“District Drones” is a design fiction project forecasting a future where drones re-enter the Danish society not as machines of war – but as veterans. The 8 projects presented here all take as their point of departure the following speculative scenario:
In 2028 the national parliament of Denmark Folketinget decided by law that drones used by the army should be given citizenship expressing the nation’s gratitude for their participation in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and NATO’s retake of the Crimea peninsula twelve years after the Russian invasion. Aarhus became the first Danish city for this social experiment and DOKK1 was later to be known under the name of “District Drones”. Read full scenario (link)
Originally, robots were developed to replace man in extreme situations whether in highly polluted areas, outer space or in industry. Today, robots are taken care of our patients and elderly people in hospitals. What will happen to drones when they have served their duty? What if drones are given civic rights in Aarhus? What kind of social relationships will emerge between drones and the citizens? How will people and drones interact with one another? What if drones would become a new working class helping Aarhus citizens as servants in their homes? What if companies like Google start exploiting drones to gather information about citizen’s privacy? Can drones be easily fitted into the urban fabric or should we expect more radical processes of social change and even revolts?
These are just some of the questions explored by the 8 design projects. The speculative futures they envision are presented in the form of design concepts, speculative prototypes and video sketches, some of which can be experienced below.
About ”design fiction”
Design fiction is about liberating design practice from narrow market-driven values, consumerist ideologies, political power and the technological possibilities of the here and now. Design fiction is about using social fiction, utopias and dystopias as means for exploring other forms of society, public and private spaces and the re-setting of human conditions. It is about using fiction in design as a technique for prototyping new materials, situations, speculative objects, products and interactions, which radically change how people live, think and communicate.
Design aim
All the projects have an overall design aim: to design socially and aesthetically engaging interaction between drones and people. The drones should be considered subjects, not as machines or instruments. Hence, we are not designing human computer interaction, but inter-subjective relations.
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