Category: News

The Ecology of Imaginaries is a glossary developed as part of WP 1 MINE.

The glossary is a companion to the report Imagining Future(s): Mining Literacies of Sustainable Consumption, by Justyna Jacubiec, Tamalone van den Eijnden, Lisbeth Løvbak Berg, Virginie Amilien,
Rick Dolphijn and Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen.

It is a repository of concepts with which the authors worked during the research. It is inspired by Pau Ricoeur’s writings on imagination and the imaginary and aims to open a space for dialogue by engaging with different concepts and creating new ones.

In this work, it is emphasised that imagination should not be seen as only present in the human mind, as if siolated from the world. Instead it is scattered, ecological, productive and creative.

The process of imagining is a

negotiation with our thoughts, written and spoken words, social relations, habits, practices, other human and more-than-human entities and material assemblages we are a part of and dwell in

Jacubiec et al., 2024

View the full glossary here (Prezi.com).

Technology in some way or form is present in all our future imaginaries. But there are also alternative ways to imagine life in 30 years.

Project leader Nina Heidenstrøm was interviewed about the findings of WP1 Mine, where the imaginaries that consumers encounter in everything from popular culture to policy and business documents, were examined.

The imaginaries vary, between the playfulness yet often dystopian stories of science fiction, and the sometimes visionary but mainly solution-oriented policy and business document. A common element is, however, the discussion of technology.

– In business, they put a lot of faith in future technology solving the problems that industries are facing. Namely, that they produce way too much. Hence they use technology to produce more sustainably without reducing the production volumes. They frame it as being to the benefit of the consumer.

The technology-driven stories are contrasted by stories of radical social change, questioning how we organise our lives, our cities and our communities.

Read the full article in Norwegian here or here (forskning.no)
Or dive into all the findings in the report from WP1 here.

We fear suveillance at work and fight over jobs. But what we want the most is a future with shorter work days and more free time.

Project leader Nina Heidenstrøm was interviewed about the findings of the 150 Norwegian consumer stories collected so far via minner.no and what they say about the future of work.

In the stories, there is a stark contrast between the fears of tougher times economically, maybe even requiring two jobs to survive and AI and other technology enabling surveillance at work in and daily life, and the wish to slow down and have more time for other things than work.

There also seems to be a willingness to adjust consumption to lower incomes.

– However, it does not seem like people are willing to reduce their level of comfort, so I am unsure what they imagine that they will use less of, Nina says.

You can read the full article in Norwegian here.

In January, we conducted three Confront Workshops (WP4) in collaboration with our subcontractor ÆRA. Each workshop focused on a specific theme—eating, dressing, and moving—and involved 45 participants representing consumers, policymakers, and businesses.

Prior to the workshops, participants recorded short videos expressing their hopes, dreams, and concerns for the future. The three-hour workshops started with a plenary, which included a storytelling session. Participants were then divided into smaller groups of 3-4, sharing their thoughts about the future in general.

After the first group session, the participants attended a mini exhibition based on of some of the projects made by design students at OsloMet (WP3). In the second group session, the participants discussed their hopes, fears and dreams for the future of food, clothing and mobility. A final plenary summarized the discussions.

Participants used survey cards to capture their thoughts and insights throughout the workshops. The cards were filled in during the introductory session, after the first and second group discussions, and in the final session (example below).

Researchers have asked the Norwegian population to share their thoughts about the future. Some narratives stand out.

Project leader Nina Heidenstrøm was interviewed about the stories collected in WP2 when Norwegians were asked what they think the world will look like in 30 years.

One respondent writes:

I think the world in 30 years will be severely marked by climate and nature destruction and that it is characterised by hundreds of millions of people fleeing towards the northern part of the world, primarily because of draught and failed crops, along with lacking ground water. But I also think many ecosystems will collapse, resulting in extreme ripple effects, for example bees, corals and fish. This will cause famines.

There will surely be large fires in the whole of southern Europe every summer, very long draught periods and no functioning food production systems. This will lead to enormous refugee camps in central Europe composed of southern Europeans as well as Africans and people from other continents. I can imagine that the northern European countries will construct border fences towards the south. The EU will be history due to internal disagreements on how to handle all these problems. Large increase in right-wing populism. Extreme inequality, where the rich have become richer and the poor more numerous and poorer.

This type is a good example of the type of story that the researchers have called a crisis ladder, where one event leads to another, more serious event.

Read the full article in Norewegian here (forskning.no).
Or dive into all the findings in the report from WP2 here.

The magazine A Magasinet from the newspaper Aftenposten (The Evening Post) is asking: – Millions of jobs will soon disappear. What are we going to be doing in the future?
 
The article references the World Economic Forum’s prediction from this summer that 81 million jobs probably will disappear within the next few years and the list of 100 jobs of the future developed by researchers at Deakin and Griffith University in Australia. The list includes (drone) swarm artist, ethical hacker and genetics coach.

The journalists interviewed several people on the subject, including Imagine project leader Nina Heidenstrøm. For the interview, she delved into the stories collected on minner.no to say something about the future of work:

“The cliché has taught us: nobody can predict the future. But it is nevertheless possible to fantasise and imagine. Humans always have.

