ANDNAND
Beyond Dichotomies
ANDNAND is a London-based participatory futures studio founded by Stephanie Pau, who works as a designer and an artist to facilitate the co-creation of near and far futures, broadly related to health and ecology.
There are several ways to read the name of the studio: and nand (nand is not-and in terms of electronics logic gate); and n’ and; or simply a series of a‘s, n’s and d’s, perhaps like a string of alternative DNA. Plurality. ANDNAND in one word also signifies the place we intend to operate from - both and neither, beyond dichotomies.
Stephanie Pau
Participatory Speculative Designer & Artist
Stephanie Pau holds a Master of Research (MRes) degree in Healthcare and Design from the Royal College of Art (2017-2019) and practices as a participatory speculative designer and an artist at ANDNAND. She researches participatory design and futures thinking methodologies and facilitates people to collectively find visions beyond watered-down consensus, broadly related to health and ecology. She practices with tomato plants and waste materials to examine dominant constructs and explore signals of more-than-human care and repair.
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Prior to that she was a solution architect and had founded a health tech start-up, which adds up to about 15 years of deep dive into patterns of machine and human systems and business ecosystems. She also holds a Masters of Engineering (MEng) degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering with Management from Imperial College London (2004, 1st Hons).
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She has published on methodologies of design-based futures thinking and collective imagination in academic journals/conferences and has been sharing her knowledge through visiting/associate lecturer roles at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, UAL.
Our Approach
Often times, in imagining the futures, dystopia or utopia is invoked. Three lines, four quadrants, which can be read as 2x dichotomies juxtaposed, are used to stratify the futures. The tools and models we used to think with constraints the shapes of the futures that can be conceptualised. Some constraints are more helpful than others towards a stated objective. All of the constraints we choose to embrace tell us something about our conscious and subconscious positions/objectives.
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Work with unknowns, is Steph's thesis. It is ANDNAND's starting position and we work with all models, because: plurality.