Hello and welcome to this presentation in support of our DIS 2021 pictorial,
exploring the dialogic potential in design for Ongoingness.
Jayne and I are presenting on behalf of our co-authors,
and we are going to briefly discuss aspects of three research engagements, ReFind,
Blueprints, and Ivvor seen respectively in the images.
These artefacts are part of a wider project called Enabling Ongoingness... that explores new ways
to enable someone bereaved, to find newness in the relationship they have to someone deceased.
Throughout our design enquiries, we have seen how the open-endedness and acceptance of change
within continuing bonds theory, chimes with Bakhtinian theories surrounding dialogism,
and specifically ideas around novelisation and potential.
Central to this is dialogue, and uncovering the voicedness of the media,
objects and memories we are left with after someone has died, brings with
it the potential for new dialogues to occur, albeit in a changed way.
Like Bakhtin, we interpret the term voice in the broadest sense of the word.
They can be of past, present, and future,
and in non-verbal forms such as body language, gesture, and proximity for example,
extending to less obvious forms like social, contextual, or associated meanings.
We have been particularly interested in how new clusters of these voices can be formed,
what new meanings and connections can be made, and how we the bring dialogic
nature of our media, in to contact with the present-day, or even the future.
So, moving on to our work...
Here we introduce ReFind, a piece that is designed for people who are bereaved
and ready to re-explore their relationship with the deceased again.
The piece works by holding an archive of photographs from a deceased person’s life-course,
pre-tagged with semantic metadata.
The user takes a new photograph, tags, and shares it with ReFind.
Refind then uses these tags to connect and present 5 archival images back to the user.
This sequence then remains, along with the present-day image,
until the user shares a new moment with the piece.
In Refind, sharing is kind of like sparking up a conversation,
and is integral to the dialogic experience.
Capturing and uploading an image from the present-day
is a purposeful activity, helping to externalize the participant’s voice,
and representing a moment in time that is loaded with intention and meaning.
Having this distinction of voice means that the user has externalised something,
that they can now look upon, and relate a new sequence of images to.
Without sharing, there isn't an anchor that grounds the sequence in the present day.
We say this because we found that when just looking at an archive of images there can be
a counterproductive surplus of potential, so by building in limitations, or limiting the voices,
a focus or anchor can be established and meaning can be found.
Tagging also plays a role in this.
Tagging is essentially identifying and labelling the voices present in an image,
and is interesting in ReFind because it asks the participant to go looking for them.
For Bakhtin, our tags would be too simple or limiting,
reducing the dialogic potential of the media by not tagging enough.
Ensuring tags are purposeful... and tuned in to the user is key, by allowing them to reflect on
the dialogic aspects that are noticeable and significant to them in the media.
We found that a rich combination of objective and semantic tags allows a
limited archive to create some authentic and profound moments of new connection.
However, releasing these moments is also part of the interaction.
In ReFind, a sequence will remain on the screen
until a new image is shared, represented by the closed loop in the center of the slide.
Receiving a meaningful sequence is understandably something the bereaved person would want to hold
on to, but without releasing it, we are limiting the archive's dialogic potential - that is the
potential for those voices to form new clusters in relation to new moments from the present.
Bakhtin's concept of unfinalisability says that everything is in a state of becoming. This is
both exciting as it means if someone is dead, we can still find newness in our dialogue with them,
but it is also challenging as loss is at the heart of grief, and losing a sequence
might feel to compound that. Importantly, it doesn't mean that the concrete meanings formed
within a sequence are relinquished along with it. Instead, those experiences remain very much real.
Recognising that the openness and fluidity of the process
is what created this meaningful encounter in the first place,
allows us to release the sequence so that new clusters can bring meaning in the future.
Now we move on to Blueprints, which is a method that offers gentle ways in
for a bereaved person to actively work with their sensitive media.
