Roel Wouters - Studio Melting Realities
In the early days of the web, this implied a promise of emancipation and democratising. We thought computers would connect people all over the world, to share knowledge and learn from each other, but things turned out differently. Now, our digital and physical realities tend to blend into each other. The digital reality has gradually become part of all our lived experiences, buying a house, finding a partner, acquisition of food. Our digital realities are frictionless. As Victorasso describes in ‘The Liquid Dream’: “You consume a hundred different lives in a minute. You process information at TikTok speed, fifteen-second fragments, without context, consequence, or memory. “A liquid dream”. Our physical reality is the pavement we see when we look away from our screens.”
With Studio Melting Realities we are studying this ‘liquid’ reality. We asses, dissect and try to understand the attributes of those melting states; initially as observers, but gradually, we explore a more active position to shape and direct that reality. This process is informed by formulating critical positions toward the things we study, and begins with a few rudimentary exercises. We’ll look at physical interactions with digital applications, such as a mouse click, or a finger swipe, directly impacting the screen.
“I hope that students leave the studio feeling empowered as designers. Digital reality often feels like a given, but platforms, systems, and tools can be designed by us.”
From there, we’ll continue to explore ‘communal presence’. Digital reality has a tendency to remove the human aspect from interactions. We see these tendencies everywhere. Uber makes the negotiation of a fair price obsolete. Google Maps removes discussions about the shortest route. As David Byrne puts it in “Eliminating the Human”, digital technologies seem to have a detrimental impact on human interaction. But I don’t believe that’s inherent to digital technology itself. Designers made those choices. That’s why part of the studio’s curriculum has a social agenda which is focused on communal presence, asking: How can technology operate in ways that don’t make us lose each other?
Something that keeps me up at night is the question of whether we can formulate a genuinely optimistic perspective on artificial intelligence. It’s easy to jump on the train of AI optimism, but we also intuitively feel that simple optimism isn’t enough. We’re entering a moment where deeply emotional relationships, which we traditionally only had with humans, are increasingly being directed toward digital agents. The idea that we’re placing our emotions and our deepest secrets in the hands of abstract agents aligned with big tech’s terms and conditions is something we should study very critically, but also with curiosity.
“The idea that we’re placing our emotions and our deepest secrets in the hands of abstract agents aligned with big tech’s terms and conditions is something we should study very critically, but also with curiosity.”
The studio is a collective effort, as its mentors will contribute to the curriculum with their own ideas and agendas. This means that the programme will keep evolving and changing. The students will also contribute with their questions and references, which will become their canon and thus also impact the studio’s curriculum.
I hope that students leave the studio feeling empowered as designers. Digital reality often feels like a given, but platforms, systems, and tools can be designed by us. Students studying Melting Realities should feel agency and realise they can create tools and systems with different intentions and incentives. They should formulate their positions rather than accept existing systems of profiling, optimisation or control. Ultimately, I hope they see technology as less fixed and less dark than it often appears.
