From visual sketching to knotted figurations: Fabulating in the contact zone
Valentina Nisi, Mathilde Gouin, Marta Galvão Ferreira, Nuno Nunes · 2025
Drawing on feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS) and feminist technoscience theories, this pictorial advances speculative design and fabulation through post-anthropocentric practices using visual sketching, embodied noticing, and indexing more-than-human perspectives and interactions. In a summer-long experiment, the authors engaged in visual sketching and noticed interspecies ecosystems through situated drawing, annotations, and indexing. This practice produced reflective and speculative narratives, inspiring positive fabulations within these "polyphonic assemblages." By challenging traditional human-centric design approaches, the authors embrace an "ethics of possibility" and promote inclusive, future-oriented design frameworks. This work details a novel embodied method for affirmative fabulations, envisioning inclusive speculative futures to push the boundaries of embodied design research.