I am an interdisciplinary artist and designer dedicated to raising awareness of diverse environmental concerns caused by overconsumption. My interest in the problem of consumption stems from a personal obsession with shopping. While the main set of concerns in this work was personal in nature, I was able to expand its scope to include the social dimension while working in the fashion and retail industry for eight years.
To communicate the urgency of environmental challenges to the public, I employ speculative design as my primary methodology. Speculative designers propose ideas for a "preferable future" by implementing design not as a method of problem-solving but as problem-posing, providing space for discussion and participation for viewers. Through this process of discussion with limitless imagination, people can "open up new perspectives" on "wicked problems," often considered big, hopeless societal problems—in my case, environmental problems.
By employing speculative design as my primary methodology, I aim to communicate the urgency of environmental challenges, allowing the public to immerse themselves in experiences of a future dystopian scenario. Speculative designers propose ideas of a “preferable future” by implementing design not as a method of problem-solving but as problem-posing, providing space for discussion and participation for the viewers. Through this process of discussion with limitless imagination, people can “open up new perspectives” on “wicked problems,” often considered big hopeless societal problems: in my case, environmental problems. Therefore, my work proposes new possibilities that might be considered solutions to environmental disasters in a fictional radical dystopian future. Even though it is a fiction beginning with my imagination, I strive to produce concrete speculation to render the ludicrous narratives seamless for the viewers by conducting scientific and societal research. Also, speculative design inherently requires designers to be interdisciplinary due to the attribute of creating their worldview into being close to reality; Therefore, I have developed the capacity to handle a variety of design disciplines: three-dimensional graphics, film, video art, VR, AR, and interactive media.
While speculative design was born to generate discussions, I have observed that a majority of speculative design work tends to be esoteric in form and content and circulates only within certain art and design communities, which seems to oppose its original purpose. As a designer who has been trained to communicate effectively with the public through graphic design, I attempt to integrate traditional graphic design methodologies such as branding and advertising with speculative design to increase accessibility.