TWIFSY Stories: A thought experiment
By Peter Thiedeke

In this project, artist Peter Thiedeke uses speculative design methods to create stories that build upon the potential future world explored in his visionary installation TWIFSY (The world is fine, save yourself), presented by Experimenta at the T&G Building as part of Now or Never.

Speculative design methods, which Dunne and Raby (2013) position with other speculative cultures such as futurology, literature, politics, and fine art – go ‘well beyond logical worlds and more pragmatic world building’ to create a space for discussion and ‘dialectical opposition between fiction and reality’.

An attitude more than a methodology, speculative design can open possibilities for ‘preferable futures’ by challenging the ‘uncritical drive behind technological progress when technology is always assumed to be good and capable of solving any problem’. Unlike conventional design methodologies, speculative design is a slightly subversive ‘parallel design channel free from market pressures’ that can critique and ‘explore ethical and social issues within the context of everyday life’.

Prologue: Post Fourth Industrial Revolution, by Peter Thiedeke

If society continues to delegate decision-making and human creation to AI—Big Tech’s monopolistic reconstruction of human histories for capital growth—how will they determine our future and how will this manifest in the physical world?

The emergent Fourth Industrial Revolution is fundamentally different from previous technological revolutions. Colloquially referred to as 4IR or Industry 4.0, this fusion of artificial intelligence (AI), smart systems, robotics, machine-to-machine communication, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles, biotechnology, and quantum computing will empower engineers, scientists, and private enterprise to accumulate radically disproportionate degrees of power and wealth, outside of democratic processes and regulatory frameworks.

Listen to this experimental AI story