MY ROLE
Experience Designer
KEYWORDS
TRANSITION DESIGN, DESIGN FICTION, CULTS, PROTOPIAS, ART, PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
ABOUT
The Center for Emerging Transitions is fictional cult I created in the Designed Realities course taught by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby at Parsons. This class “imagine(d) new ways of seeing the world made tangible through the design of everyday things” and explored the idea of “not here, not now.” The cult evangelized a new way of being in relationship with our planet through participatory walks, personal rituals, promotional materials, and a TikTok influencer persona. The Center for Emerging Transitions was the vehicle for a much larger question: How might the techniques of cult persuasion be used to inspire radical action on climate change?
PROCESS
The cult was based on ideology outlined in the book Emergent Strategy by adrienne marie brown and combined with tactics utilized by Q Anon, a right-wing extremist cult based in the United States. My process began with finding the convergent and divergent ideas between Q Anon and brown's book, and as expressions of the cult emerged I began to test them amongst potential members.
During the course of the project I embodied the persona of a lead member of the cult, creating a series of participatory walks designed to be either taken individually or facilitated in a group setting. These walks were created to help participants enter the fiction by suspending disbelief, expand their perception of reality, and facilitate apophenia (the human tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things) by coming into communication with the world around them.
OUTCOMES
Needing a way to capture the experiences I was creating, I utilized TikTok videos as a method to share what someone might expect if they joined. I used this as a format to explain some of the dense concepts I was working with in a simpler, more colloquial way. One of these concepts is what I coined as “CompReality,” (based on the idea of Compulsory Heterosexuality) which is the notion that we have been raised with a limited notion of what reality is, and need to expand beyond this with the help of the Center.
LEARNINGS
Throught this project I learned the importance of making as a part of the research process. Previously I had thought that research and making were two separate steps, intended to be done in succession. However, when done in tandem these actions reveal new insights not afforded by a linear process. It felt counterintuitive at first to play with ideas as I was learning about them. It was a valuable skill that I’ve adopted in other areas of my practice.