Design Currents Preserving Identity Beyond Humanity

The Issue of Cultural Appropriation

As a design researcher, you work on future-oriented design, including speculative design^*1. Could you tell me about the areas you’re currently focusing on from this point of view?

My own research includes many different fields. If I were to give one area of focus, it would be issues surrounding development and culture, primarily in developing countries. For example, the Mexican government is venturing into the problem of cultural appropriation in the country as a whole. They’ve positioned ethnic groups’ cultural designs, patterns, and other items connected to identity as country-owned assets and are asking companies for royalties.^*2 Behind that is the historical awareness of developed countries exploiting these things in their development, and also that traceability has become attainable. From now on, the trend will emerge of making culture into industrial assets by country, through full use of blockchains.

Another area I’m focusing on is the relationship between smart city efforts and native urban systems in Asian like the Philippines and Indonesia. In Paris, London, and Copenhagen, efforts have progressed to create strong neighborhood ties by keeping jobs near home. But the leader of the Fab City Project in Barcelona, Tomás Díez, felt systematic urban planning was based on Eurocentrism and had its limits. He therefore moved to Bali, Indonesia to “relocalize production.” This is because we’ve already reached the limits of proceeding based on technology while disregarding native culture and local people’s wisdom.^*3
But the tricky part is how to fill the gap between businesses with a global platform and operations based in a city or region.

*1 Speculative design: As opposed to conventional design approaches that lead to solutions to current problems, design that first hypothesizes future possibilities to create questions, leading to opportunities for people to think and discover the issues themselves
*2 「Mexico Fights Cultural Appropriation With New Intellectual Property Law」(LAW.COM)
*3 「MY JOURNEY IN DESIGN SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD No. 4: What I learned at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (in Japanese)」(CULTIBASE)

In contrast to this movement, people say Japan has no grand design for future society. What do you think?

Although I agree with that, the “grand design” mentality in itself is Eurocentrism. Imagining a vision is important, but also need about applying indigenous cultures and technologies on a regional scale. Based on that, making a vision from the independent mentality of diversely flexible Asia would lead to new possibilities.

Multispecies Anthropology
and Circular Design

Last year’s DESIGN VISION attempted to further expand the view of diversity to incorporate knowledge of multispecies ethnology^*4, beyond the human species. But the question is how to achieve a beyond-human point of view through traditional human-centered design (HCD).

I believe processes to free ourselves from HCD are being refined worldwide. HCD proponent Don Norman has even said that the human-centered approach has reached its limit, and we should be expanded to a more comprehensive Humanity Centered design. ^*5 This means approximately the same thing as saying there are limits to design thinking. In addition, discussions are springing up about how to capture the networks, communities, and environments rather than the user, like the "more than human" perspective that also links to multispecies anthropology, or the inclination to advocate "thing-centered design" that will focus on the coordination between IoT devices in the future.

I also analyzed types of designers based on these trends in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry METI’s Study Group on Fashion Futures(in Japanese). Specifically, we take for granted that there are "circular design" designers who develop biodegradable materials or investigate asset circulation; and "digital design" designers who tailor data to materialize interactive digital spaces. The context behind that is the growing awareness that we can’t just make and sell things like before.
To take the example of redevelopment of areas around terminal stations: the same types of tenants move into the same types of buildings, selling the same types of products. So, on the flip side, what would shopping environments and products with a sense of uniqueness be?

For instance, in the redevelopment of areas around terminal stations, the same types of tenants move into the same types of buildings, largely selling the same types of products. So what would products with a sense of individuality and uniqueness be? There are brands like one that’s built a factory in a village in Italy and takes on manufacturing centrally by hiring the people in the village. They sell the products at a high price and are giving the profits back to the village through construction, like of an art museum. This is an example of a movement to add extreme value called "post luxury." It’s interesting because it not only connects to traceability of the environmental burden but also to regional development, and it generates new rarity and value. The current situation is that just satisfying existing user needs no longer creates value.

*4 Multispecies ethnography: A new concept in anthropology that understands the human condition through relationships beyond species, from plants and animals to microorganisms like gut flora, presupposing coexistence with the ecosystem
*5 "Humanity-Centered Design"(Interaction Design Foundation)

How to Design
the Metaverse Is Crucial

Designer Training Program in Kyoto

Of the 'circular design' and 'digital design' practitioners you referred to before, it seems the latter will be involved in future development of the metaverse.

