Category: lectures

  • The Future of Money

    The Future of Money

    Lead by: Malé Luján Escalante, in collaboration with Supra Systems Studio and UAL:LCC Design School

    The Future of Money Award has run for over a decade, exploring different facets of design, money, and speculative thinking. In 2022, it was hosted by Supra Systems Studio, in collaboration with the Design School at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

    Every week seems to bring a new plan to reinvent money. These plans are hyped as revolutionary: they promise to liberate us from inequality, disrupt global finance, and bring down outdated institutions. These new monetary systems are designed from the ground up with fresh inbuilt logics to support their imagined use. Seductively shiny, they ask us not to look too closely at what their long-term implications are.

    But the existing world of money isn’t going anywhere. State currency is still real. Bitcoin is still valued in US dollars, and folding paper cash still exists. Money is a public infrastructure and common language – it only has value because we have a shared sense of its meaning. If we want to change the world, we must start with what’s here right now, and think about how the system really works.

    Instead of solving it by stacking new breakage on old, can creative practice challenge how existing financial systems work?

    The Future of Money design competition invited people to use future-oriented creative methods and create a project which makes a change to an existing financial system, considering how this system operates, and why, and designing a modification to the system, its’ communication, or how it is distributed.

    The Futre of Money 2022, Award Winners

    Memoirs to keep

    Yashwanthi Balamurugan Sumithra, Xi Zhang, Syeda Madiha Hussain, & Yini Zheng, MA Service Design, UAL:LCC

    Failed Economies

    Angela Rodríguez, Andrea Miranda, María Gabriela Sulbarán, Karl Gavidia, Jeiver Gavidia, Graphic Design, Universidad de los Andes, Venezuela.

    Financial Transaction Markup Language

    Martin Disley, Chris Elsden, Chris Speed, Institute for Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh

    Fanoo Child Banking

    Carmen Diaz, Zhiyu Lin, David Povilaika, & Julia Yu , BA (Hons)Design Management, UAL:LCC

    Pay Delay

    Omair Malik BA (Hons) User Experience, UAL:LCC.

    Green Uni

    Pam Chen, BA (Hons) Design for Art Direction, UAL:LCC

    CBDCS for SDGS

    Glenn Sæstad, MA Strategic Design, Oslo School of Architecture and Design

    ___, in Excess

    Astrid Chung and Benedetta Scollo, BA (Hons) Design for Art Direction, UAL: LCC and Aldo Heubel, BA (Hons) Crossmedia Design at ArtEZ University of the Arts

    Hidden Value in the Information Age

    Haipeng Yan, Hanli Zhang, MA Data Visualization, UAL:LCC and MsC Data Science & AI for Creative Industry, UAL:CCI

    Public Program

    To complement the competition, we have curated a public online program of lectures and creative futures workshops,. Videos for the lectures are available in the links below. Attending the public program is not a requirement for submission, but it will help to situate your work within the design discussions.

    If you’ve participated in the program, we’d love to hear your feedback about it here.

    ‘Financial Instruments’ – DMSTFCTN.  In this lecture, DMSTFCTN will explore opaque financial practices and discuss their evolving artistic approaches to money and its systems. Video available here.

     ‘Selling Stories’ – Oliver Smith (DMSTFCTN) and Marion Lagedamont (UAL) This workshop explores the use of storytelling as a way to reframe our approaches to the future of money, revealing its infrastructures and hidden systems. 

    ‘Counting Things That Money Doesn’t Count’ – Diana Finch, Bristol Pound, in conversation with Dr. Nigel Dodd (LSE) and Charlie Waterhouse (Extinction Rebellion) A conversation exploring the history and development of Bristol Pound and the role of communities in shaping the future of money. Video available here.

    ‘Dancing About Money’ – Alaistair Steele (UAL) and Dr. John Fass (UAL) What are the opportunities and pit-falls, for people and planet, of current and imminent changes in the forms money takes?

    ‘Participatory Futures’ – Laurie Smith, Head of Foresight Research (NESTA). As the world struggles with increased complexity and uncertainty, this lecture explores how NESTA uses contemporary methods which can allow us to collectively imagine alternative, democratic and inclusive futures. Video available here.

    ‘Money for Mars’ – Scott Smith (Changeist) & John Willshire (Smithery) Humans are on the edge of living in space full-time,  but we have little recent concrete speculation about the new financial instruments and products that may emerge, especially considering how time, connection and needs change radically off-Earth. This workshop explores how to develop speculative financial products for New Space economies.

