Sample and Mix Freely

There are a number of conversations that telescope out of Anthony Dunne's answer to the question as to how and where we might combine disciplines. Although brief, the comments reveal a (welcome) attitude that addresses fields of inquiry as approaches rather than binding frameworks. This desire to sample and mix freely is clearly at play in Dunne's design practice and it is worth zooming in on a few of his past comments to provide additional context.

In a 2007 interview with Régine Debatty, Dunne described the necessity to critically engage emerging fields such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and synthetic biology as follows:

What does it mean to design living or semi-living materials and products? It's important too that design, with its powerful visualisation skills, makes abstract concepts tangible and discussable. It can help us debate different futures before they happen. Otherwise the 'future' is just going to happen to us and the products and services we get will be driven by economic and technological factors rather than human needs, let alone desires.

Design as glue indeed. This call to arms suggests that design thinking is a means to "colonize" (terraform?) new domains rather than ceding them to the market. Elsewhere, Dunne explains his use of the word "placebos" to communicate his vision of how many of his projects operate:

With classic design, the idea is generally to solve the problem or cure the ailment. If you're getting wet, you make a shelter. Placebo projects we see more as a way of negotiating a relationship to something. It's not solving a problem. You're setting up a situation that facilitates a discussion. The more poetic the space--such as a discussion about invisible fields in the context of the home--the more interesting the stories. The idea of a placebo is important because it stops students thinking in terms of, "Here's a problem, now I'm going to solve it." We want to think about people in a complex way that isn't neat or containable. Rather than making things easy to digest and incorporate, our interest is more about pulling back and pausing and trying to create a space of reflection.

So according to Dunne, design is essentially a speculative enterprise—futurecasting. A quick scan of several creative practices yields some relevant examples. Architects have proposed "avoiding clients, site and program" in promoting the unsolicited architecture agenda. While that blue sky might work at the drawing board the unsolicited biotech research of the Critical Art ensemble (CAE) was not so well received and the collective endured a four year legal battle after Dr. Steven Kurtz' home was raided when the activities of the CAE were shortsightedly confused with terrorism.

So where exactly does this leave the cross-disciplinary researcher? That is a literal question—where does this researcher situate themselves? Procuring funding that builds bridges between institutions and research methodologies? In the margins practicing garage science? Or perhaps building new curricula with the hope that students can intuit new courses of action based off exposure to disciplines that have traditionally been considered distant, or at least far removed.