Inventing Pasts and Futures: Speculative Design and Media Archaeology

Abstract

This chapter aims to put imaginary media research and speculative design in conversation; what does it mean to think of media archaeological and imaginary media projects in the context of speculative design? This earlier missing discussing of the two parallel fields sets out to investigate critical methods in speculative practices across media and design with a special angle to imaginary pasts. Both speculative design and imaginary media research are interested in how alternative worlds might be created and how both temporal, social, and technological tabulations situate coordinates of past-future in alternative ways. The chapter addresses different art and design projects, cross-fertilising the two traditions of media and design theory and practice, and aims to elaborate ways how media archaeology could contribute to speculative design and hence contemporary issues in critical design.