What do you see then? Food on tubes? Robot take-overs? Flying cars? That we will live on a strange planet? Then you’re not alone.

– These classic future images are strikingly constant. They are reproduced over and over again, says Nina Heidenstrøm, senior researcher at Consumption Research Norway SIFO, OsloMet.

She leads the research project Imagine, where the goal is to engage people in active reflection about how they imagine the future. The project will result in an exhibition next year. According to Heidenstrøm, many people speak of hope and dreams of a slow life. The ambition is not to be part of the rat race. Many people like the thought of both 6-hour work days and four-day work weeks.

– The decidedly most dominating fear is that life will be tougher economically and that one will have to work more.”

Click here to read the full article (aftenposten.no).

From 22nd – 24th of May, Marie Hebrok and James Lowley went to Eindhoven University of Technology to visit Dan Lockton. The purpose of the visit was both to share experiences and to work with the students at TU Eindhoven.

The three researchers discussed their experiences with and the outcomes of the design courses that they have been running at OsloMet and Eindhoven as part of the IMAGINE project. They also made plans for the development of the planned IMAGINE exhibition toward the end of 2024.

James and Marie hosted a lecture and workshop on food future imaginaries with MA design students attending the course Researching the Future Everyday.

Together with the students they reflected on and visualized how futures of food and eating are imagined – how imaginaries manifest in the present – and what the role of design is.

They also got the chance to visit the RetroFuture exhibition at The Evoluon – that “explores how we envisioned the future in the past, while reflecting on our understanding of the future today”.

DREAMING OF THE FUTURE
We all dream about the future. Do we dream about the Earth, the Moon, or the universe? About how we can all live together peacefully, or how we might end up living in a nightmare? Or about all of the things that will be made possible thanks to technology and science? And how do past dreams and the here and now affect the way we think about the future?

Text from the RetroFuture Exhibition

Wednesday 16th November, James Lowley led the student workshop “Provotypes and mediations” for the MA Product Design – Design in Complexity students at OsloMet.

The workshop is both a part of his PhD research and the MAPD5000 Technology and Design subject, a 6-week subject running till mid-December, that kicked off the week before. In the course, the students are tasked with making imaginaries of sustainability tangible to create reflection and discussion.

The goal of the workshop was to work on performative and mediative aspects of speculative design.

For the workshop, the students were asked to bring food items and based on this, to imagine future eating utensils.

Below are some of the outcomes of the workshop.

James is a PhD. Candidate at the Design, Culture and Sustainability Research Group at the Department of Product Design at the Faculty of Technology, Art and Design at OsloMet.
His PhD project is called: Senses of Coherence: Future Perspectives on Design, Technology and Everyday Eating

The aim of the project is to bring together perspectives from Salutogenesis and Philosophy of Technology to explore Engagement in, through, and with Speculative Design. A Postphenomenological lens can position human-food relationships as instances of Technological Mediation; a transactional dynamic occurring through actions and experiences. In this theoretical landscape, designed artefacts are key determinants of sustainability outcomes by shaping ways of being and becoming in the present, and this has implications for the cultural practices they seek to support and replace, as well as the types and conditions of health they participate in creating.

You can see some of James’ previous work, called E.A.T (Edited Aesthetics of Taste), here (doga.no).

On the 7th-8th of November, WP3 DESIGN, led by  Dr. Dan Lockton & Dr. Nenad Pavel, organised a 2-day kick-off seminar for the student course designed by IMAGINE researchers for OsloMet students.

The course, MAPD5000 Technology and Design is a six-week subject part of the Master’s Degree Programme in Product Design – Design in Complexity

Day 1 included information and introductory sessions about the IMAGINE project and speculative design and was held at the OsloMet Kjeller Campus.

Day 2 included a morning session where the students were introduced to the theoretical underpinnings of imaginaries and some of the findings so far in the project, and an afternoon workshop where they got to start playing with the materiality of futures through objects. This day was held at the central Oslo Pilestredet Campus and was open also to students from the Department of Art, Design and Drama, where the IMAGINE themes are being integrated into their course-specific subjects.

We will be following the student work and are excited to see what they come up with.

The course will also be repeated next academic year at OsloMet and a parallel version, DCM100 Constructive Design Research runs at TU Eindhoven this autumn (imaginaries.es).

Various forms of technology are intrinsically woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. Technology also holds a central place in how we imagine and anticipate the future. Particularly in how we imagine more sustainable futures to be and come about. Processes of developing, introducing, and using technologies, as well as of imagining future ones, are often filled with ethical dilemmas, assumptions, and power struggles. This course explores how to use speculative design approaches to critically engage with current technological developments and imaginaries of sustainable futures, in order to shed light on and provoke critical reflection on present trajectories of change.

The course is taking place within the frame and scope of the research project IMAGINE– contested futures of sustainability (imagine.oslomet.no). Candidates will be included in the network of project participants and encouraged to find their own role and perspective. The learning outcome of the course includes participating in interdisciplinary research by applying prototyping and visualization skills to make imaginaries of sustainable futures tangible and therefore more accessible for critical reflection. These materializations of imaginaries we call provotypes. A number of projects will be exhibited at the IMAGINE exhibition at DogA. The course gives students the opportunity to develop anticipatory skills and to conduct research through design in the context of an international research project.

Program