Research Creation
The project carves out a creative space. Rather than working with literal representations like photographs or video, ambiences use interpretation and suggestion that are felt rather than captured.
This subjective aspect is fundamental to our project. Carving out a niche for creators, driven by creation. Creation drives inquiry, raises technical challenges and necessitate solutions.
This aligns well with the reasearch-creation methodology used in the project. Where creation serves as both a demonstration of understanding and a tool for generating artefacts to be understood.
A System First Approach
Funiki is a long horizon research project. It doesn’t have specific long term goals or deliverables but rather a mission and an evolving direction. Rather than working on isolated research problems from a purley academic perspective, we take a systems first approach.
Individual lines of inquiry are imagined in terms of the broader Funiki system as contributions across components. This allows for individual contributions to keep within a global vision and direction. Moreover, it ensures that advancements are realised as tangible artefacts that can be interacted with by creators as the project evolves.
This is opposed to isolated academic contexts where problems might not contribute meaningfully or practically outside of their specific scope. This allows questions related to interactions between components and usage of the system that might not be obvious otherwise. At the same time this approach can motivate new academic pursuits and new or augmented systems.
Design Fiction
Funiki is also partly a speculative project. It attempts to look into and shape a potential future as an exercise in foresight. A great way of doing that is through design fiction.
Design fiction is a way of using speculative narratives and artefacts to think through the implications of technologies before they exist. Rather than predicting the future, it creates plausible futures. These might be mundane or fantastical, where systems are already embedded in everyday life. These futures are explored through stories, mock objects, advertisements, manuals, or interfaces that feel real enough to provoke reflection.
The value of design fiction lies in how it shifts discussion from abstract claims (this technology will improve society) to situated consequences (what would it feel like to live with this?).