Speculative Design Ch. 7 - Response

This chapter was very eye-opening to me, because it talked about how artists tend to "reference what is already known" to make speculations seem real. I feel like I tend to do this with my art in general (although not in the context of speculative design) because I enjoy doing photoshop edits where I manipulate reality to create fantastical worlds/stories. For me, I've always viewed the realism aspect as a "strength" because I thought that it would make the audience more easily able to imagine themselves in that scenario, and thereby make the art/design more "personal" and resonating with them. But after reading this chapter, I now see that in the world of speculative design, designing with realism in mind could limit you. But at the same time, I wonder if straying too far from reality can also be detrimental. I suppose it depends on what one's "goal" is, but I feel like if you design for a future that is too dissimilar from ours, the audience could dismiss it as something that's too "out-there" and decide that it's not as important as a different, more "realistic" potential future (?). But if your goal is to explore ideas that have never been explored, then straying far from reality would be something that you would want to do.

Another idea that I never really thought about was using "characters" in design. The chapter stated that "By using characters in scenario design we ask viewers to become voyeurs, glimpsing the world of the character and comparing it to their own." I think because I was reading these chapters with the Future Casting project in mind, I never thought about "characters," and instead just thought about a future with our current-reality humanity. Also, because I've always liked for my works to be "realistic" in one way or another, I've never really used "characters" in general, so I think in the future, it would be interesting to try thinking beyond our current humanity (ie. alternate realities, different worlds, etc.) to feature subjects that are not "us."