That’s right. I’m preparing a metaverse-related curriculum while working on Kyoto Creative Assemblage(in Japanese), a value-creating design training program with Kyoto University. But learning the basic skills needed to create a metaverse environment, starting with the Unreal Engine for making games that lets you make 3D spaces in real time, takes a considerable amount of time. Because you have to create everything: the space, clothes, the sound environment, interaction…

However, the process of supervising that much production in multiple areas by yourself is already unavoidable. For example, people do this when holding virtual fashion shows with textures that are impossible in reality. These shows are gaining exposure in the fashion world. It feels like a new business ecosystem is becoming necessary, with the involvement of everything from ways to sell digital data to ways to output and sell it. Design work and ecosystem-envisioning skills are in demand across a wide range of fields, like textiles and graphics, not just fashion.

Understanding Metaverse Culture

This year’s DESIGN VISION also grapples with research and ethnography^*6 in metaverse spaces, like by using the social VR app VRChat. How can we establish a balance between virtual and real to live better lives as humans?

Creating that balance is exactly what future designers will be working on.
One trend that makes life better by blending virtual and real is remote concerts, like the ones by K-pop idols. These are easy to assimilate as a way to enjoy the metaverse, too. So it’s about how important fandoms will be shaped.

Digital ethnography (virtual ethnography) is an effective way to understand the social media-enabled metaverse environment. It’s crucial not just for collaborators to record the virtual situation but for researchers to experience their worlds with them. For example, although there are people who are single in the real world who have gotten married virtually in Second Life, there have also been cases of people making graves in a virtual space because their partners died in real life. There are some very interesting things, including differences in how people interact with the metaverse depending on their country or culture. There are already research examples of researchers conducting interviews in Second Life via avatars.^*7

*6 Ethnography: A technique in social anthropology of placing oneself in a different culture for a comprehensive understanding of the behaviors, ways of thinking, and cultural context of the people living there. Recently, it is used in the business domain in behavioral observation surveys to understand consumers.
*7 Gibson, M., &Carden, C. (2018). Living and Dying in a Virtual World. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies.

As for differences by region, I wonder how Japanese idiosyncrasies will be judged online, like middle-aged men transforming into avatars of beautiful young girls in virtual world.

Avatars aligned with the context of Japanese subcultures, like the ones you see of men turning themselves into avatars of pretty girls, or avatar designs with an extremely exaggerated breast size, could turn into the target of intense online criticism related not only to lookism but sexism and the problem of intersectionality, too.
There’s a high probability that it’ll be important to design and employ avatars bearing the users in mind—who uses them and in which context. People will consider the nature of each platform, from in-game worlds to the metaverse spaces as social media. In one popular TV drama that’s streaming online, they present an alternate history in which people of certain race were part of the nobility. I believe avatar design will become an important ethical issue in that sense as well.

If you copy yourself in an avatar, the uncanny valley^*8 could be a problem. If anything, a character completely different from the real world is probably easier to accept. I also think introducing avatar customization and elements that lend some interest to items leads to communication with other people.

There’s an apparent trend toward diversity in the inclination to express ourselves through the customization of avatars. Some people will go the DIY route; others will purchase inexpensive assets to create their avatars. There’s also a trend of people aiming for differentiation by purchasing high-priced items, including assets from luxury brands, and of purchasing these items for the purpose of investment, especially for virtual sneakers as NFTs. It’s very interesting that some young people even prefer to purchase NFTs with rising resale value over purchasing brand-name items in the real world. This aspect also links to the collector culture that was originally called "sneakerheads," and it links to a familiar topic in fashion research. It’s only human to have the conflicting desires to represent yourself as both distinct from and the same as other people.

*8 The uncanny valley: Regarding robots and avatars that imitate the outward appearance of humans, the psychological phenomenon of feeling a strong sense of discomfort or revulsion toward forms that are extremely close to human but subtly different

The Direction of
Multispecies and Design

Multispecies Projects Implemented by Professor Mizuno

Out of the various trends, what kind of projects are you working on from a multispecies point of view?

I’ll give you a few examples from student projects at the Kyoto Institute of Technology KYOTO Design Lab.
A combination of serious gaming, ecological design, and the Anthropocene, simulating an Earth destroyed by climate change on the Unreal Engine, where you try to survive by looking for a place to efficiently establish and build an autonomous solar power plant. A combination of agricultural technology, fabrication, and ecological design aimed to mediate between humans, the soil environment, and vegetables by using soil filaments with chicken droppings to 3D print habitats for the earthworms responsible for improving farmland soil, then burying the habitats in the ground. A combination of fabrication and circular design to revive former waterways, cutting timber called “Kitayama cedar” from the mountains in the northern part of Kyoto for the purpose of circular construction in the area so it can be used in traditional Kyo-machiya houses, temporarily piecing it together as a boat using CNC machining upstream, then unloading and taking it apart to use in the city. Some students are upholding principles of biotechnology and sustainable fashion by making clothes using patterns from the 3D tool for apparel CLO using bioplastics made from algae from Lake Biwa. One student in the doctoral program is involved in community design research, considering "autonomous communities" and studying precedents where circles of people voluntarily cutting bamboo, with no economic benefit, were created in areas that struggle with bamboo overgrowth. In a field where it's easy to burn out just by upholding an awareness of social issues, we’re trying to look for how the local community can face nature in an enjoyable way.