First a series of fabric collages are made by a participant, perhaps using old clothing
or archival fabric from the deceased person. The fabric brings a material voice to the experience…
a soft, tactile, and malleable quality that gives a sense of potential through touch and feel.
These are then translated into new media compilations and sequences, by exploring
the physical properties of the fabric objects through a series of rules and utilising a grid.
The overlaid grid corresponds to an archive of images,
and compositional rules dictate the manipulations that will occur between them.
Here we have an example of two blended images
utilising transparencies as per rule #2 that you can see here.
We can imagine the difference in outcome between the rules, but can also see how
the method facilitates subjectivity, and an openness to creative interpretation.
By simply rotating, or flipping the fabric collage, we can create entirely
new visual outcomes, encouraging an element of randomness which is fuel for dialogic potential.
Here are some compositions that the Blueprints method produced.
Working blind in this way creates a dialogic distance from the media.
The presence of the voices in the interaction are lessened,
in order to maximise the dialogic potential of the archive.
If more rigid narratives were visible to the participant, or a lack of creative confidence
hindered what they thought was possible, then these novel connections might not have occurred.
It's important to note that the images are ultimately put together by a creative person,
separate to the encounter. It is not possible to discount their voice in the process,
channeling their own narratives from their personal experiences,
and adding another level of dialogicality, albeit from behind the scenes.
Ivvor is our latest engagement, currently living
with an active participant who helped shape the interaction.
The locket holds a permanent archive of photographs,
representing multiple deceased individuals,
and is available to view everyday by lifting the locket up, and tilting it to change the image.
On significant dates or memory days, Ivvor replaces the daily archive for a single image,
representing a deceased individual.
This remains for the duration of the day, before disappearing until the following year.
Ivvor’s primary interaction is about establishing
a natural and ordinary dialogic flow, between user and archive.
The importance of the everyday, underlined by Bakhtin, is its ability to build understanding
in gradual and iterative ways. Tuning Ivvor in to the rhythm of the participant’s life,
and turning what was once a printed archive, into one that has the potential to encounter
new contexts increases the opportunity for the archival voices to find new relevance.
The second interaction is the event, or memory day.
The event is interesting as it begins to shape the participant’s behaviour in the build up to it,
and we recognise that this is an interesting opportunity to
bring the anticipation of the future,
into the dialogic experience, and therefore a possible moment for Ongoingness in the process.
To introduce this concept, we started to reimagine how the participant could experience images that
are well-known to them. We created a new scrolling image that re-framed aspects, isolating them
from the broader context, and in a sense giving them more of a voice, more undivided attention.
The effect was that the participant started to see a shift their mindset,
starting to talk about memory days as something more positive,
that there was something to look forward to in the future, and the potential of new images.
Since then, we have used this positivity to explore new ways of working with the participant.
Seen here are printed acetates, bringing a material and translucent quality to the media,
and immediately filling them with a sense of potential.
Images can be cut away from backgrounds, flipped, and combined to explore new dialogues,
and we are using it as a way for our participant to work with the voices,
and curate new clusters that can inform future scrolling images.
Interestingly, what we can see here is the same images are being re-used,
saying something different in each composition.
Reframing the media in a novel way, encourages this malleability and fluidity, bringing it closer
to the present, and transforming it from something we view as finite and only existing in the past.
I’d like to conclude on this quote from our current participant, talking about the everyday
archive of photographs that lives on the locket. To date, this archive has remained unchanged for
over 6 months, yet they are still able to discover new moments of connection from day to day.
To tie it back to this year’s DIS theme, ‘nowhere and everywhere’,
the potential for newness, ongoing dialogue, and a continued sense of
connection to the deceased is everywhere if we choose to perceive it that way.
Part of our research activity has been to bring people along with us,
on a journey toward Ongoingness, and to gently
open up their thinking to the potential of their archival materials and connections.
Along the way we are discovering new opportunities for Ongoingness,
not only in the objects we make, but in the entire process.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to this presentation,
please visit our website and the pictorial for more insight into the work we have presented.