    ‘Indigenous Futures’ – Felipe Viveros This lecture will explore some of the key ideas and guiding principles behind global projects exploring new economic paradigms, from UBI to gross national happiness in Bhutan, presenting a general overview of how these new policies are working on the ground. Video available here.

    ‘Failed Economies’ – University of Andes ULA & IsITEthical? Exchange This workshop explores the realities of being a creative in a country where money has failed.

    ‘Reimagining the purpose of tax for a climate and biological emergency’ – Becky Miller This lecture introducing a speculative tax system in order to investigate the use of design artefacts in facilitating conversations with financial and climate futures. Video available here.

    “When Money Talks Back”  – Ruben Pater (Untold Stories) This workshop explores of the power dynamics behind the visual representations of money in many of its forms, and an invitation to use graphic design to open a line of communication allowing these representations of money to “talk back”. 

  • A Route Out Of Permacrisis? The Informational Right To The City

    A Route Out Of Permacrisis? The Informational Right To The City

    Prof. Monika Buscher, Sociology Department, Lancaster University.

    Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s notion of the (informational) right to the city, I explore what we can do to make data commons and what action such data commons could allow. I ask how this could help build response-ability in a world in climate and related permacrisis, tracing forms of resistance, opportunities for design, and grassroots efforts.

    Monika Büscher is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University and co-director of isITethical? Exchange. She co-edits the book series Changing Mobilities. Monika currently leads research on decarbonising transport, disaster mobilities and ethical, legal and social issues of IT innovation in a range of different projects.

  • The Westernizing Dream: Semiotics of AI and Technological Colonialism

    The Westernizing Dream: Semiotics of AI and Technological Colonialism

    Dr Luke Moffat, Sociology Department, Trustworthy Autonomous Systems -Security Hub, Lancaster University.

    In this lecture, Dr. Luke Moffat (Sociology Department, Trustworthy Autonomous Systems – Security Hub, Lancaster University) explores the cultural, material, and political entanglements of artificial intelligence. Drawing on semiotics, philosophy, and indigenous knowledge systems, the talk critiques the “Westernizing Dream” of AI — a vision tied to extractivist practices, colonial logics, and securitization. Dr. Moffat invites us to reimagine AI not as a neutral tool, but as a system deeply embedded in power structures and planetary consequences — and to consider alternative ways of being, knowing, and designing.

    This lecture is part of the Design Brief Award and Companion Program of Public Lectures and Creative Workshops, hosted by isITethical in collaboration with the Design School at London College of Communication, UAL, exploring the role of arts and design in AI ethics and responsible innovation.

  • AI Ethics Through Design

    AI Ethics Through Design

    Dr Malé Luján Escalante – MA Service Design UAL: London College of Communication.

    Ethics through Design (EtD) uses co-design methods to create, facilitate and nurture anticipatory capabilities for research and innovation, responsive to both society and environment. In practice, EtD problematizes both ethics and design. This lecture draws upon ethics of technology to formulate principles of co-design facilitation. EtD understands ethics, beyond regulation and administrative ticking-box exercises, as contextual, creative, and participatory ongoing processes.

    EtD has been developed at IsITethical? Exchange originally within Disaster and Risk Management (DRM) and Emergency Response domains, over 7 years of working in partnership with emergency response services, policymakers, academics across disciplines, standardisation organisations, and key IT developer companies and its framework is now being adopted and applied in other sectors including AI for education and AI Responsible Research Innovation. In the lecture, we share the framework we have used to design and facilitate ethical co-design workshops, tools and interventions, posited as response-able pedagogy.

  • Consumer protection in IT as well as the role of dark patterns in emerging technology

    Consumer protection in IT as well as the role of dark patterns in emerging technology

    Prof. Alexander Boden and Veronika Krauß, University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg.

    This lecture by Prof. Alexander Boden and Veronika Krauß from the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg explores consumer protection in digital technologies, focusing on dark patterns and their growing presence in emerging areas like XR (Extended Reality). Drawing on research in consumer informatics and interface design, the talk considers how manipulative design practices challenge ethics and user agency in increasingly immersive tech environments.

    Presented as part of the Design Brief Award and Companion Program of Public Lectures and Creative Workshops, hosted by isITethical in collaboration with the Design School at London College of Communication, UAL, the series explores the role of arts and design in AI ethics and responsible research and innovation.