Speculative design workshop - Pipedreams&Lushlakes

10/06 2025

Speculative design workshop – Pipedreams&Lushlakes

Metamedia Association in collaboration with The Design of Visual Communications Department (Arts Academy in Split) organised a Speculative Design workshop under the title “Pipedreams & Lushlakes’’. The workshop took place from 26th to 30th of May 2025 in the Association of Technical Culture in Pula, Croatia and was led by Dora Đurkesac and Lilly Urbat, the final performance was held in Club Kotač at the festival afterparty. The finished projects served as a visual backdrop for DJ Evan and DJ Ilija Rudman.

The workshop explored psychedelic feedback loops between technological fantasy and environmental fallout as well as water as an interface – symbolic, emotional, organic, and chemical – revealing how subconscious desires clash with the material realities of water contamination, overconsumption, and organic survival. Can personal dreamscapes reveal the fears of impending catastrophe, the path to regeneration, or an attraction to self-destruction? Participants were invited to delve into the personal and collective subconscious, exploring the metaphors of water, contamination, and transhumanist desires embedded in dreams, corporate aesthetics, or esoteric diagrams. Workshop approach encompassed the application of speculative design in VJ media.

A total of 8 participants created 5 VJ sets centered around the workshop theme Pipedreams & Lushlakes. The workshop resulted in live VJ sets at the Plava Struja afterparty, featuring DJs Evan and Ilija Rudman.

Works

Petra Guljaš & Antonela Lukša

The Flood

In the time period we live in today, where the news about climate change and natural disasters aren’t viewed as breaking news or an object of worry anymore, people have also stopped appreciating the natural beauty that surrounds them. With the background visuals of National Park Plitvice Lakes, the VJ set The Flood is shown as a set of instructions of what to do in case of a flood that isn’t meant to be taken seriously. Why? Because we deal with the feeling of acceptance of what people did and what awaits mankind in the future. The ending visual with the words “Let’s swim” written on it works in the party environment this work is meant to be showcased in but also as our final farewell to the future.

Mia Šabanović & Petra Mišan

VJ duo: AQUAOBSCURA

Hydromemoria: When Water Remembers

Imagine a world in which water has developed a collective consciousness. Every drop holds memory — not only of the serene beauty of life it once nourished but also the brutal scars left by human actions. After centuries of passive observation, water begins to respond. But it is not vengeance that moves it. Water does not retaliate with storms or floods. Instead, it mutates. It learns. It adapts. It becomes something else. Hydromemoria is a speculative narrative in which water emerges as an archive of the planet’s emotional and ecological history. It absorbs the remnants of coral songs, oil spills, whale calls, and microplastic dreams. It digests data, decodes pain, and begins to shape new forms of existence — post-human, post-collapse, but not devoid of life. In this world, water transforms into a generative force, weaving together fragments of lost biodiversity and synthetic debris. It forms new ecosystems, new languages, and new bodies. Some shimmer with ancestral marine DNA; others pulse with the electric memories of extinct machines.

Nabil Almanssour

CATS HATE WATER AND SO SHOULD YOU!

In the near future, water scarcity is no longer a distant concern but a daily crisis in many parts of the world. As freshwater sources become more limited, tensions rise between nations and communities. Meanwhile, access to clean water becomes increasingly unequal. In the future, businesses will invent an alternative to water, but in order to market this product, they have to discourage people from using real water using memes of the internet mascot, cats, as a propaganda tool.

Why water is bad:

Water makes your socks wet

You can drown in water

Water makes the floor slippery

Sharks live in water

Water ruins electronics

Your ex is 60% made of water

Mosquitos lay eggs on water

Your cat hates taking baths for a reason

Polina Komyagina

Liminal Drum Society

(dystopian techno-magical laundry of the future)

Do you want your life to be brighter, softer, and fresher? Do you want to get rid of the old trauma stains stuck in your memory? To clean your consciousness from the spots of shame, guilt, and anxiety? LDS purifies your mind by transforming pain into hypnotic visuals. Unlike psychotherapy, LDS doesn’t require any inner work. Instead, you load all your “dirty” thoughts in the drum, select a program, choose a detergent, and press “start.” Your mental issues will be immediately transformed into a psychedelic audiovisual journey, aiming at making you happier without any effort on your part!

Mia Ribić & Milica Denković

Liquid Archives: Ritual of Unlocking

Ritual performance and VJ set exploring the ways movement becomes a tool to uncover submerged narratives of contamination and care within the Adriatic Sea. Through the gestures, the performer channels three interconnected entities: a cruise ship, a marine organism, and a personal care/pharmaceutical compound. Every movement sequence via portal leads to the interface of visuals and sound, showing the enmeshment of bodies, waters, and industry. Rooted in hydrofeminist thought, the work encourages us to feel with the sea and to think through nonverbal ways of knowing and communicating with each other in a contaminated world.