Jakob Ion Wille

Designing Possible Worlds – World building methods and future scenarios

The Royal Danish Academy, Denmark

At the Royal Danish Academy, we combine storyworld building and speculative
design to create visual fictions in various media formats, such as film, games, and
interactive installations. These design-based collaborative approaches to developing
media content to some degree challenge the status and role of the screenplay and
traditional media production. In this presentation, I will showcase three examples of work
done by students at the Royal Danish Academy and present and reflect on some of the
new methodologies utilized in the design courses.

The three examples are:

1) A course in speculative design, worldbuilding, and
design fiction.

2) a course in art direction and worldbuilding and

3) a master thesis film production combining world-building methods and production design.

Common to the different courses, besides utilizing world-building methods, is their
focus on future scenarios, the transformative potential in stories and themes related to
sustainability. In the speculative design course, students worked on design fictions as
interactive installations, exploring a relatively broad concept of future existence. In the art
direction course, students designed computer games. The course is part of two related
projects: one being Planet Junk, initiated by Alex McDowell (University of Southern
California), and the other being The Climate Expedition. The Climate Expedition is a
project using storytelling and new media to engage the broad public in themes related to
sustainability. The third project is the live-action film Wild Child, created by film school
students and design students who developed the fictional universe and created the
production design.

All of the projects combine storyworld building methods (McDowell) with
speculative design methods and scenario thinking (Stuart Candy, Anthony Dunne & Fiona
Raby). The projects also build on new methods and tools on how to create fictional
universes developed by the author and Simon Jon Andreasen from the National Film
School of Denmark.

Jakob Ion Wille is a dramaturg, PhD and associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy’s Department of Visual Communication, and head of the educational program Visual Game and Media Design. where he researches and teaches production design, visual narratives and story worlds. Has worked with films, TV series and exhibition design as a script consultant, screenwriter and has published a number of research articles and books on e.g. production design and world building including Wille, Andreasen & Wille (2023): Håndbog i Universskabelse (How to create a Universe), Samfundslitteratur, Aggerholm, Wille, Hansen (2020) Production Design, Samfundslitteratur and Wille (2017): Analyzing Production Design: Positions and approaches.
Kosmorama.