If technology is the answer, then what is the question?
January 2020
Workshop for Radar's Co-Lab at Loughborough University
Applying a multidisciplinary approach MA and BA Industrial Design students spent the day composing a production inspired by the fiction’s employed by science and technology industries. Exploring how tech solutionism is used to address complex social issues.
Participants worked with a range of methods such as moulding and casting, concrete poetry, forum theatre techniques, scriptwriting and performing in order to collectively unpick the language and branding employed by corporations around the ‘techno fix’ and the myths of unlimited growth. Building from this we explored how we can subvert these methods and come up with our own ‘ethics charter’ around technological and design developments.
The workshop seeks to challenge the dominant viewpoint which positions technology as the only tool to combat complex social and political issues, whilst ignoring structural inequalities and the environmental impacts technology can reproduce and reinforce.