Personally, I researched making bio-leather undergarments with the WACOAL Human Science Research & Development Center, Wacoal Corp.'s R&D Department. We created biodegradable, 3D-printed filaments, 3D printing the shape of the pattern for the clothes then cultivating mushroom hyphae. The clothes easily decompose if you bury them in the ground after use, and mushrooms will grow unless you sterilize the soil. (Laughs.) I evaluated the physical properties of filaments and researched algorithm development and mushrooms’ growth conditions previously. I created a scenario using sci-fi prototyping methods for the prototype we actually developed. To create this scenario as speculative fiction, I’ve introduced a perspective of circular design as service design, not just the story of the items. I’m currently moving toward the stage of implementing the underlying technology I researched.

An example I referenced was an effort by a sports brand to produce sneakers made from a single, 100% recyclable material. Using a single material reduces waste and also makes recycling easy. I’d like to make products like this easy to create using only a 3D printer, and I’d also like to equip them with ready biodegradability.
Speaking of the design trend toward sustainable and computational sneakers, there’s an observed trend of purposely making them look like they’ve been made from a mix of miscellaneous materials to emphasize that they’re made of recycled materials. Another sports brand offers a sneaker series where the outsole and fabric are made with scrap material from factories. I was impressed by how the series broke away from modern design aesthetics and took on more heterogeneous forms of expression. If these heterogeneous elements are applied, they’ll also have a significant influence on design trends.
But it’s important to take an approach that keeps a close eye on traceability so these efforts don’t turn into greenwashing^*9.

*9 Greenwashing: Behavior that deceptively appeals to customers about the environment, such as companies or administrations calling attention to environmental friendliness while concealing an altogether different reality, or faking environmental measures.

Working Locally, Connecting Globally

Do you think being based in Kyoto and Kansai poses benefits in expressing native-ness? Or do you attach more importance to global activities?

No matter where I am, my approach of acting locally and connecting globally doesn’t change. Exchanging information on the internet is essential to digital fabrication, and I hope to make my own contribution by publishing the processes for the fabrications I’ve worked on. The production method for fabric made from mushrooms is also something I got from BioFabForum. Going forward, it will continue to be a matter of optimizing the designs for each region while using global information. We’ll need to have the perspective of expanding information globally but materialization locally and making the circulating system after materialization local whenever possible.

One point to reconsider that’s been raised for in-house design organizations at Japanese companies is that too many regional characteristics have been lost by aiming globally. What’s your advice about this?

In the context of circular design, we need to think about mechanisms that move from the arteries to the veins, then circulate back to the arteries again. For artery optimization, I suggest usage rooted in unique regional culture as conventional user research. What’s needed after regionally optimized product development is an infrastructure to maintain vein mechanisms and encourage circulation. If we work cooperatively with services from other companies and build recovery mechanisms for recycling resources, the viewpoint to develop products and services with an understanding of the entire cycle will be vital.
What can designers do, not only to bring things back to production bases in Japan but also including bringing things back to bases of circulation? I hope working from that viewpoint will result in significantly impactful business. A story has even been featured on [Japanese public broadcaster] NHK about Chinese companies relocating factories to Japan because the labor cost is lower. I hope that seeing this as an opportunity and striving for optimization of the entire industrial ecosystem of each region in Japan, getting to the core not just of regionally optimized artery industries but also vein industries, will result in significantly impactful business.

(Interview held at Daijiro Mizuno’s office at the Kyoto Institute of Technology on June 22, 2022)

Interviewer’s commentFumitaka Ozaki, Research Producer, Creative Center, Sony Group Corporation

When describing the dynamic mixing and mingling of contemporary culture through various perspectives —local vs. global, and the metaverse vs. physical spaces — Professor Mizuno expressed the mission and role of design within contemporary culture. At Sony, we call these kinds of trends "Culture Flux," and Professor Mizuno's detailed explanations around the issue of cultural appropriation, circular design, and the ethical issues of avatar design, made me expand the scope of our report to include these topics. In this era of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), we believe that the trend of “Culture Flux” will only continue to accelerate, bringing dramatic changes to our cultures. Our work will be to consider balanced designs from a wide variety of perspectives, while maintaining a firm understanding of these changes.