IDW 2019

by Yalenka Mariën and Justine Syen the new normal by João Quintela and Tim Simon 1:1 In the new normal workshop we’ll use design fiction to create provocative and immersive installations that will make the audience question future scenarios. When thinking of the future, we can see positive scenarios, but also frightening ones. We often think about “What if…” From the rise of robots changing the way we work to the disappearing of binary gender norms. These notions are not new, but are not yet a reality, we are on the verge — an in-between state. As creators we can learn from the storytelling artistry of science fiction. Design fiction uses narration and prototyping to confront an audience. The result helps to grasp the mindset of our audience, but more importantly challenge and eventually change it. You’ll work in groups on one of these “challenges”. Through multiple iterations the groups will build a scenario and make it come to life through a prototype, confronting their future with people in guerrilla tests on the streets of Antwerp. The final result will be an immersive installation that will create strong emotional responses. As creatives, we don’t want to predict the future but shape it and design fiction can help us do that. Under the theme of Liminality we want to propose the workshop 1:1 as an exercise to research and explore the undefined boarders between designing and representing in Architecture. We want to think and develop a project together with the students using just the real scale to design an intervention for a specific place. Instead of reducing the ideas to small models or scaled technical drawings our intention is to make closer approaches to the project itself with the use of real scale drawings and atmospheric paintings. This approach leads us to different questions about designing methodologies but also put in crisis the idea of representation and reality. We take the words from Rosalind Krauss to reinforce an idea of “Architecture in the expanded field” and with this in mind we ask ourselves once a real scale representation of an architectural project could be the project itself or even when a simple painting is closer to architecture than any other discipline. Our goal during the workshop is to work on different issues that we have been researching through our own practice and academic experience over the past few years. 1. Netflix original series Maniac questions not only artificial intelligence in science but also the notion of “buying” or accessing true happiness. 2. In the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” is an example of a more positive narrative that questions mortality and the existence of a heaven on earth. 3. The movie Ex Machina explores ethics, artificial intelligence and our desire to understand “humani- ty” through mimicking it.