Radical Uncertainty
Creative response to the ‘Radical Uncertainty: Design beyond solutionism’ webinar
How can we embrace design practices and deliver strategies that better engage with global challenges characterised by their radical uncertainty?
The Radical Uncertainty: Design beyond Solutionism webinar was hosted by Tom Ainsworth, Sally Sutherland and Ben Sweeting from the University of Brighton Radical Methodologies Research and Enterprise Group (RaMREG) and the Centre for Arts and Wellbeing (CAW) on the 23rd July 2021. This transdisciplinary event sought to explore ways of acting and designing in situations characterised by changeability, conflicting values and uncertain boundaries. Guest speakers Mihir Bhat, Shilpi Srivastava, Zoe Sadokierski, Chris Rose, and Claudia Westermann, were invited to present personal reflections informed by their work in response to the ideas and questions outlined below.
Following the seminar, I was invited, along with Lauren Dark, Jorden Whitewood-Neal, and Rachel Wilson, as a practitioner from the postgrad community, to produce a creative response to the event.
Screenshot of the seminar.
In my creative responses, I was interested not only in creating a tangible output but also in visualising the multiple conceptions of uncertainty that emerged from the seminar in a dynamic and ongoing way, open to further interpretation, meaning, and practice over time.
Uncertain Conversation is a booklet that builds on words and sentences pronounced during the event to create abstract poems left to the reader's interpretation. This book works as an abstract repository of some of the critical moments of the seminar, echoing the idea that when designing for uncertainty, there are no methods until they are enacted because methods need embodiment.
The book's design, through blur, gradients, and deconstructed layout, aimed to explore the fuzzy boundary of uncertainty, questioning how to visualise this unstable state, its ‘extreme complexity, instability or disagreement about what is considered known or knowable’, as defined by the event’s organisers.
Overview of the Uncertain Conversations' book content.
Summary video of the event and the creative responses.