Abstract
As AI technology permeates the media society of today, futurology has become one of the most notable topics among various disciplines. In reference to Jacques Rancière's aesthetic politics, this article discusses how speculative design distributes the audience's sensibility by means of fiction and creates Dissenus with props, so that the vigorousness of future poetics can be maintained. As today's most critical cross-media practice, speculative design, based on the logic of "What-If," relies on props and their fictional aesthetics to deduce the side effects of emerging technologies. In this way, people can get away from the consumer-based logical script and turn themselves from passive consumers into active subjects. In Herbert Simon's view, designing is essentially utopian, for it always aims to transform the present in reference to the future. Speculative design shapes the present from the perspective of the future, reflects the real world based on paralleled worlds, and questions the blind spots of technology against technological optimism. Dedicated to an intellectual equality, speculative design raises questions without answering them and leaves the decision and possibility of action to the audience. In general, the fictional value of speculative design is embodied in its dimensions of aesthetic politics and future poetics.
First Page
152
Last Page
160
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Li. 2019. "The Value of Fiction: The Aesthetic Politics of Speculative Design and a Future Poetics." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 39, (6): pp.152-160. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol39/iss6/19
