Prototyping the Margins

Our perceptions of the future have been conjured via media, cultural references, and select readings as well as fact. In this we receive particular cultural and gendered perspectives, even unconsciously. Prototyping the Margins asks us to re-envision more diverse and inclusive futures, to ensure that they will exist. Through the reading and reference of alternate texts, using non traditional perspective and high-lighting bias, this class will deconstruct previously held notions of the future through reexamining the past and rethinking the present via storytelling and prototyping.

In this course, students would engage in literary exploration, design thinking, creative research, storytelling, and rapid prototyping.

They will read and investigate “alternative culture" resources, remix their own narratives based on their findings, then prototype speculative expressive artifacts or environments that speak to the diversity of futures found. Throughout the semester, students will create 3 projects in the categories of Environment, Body, and Object that exist in their narrative world. Their final presentation would be in the form of an exhibition, in which students will have an opportunity to discuss their narrative, methodology, and process with external expert critics.

The course functions as a space for the discussion and recontextualization of notions of futurity and history. Additionally, the course is a workshop for designing and prototyping speculative artifacts and environments of revised histories and alternate futures.