Multispecies Design and Ethnographic Practice: Following Other-Than-Humans as a Mode of Exploring Environmental Issues

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, the concept of sustainability has been employed by designers to confront the problems deriving from the emergence of the environmental crisis. On the one hand, if this contributed to generating systemic design approaches and methods to mitigate the human impact on the planet, little has been done to explore sustainability as a concept that extends beyond anthropocentrism. Examining environmental issues by considering other-than-human viewpoints could introduce alternative scenarios compared to those envisioned through technocentric means. This work considers a speculative design project that provides a multispecies reading of the notion of environmental contamination through the engagement of human and vegetal perspectives. The considered methodology focusses on the transdisciplinary tactic of “following” plant collectives across the multiple sites and actors that populate their life. Building on post-humanism theories and Guattari’s concept of “ecosophy”, this paper entails that sustainability should be seen not just as the outcome of a design process, but also as a behavioural attitude, and design as an implementation of that attitude. It is argued that following other-than-humans can teach designers to think sustainably by cultivating relations of reciprocity that help to shed light on the multispecies landscapes of the Anthropocene.

Speculating on Nature, Technology and Finance. Geomerce as a Case Study for Research through Design

“…Those can be complex and sometimes contradictory but have the advantage of opening to in-depth analysis, shedding light on how knowledge flows across different subjects and disciplines. The strategy we used was based on an inventive method, that is, "following the plant" (Gatto and McCardle, 2019). In doing that, we understood what actors we could collaborate with and how they could informand be informed by -GeoMerce.…”

Design for Sustainability: The Need for a New Agenda

“…Therefore, whilst some are more attuned to decaying planetary conditions within their local environs, for example recognising the increasing frequency and severity of heatwaves as abnormal [32] or have noted a decline in bumble bee abundance [33]; for the rest without direct access to such environmental realities or scientific fact the message becomes communicated and translated through other media, such as the television, the internet, and social media platforms. As part of this Special Issue, Gatto and McCardle in their paper Multispecies Design and Ethnographic Practice: Following Other-Than-Humans as a Mode of Exploring Environmental Issues [34] take the position that by engaging with other-than-human viewpoints, here building upon post-humanist and ecosophy theories and the ethnographic method of 'following the plant', the focus of sustainable design intent can be de-centralised away from the human towards multispecies participants. The value of this, they argue, is that environmental concerns can be intelligently probed and explicitly considered without an assumed position of human privilege and associated capitalist needs.…”

Vivo, provocador, sorprendente: dimensiones emocionales de los materiales bio-sinérgicos para un diseño socialmente significativo

“…Such activities that emerge out of Bio-Synergistic materials might bring us out of the simplified, perfect, and rational ideas on which our culture is based, and normalize new values of surprise, imperfection, provocation, and impermanence. The interdependent relationship between organism, technology, and user in the maintenance and in many cases, healing of the material can increase our awareness towards the agency of nature and its temporality, addressing environmental consciousness, and multi-species collaborations (Gatto & McCardle, 2019), leading to a shift away from an anthropocentric 'human-centered' design towards acknowledging our radical interdependence with nature to take on a more-than-human approach to design (Escobar, 2018;Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). From these observations and discussion, an original framework emerged (Figure 10), representing the role of Bio-Synergistic materials in suggesting new values by socially meaningful design.…”

“…Estas actividades que surgen de los materiales bio-sinérgicos pueden sacarnos de las ideas simplificadas, perfectas y racionales en las que se basa nuestra cultura, y normalizar nuevos valores relacionados con la sorpresa, la imperfección, la provocación y la mutabilidad. La relación de interdependencia entre el organismo, la tecnología y el usuario en el mantenimiento -y en muchos casos, la reparación-del material puede aumentar nuestra conciencia sobre la agencia de la naturaleza y su temporalidad, abordando la conciencia ambiental y las colaboraciones multi-especies (Gatto & McCardle, 2019), lo que lleva al cambio de un diseño antropocéntrico "centrado en las personas" y conduce al reconocimiento de nuestra interdependencia radical con la naturaleza y permite asumir un enfoque más que humano del diseño (Escobar, 2018; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). A partir de estas observaciones y esta discusión, surgió un marco original (Figura 10) que representa el rol de los materiales bio-sinérgicos en su potencial de sugerir nuevos valores mediante un diseño socialmente significativo.…”