{"id":2743,"date":"2025-06-16T22:39:05","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T22:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chrisspeed.net\/?p=2743"},"modified":"2025-06-16T22:39:05","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T22:39:05","slug":"design-contradictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisspeed.net\/?p=2743","title":{"rendered":"Design Contradictions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two projects during Melbourne Design Week with collaborators <\/a>Michael Dunbar<\/a> and <\/a>Liam Fennessy<\/a> to explore connections across. A possible theme: how design simultaneously demands radical honesty about complex futures while maintaining professional facades that obscure the messy realities of practice\u2026

Fabulating More-than-Human Data with AI\u00a0invited workshop participants to generate synthetic datasets for multispecies urban planning \u2013 imagining how cities might account for spider negotiations, fungal networks, and seasonal migrations. Using prompt engineering, designers stretched beyond human-centered metrics to ask: “What data isn’t there, and whose perspectives are systematically excluded?” https:\/\/designweek.melbourne\/event\/fabulating-more-than-human-data-with-ai\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Whilst using Gen-AI to fabulate may sound frivolous to some readers (or irresponsible), we found that a complexity grew as the AI prompts didn’t just generate alternative data \u2013 they revealed assumptions embedded in existing datasets, forcing questions about who sets standards and whose futures get foreclosed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A particular favourite was <\/a>Madelaine Thomas<\/a> \u2019 exploration of fungus conversations leading to an impenetrable speculative language \u2013 see video: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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