Critical Design — Design Fiction
Feeling Human
A speculative object for a future where emotion has to be induced
Origin
A future scenario
Feeling Human is a design fiction project — a future scenario set in a non-Western future, built to reflect the culture, environment, and society of Iran. It imagines human relations distorted by the virtuality of the world: the social mesh broken, everyone an ephemeral entity travelling through space and time, having forgotten what emotion even feels like.
The scenario is narrated through a single consciousness passed between bodies across a century — Sara, Anita, Niusha, Shirin, Leili — each a different age, a different decade, the same traveller: "The dates blurred, stretching across a century I hadn't yet finished living... Today, the air tasted of Isfahan's dust and roses; tomorrow, it might carry the scent of Shiraz's orange blossoms."
Process
An object for remembering
In this future, the only way to remember what emotion feels like is to artificially induce it — through something that is both torture and pleasure. The resulting piece touches the body wherever a specific feeling or memory needs to be recalled.
Material
Copper and Bakhtiari felt
Made from local materials that root a speculative future back in Persian craft: hand-cut, oxidised copper shards layered over Bakhtiari felt — a traditional Iranian wool felt — worn directly against the skin.
Outcome
Exhibited in Rome
Shown as part of the Global Futures symposium at MAXXI Museum, Rome, and "Souvenirs from the Future" at 1/9unosunove Gallery, Rome.
See Feeling Human on the Global Futures Lab site
