Speculative Story World Design

Researchers: Jakob Ion Wille, Arthur Stein

In the program we investigate the intersection between speculative design and story world design.

Humans are storytelling animals and, in that capacity, also designers and builders of fictional and hypothetical worlds. We enjoy interacting with such creations in childhood play and later in adulthood to the extent what they form the foundation in most genres of fiction from film to computer games and transmedia.

Interactions with fictional worlds are also means of speculating on and preparing us for possible upcoming events and scenarios in the real world. In short, we prepay the future through play and story world interaction. In addition, the entertainment industry is utilizing new digital tools, that is changing the way visual fiction is developed, visualized and produced. 

One hypothesis of this project is that these new tools, methods and production practises can also be used communicating and investigating solutions for challenges in the real world. 

This project then investigates creative practices and technologies in the development of story worlds design for visual media. And it investigates the value of this new creative practices and technologies in a context outside the entertainment industry in search for solutions related to real life design problems. 

Both investigations are related to the concept of Story World Design. Story World Design on one side, applies ideas and methods from the art world of media entertainment (film, television, theatre and computer games) content development and production and on the other side, on ideas and methods from the problem-solving development and production world of design.