SOWING ELECTRIC SEEDS:

Day01. Wednesday, July 07, 16:15-17:00 EDT

This talk explores a methodology for teaching design fiction, science fiction, decolonial futures, and the future of politics in the digital world. Sharing these subjects with design students early on in their education can provide critical thinking tools for accessing visions of other futures that are overshadowed by the mainstream, and drive a sense of responsibility for our real and present world.

In this talk, we, Allan Mendes and Daniel Fernandes are going to express our path in creating a methodology of teaching about design fiction, science fiction, decolonial futures, and the future of politics in the digital world since 2017, and show some of the results of how it affected its students personal and professional life. We'll show the beginning of our interest in sharing these subjects to design students and how it can offer tools to have critical thinking and access visions of other futures that are overshadowed by the mainstream. We believe that the critical thinking of design fiction shouldn't be closed to the vision of first-world views and shouldn't be applied only as a fancy tool for designers after the university. It needs to be taught much sooner like to university students, making connections between video games, books, Youtube videos, feeding the creativity and the sense of responsibility for our real and present world.

Allan is a Graphic Designer, Teacher, and Game Designer from Brasilia, Brazil. He did his master’s thesis about the correlations between design, fiction and how the studies of fictional genres and practices can engage future designers in the practice of innovation and social responsibility. Since 2016 he has taught an open course at the Universidade de Brasilia focusing on politics, future technologies, and pop culture, creating a toolkit of media literacy and fiction for graduates from many different disciplines. Simultaneously, he helped create a group of workshops, lectures and speculative design practices in their context.

Daniel Fernandes is a professor at the Visual Arts Department of the University of Brasilia having taught in the Design+Narrative course. He is also a co-founder of Speculative Futures Brasilia. Having graduated in History and with a master’s degree in Art History, his interests focus on the interface between art and narrative, as well as in future studies. Lately, he has been orienting his research to the broad relations between politics and works in different media.