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Tom Tjon A Loi

Concept visualisation of six participants negotiating one shared sentence

Ongoing Proposal / Participatory Futures

THE END?

Can visual communication become visual negotiation?

Agreement is not the end. It is where interpretation begins.

Project year
Project 2026
Role
Concept · Research Direction · Participation Protocol · Visual System
Status
Ongoing / Proposal · 2026
Project context
Self-initiated proposal · developed in 2026

00 · Project truth

Central question
Can a future remain democratic after design gives collective language a concrete form?
Relationship
Independent proposal developed for the HfG Ulm Designer in Residence 2027 call; not commissioned or accepted.
Editorial note
The participant scenes are concept visualisations of the proposed method, not documentation of completed workshops.

Meaning before making

The gap this work had to close.

  1. 01 · The question

    Can a future remain democratic after design gives collective language a concrete form?

  2. 02 · The shift

    From designing futures for an audience to building a protocol in which interpretation can be contested.

  3. 03 · The form

    An ongoing proposal in which groups negotiate a speculative society, confront its designed interpretation and revise what they thought they had agreed.

01 · The conflict

Six people can agree to the same sentence and still imagine six different worlds.

A statement such as ‘housing is owned collectively’ sounds clear until design turns it into contracts, interfaces, rooms and authority. The project begins inside that gap between shared language and lived consequence.

Same words. Different worlds.

02 · Protocol 001

Provoke. Negotiate. Materialise. Confront. Revise.

Participants move from incomplete propositions to a contested constitution. Majority agreement, conditions and dissent remain visible. Design then gives one article a consequential form and returns it with a simple question: is this what you meant?

  1. 01

    Provoke

    Introduce deliberately incomplete future propositions.

  2. 02

    Negotiate

    Agree, condition, object, veto, abstain or propose.

  3. 03

    Materialise

    Translate one decision into a consequential designed form.

  4. 04

    Confront

    Return the interpretation and record what survives.

  5. 05

    Revise

    Change the constitution without erasing the dissent.

03 · Proposed encounter

The return is the real prototype.

The scenes below visualise the proposed sequence: a group negotiates one line, design materialises an interpretation, and the result returns to the six people who authored the language. The method is only proven when disagreement can still change the work.

Concept visualisation of a group negotiating a shared line
Concept visualisation · same sentence, different mental models.
Concept visualisation of a housing interpretation and objection form
Concept visualisation · design makes hidden assumptions concrete.
Concept visualisation of six participants reviewing the materialised result
Concept visualisation · the interpretation returns: yes, partly, no, never agreed.

04 · What exists now

A rigorous proposal. The human test is still ahead.

THE END? currently exists as a research framework, five-stage protocol, residency proposal and concept visualisations. No participant workshop, negotiated constitution or public exhibition has yet been completed.

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