Designers of the silicon age proficiently mediate between the visceral and digital realms, when designing with and around technology. But how exactly do we reconcile disembodied technologies such as AI, with those aspects of the design profession that emphasize and often rely on tacit knowledge, gained through bodily multisensory experience and interaction?
This hands-on workshop is oriented towards collaboratively finding an approach to dealing with applied Machine Learning techniques while developing speculative future visions on machine-human hybridization. A high-level understanding of applied Machine Learning principles will be conveyed by means of practical appropriation of AI tools, while maintaining scrutiny while retaining scrutiny on their concurrent ethical and societal issues. Views of posthuman thinkers such as Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, and Katherine Hayles will be introduced and jointly reflected on. Participants are invited to construct and share future visions of human-machine collaboration while appropriating AI tools that can be integrated into their individual workflows. Novel ways of co-creation with machines will be explored, focusing on text-to-image techniques such as Stable Diffusion. Learnings made during the workshop through practical experiments will serve as a starting point to reflect on and discuss possible future scenarios and modalities of human-machine interaction and collaboration. The workshop will put in perspective the mediating role speculative design can have in the face of disruptive technological advancements, as it allows for the exploration and simulation of future developments. Outcomes of the workshop will be a collection of generated images or short videos reflecting on posthuman future visions, the story of their inception, and the conclusions drawn from them.