Paper short abstract:

Within a series of case studies, the authors explore how emerging ecosystems of mediation, tools, techniques, platforms, practices, and social ideas offer potential to speculate on the material today as a process of developing shared futures and critical future thinking.

Paper long abstract:

The prevalence of digital technologies and processes within numerous contexts of life provides a unique opportunity for social research to benefit from innovations and to recontextualize or exploit existing ‘mundane’ processes, technologies, or information sources. When consulting a map on a mobile device the processes which filter and display meaningful locative data are usually not a direct concern of the user. Viewing and uploading images to social networks are complex negotiations of data transfer, organization, analysis, distribution, and visualization, yet seem “easy”. The techniques and algorithms used to produce the abstracted visualization of city streets on Google Street View are not often in the minds of users as they traverse the virtual terrain.

The ability to translate and re-contextualize aspects of material landscapes and first-hand experiences through processes of intermediation have led to new ways in which the world is represented and seen (Uricchio 2011). Using shared tools and techniques (from stock photos to VR worlds) explorations contest material structures, reuse, misuse, remix, or otherwise engage with processes of resemiosis to imagine new values and social realities. Methodologies exploring the visual and material production of speculative futures offer potential for contexts where producing data is difficult or impossible with more traditional ethnographic approaches, as is the case with complexities of future thinking.