Design Fiction x Inktober

I have always been an ardent admirer of sci-fi movies and futuristic theories that reflect the present realities and future possibilities for such concepts. This time, I have used Inktober prompts as nudges to illustrate speculative concepts. Although I had taken this up as a challenge — to speculate with constraints — the primary idea behind these concepts is to make us introspect, question and debate over possibilities. Speculative fiction, more often than not, tinkers with dystopian worlds which are essentially grounded in reality and represented in abstract forms. Some prime examples of such worlds that we have witnessed before would be H.G Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’, George Orwell‘s ‘1984’, Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and, most recently, ‘Black Mirror’.

To illustrate the flow of the concepts

Context
Inktober is essentially a 31 day challenge which encourages artists from around the globe to create ink sketches each day to inculcate the practice of sketching and overcome creative blocks. Each day a prompt is given, which is interpreted differently by every artist.

Process

The prompt was tinkered with for a bit, imagining possibilities and worlds. This was then juxtaposed against the current politics surrounding the prompt which finally takes a tangible form in ink.

To view my work daywise click here

Glimpses of some of my inked illustrations

To further illustrate some of the concepts

1. Fish pods : 100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste alone. (Source: https://www.condorferries.co.uk/marine-ocean-pollution-statistics-facts).Unfortunately,this does not come as a surprise. I illustrated Fish pods as a conceptual pod for fish to exist above the realm of toxic wastes as that is where we are heading.
2. Wisp : One of the prompts was ‘wisp’ which prompted me to reimagine hair follicles. We have often seen dystopian concepts where the world gets more and more desensitised to emotions and people and are disconnected from each other, just like hair follicles that have their own muscles, nerves, and blood supply and appear to exist on their own, disengaged from each other. Therefore I conceptualised an evolved version of species, wherein neural pathways, through hair follicles connect people and their thoughts in a deeper,subconscious level.
3. Fancy: Another prompt for inktober was ‘fancy’. My concept was to display the disparity of classes,a divide that further widens between those who are racing against time to make a living and those who have an abundance of it.
4. Armour: My interpretation of armour is the masks we wear on a daily basis. What we feel is often not revealed.Could there then be a way to project our true expressions upon a headgear ?
5. Chef : For this prompt, I designed a tool which could potentially be an extension for hands. It would comprise of tools that we need handy while cooking up meals.

While these are some of the many speculative concepts, the larger question is, what are the implications of the decisions we make today and what would be the implications of how we respond to it in the future? I say pick up your pencils and let’s speculate!