Amphibious Scales and Anticipatory Design

This paper considers dynamics between Anticipatory Design and relational ontological scales in imagining, articulating and shaping futures. This includes speculative, experimental and experiential engagement with imaginary futures for rethinking relations to the present and beyond them into long term sustainable ones. Such acts are situated in a wider view of design futures literacies that encompasses design fiction, extended choreography and arctic futurescaping.

We use ‘Amphibious Scales’ to encompass this in the context of the Anthropocene. The scales are amphibious in their slipperiness and their dynamic, prosessural and emergent status in a mode of becoming. The paper conveys a transdisciplinary body of collaborative work by diverse partners in and between two funded research projects. Included are design fictive works centred on the persona of an octopus and scenarios connected to the Arctic Northern Sea Route.