundtable at the ESA midterm conference in Oslo this fall.

Program

June 7th Day 1: Design and Fashion

12.15 – 12.30pm: Welcome and Introduction to the Workshops – Dan Welch and Nina Heidenstrøm

12.30 – 1.15pm: Fashion and Imaginaries – Jo Cramer

1.15 – 1.45pm Lunch

1.45 – 2.45pm: Design Fiction/Speculative Design – Dan Lockton, Marie Hebrok, Nenad Pavel

2.45 – 3pm: Concluding Thoughts

June 9th Day 2: Sociology, Philosophy and Storytelling

10.20 – 10.30am: Welcome – Dan Welch and Nina Heidenstrøm

10.30 – 11.30am: Ricœur: Ideologies and Utopia (Philosophy) – Rick Dolphijn, Virginie Amilien, Tamalone van den Eijden

11.30 – 11.45am: Break

11.45 – 12.45pm: Practice Theory and Imaginaries (Sociology) – Nina Heidenstrøm and Dan Welch

12.45 – 1.15pm: Lunch

1.15 – 1.30pm:  Storytelling and Imaginaries: Heidi Dahlsveen

1.30 – 2.30 pm: Concluding Thoughts and Next Steps

Categories
Events

EU Design Days Brussels

IMAGINE researchers Marie Hebrok and Nenad Pavel are currently in Brussels for the EU Design Days arranged by ERRIN – European Research and Innovation Network.(errin.eu).

Together with a group from the Department of Design at OsloMet they are there to promote ongoing research projects. Head of studies, Julia Jacoby, included IMAGINE in her presentation «Innovation for sustainability – design research initiatives from Norway».

The EU Design Days are connecting to the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Initiative (europa.eu) and the NEB festival (europa.eu) that is going on these days.

Categories
Conferences

Accepted abstract at Anticipation

More good news! The abstract submitted by Marie Hebrok and Nenad Pavel for the Anticipation 22 Conference (anticipation.com) has been accepted! The conference is both virtual and in-person in Arizona.

selective focus photography of multicolored confetti lot

Imaginaries of sustainability – creating spaces for critical anticipation through speculative design approaches in design education

Dr. Marie Hebrok(corresponding author) Senior Researcher, Consumption Research Norway, Oslo Metropolitan University

Dr. Nenad Pavel, Associate Professor, Department of Product Design, OsloMetropolitan University

Abstract

This paper will reflect on the process and outcomes of involving design students in the recently commenced research project IMAGINE –contested futures of sustainability, through assignments to make current imaginaries of sustainability tangible and open for public critique by applying speculative design approaches. This is part of one of the three major steps defined in the research design of the project: identify, represent and confront. The tangible representations produced by students of how and by whom sustainable futures are imagined, will contribute to facilitate communication between relevant actors confronted with a multitude of contested imaginaries in order to expand the space for critique as well as for mutual understanding. Furthermore, to engage diverse stakeholders in crafting common imaginaries of sustainable futures that can work on the present to shape trajectories of change. We will base our paper on the outcomes of student involvement within two master-level courses in product design education conducted in 2021 and 2022 at Oslo Metropolitan University. Our aim is to discuss the value of our approach in fostering capacities for anticipation in design education, as well as for creating spaces for public anticipation through designerly and artistic ways of making complex issues tangible to the senses.

Categories
Conferences

Accepted abstract at ESA

The abstract submitted by Nina Heidenstrøm and Dan Welch to the European Sociological Association (ESA) conference to be held in August/September at OsloMet has been accepted!

fireworks illustration

Roundtable on IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability

Session panel:  Nina Heidenstrøm (SIFO) and Dan Welch (University of Manchester. Additional panellists TBC.

The Roundtable will introduce the recently inaugurated research project IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability (PI: Nina Heidenstrøm, SIFO), the conceptual foundations of the project and the project’s relevance to the study of consumption. The project resonates strongly with conference theme of “consumption, justice and futures [and] what it means to live and consume well in future societies”. IMAGINE is an interdisciplinary research project (humanities, social sciences, design and arts) that investigates the power of cultural imaginaries of sustainability to influence societal change, and guide and legitimize actions taken by different societal actors to establish possible futures. IMAGINE looks specifically at imaginaries tied to three currently unsustainable areas of consumption: food, clothes and mobility, and their associated practices. The Roundtable will be initiated with two presentations (10-15 minutes), followed by a chaired discussion of the issues, topics and concepts introduced. The first presentation (Heidenstrøm) will introduce the IMAGINE research programme, and its ambitions: to advance the theoretical and methodological approaches towards the scientific study of imaginaries; to convey imaginaries by making them tangible through visual, tactile and audial spaces; and to confront three types of actors—consumers, policy influencers and businesses with imaginaries of sustainability. IMAGINE’s interdisciplinary perspective mixing ethnography, philosophy, anthropology and sociology with design and art will provoke novel ways of seeing and understanding contemporary culture by creating fictional visions of alternative futures. The second presentation (Welch) will discuss the emerging conceptual framework from this interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing on results the project’s first Conceptual Workshop. The Conceptual Workshop develops theoretical dialogue between the three key disciplinary-theoretical foundations of the IMAGINE. Firstly, Ricoeur’s theory of cultural imagination, and the “utopian mode”. Secondly, sociological theories of practice, and their relation to understanding “social futures”. And thirdly, future-oriented design studies, such as speculative design and design fiction. 

Categories
News

Imagine your future life

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

The future is unknown – but how we imagine it, affects the choices we make in our daily lives. In collaboration with Norsk Folkemuseum, we invite you to share some of your thoughts:  

When you think about the future, what do you imagine? How do you think people will live 30 years from now? How will they travel, eat, dress and work? Which future do you fear? And which future would you aim for?  

We welcome you to participate with your own views in an ongoing conversation about our possible futures. Submitted texts and images are stored in the museum’s collections and will be available to researchers today – and in the future.  

Click here to submit your story (minner.no).