Practical Investigation: Brief

[Human centred design - learning through play]

Practical Development

‘How can we convert into image and narrative the disasters that are slow moving and long in the making, disasters that are anonymous and that star nobody, disasters that are attritional and of indifferent interest to the sensation-driven technologies of our image-world? How can we turn the long emergencies of slow violence into stories dramatic enough to rouse public sentiment and warrant political interventions, these emergencies whose repercussions have given rise to some of the most critical challenges of our time?’ (Demos, 2017, p.13)

Findings:

• Artistic practice is intrinsic and necessary to good thinking and good science 
• Material figuring 
• Poiesis itself translates into making 

Greenpeace campaign that said: “If the world was a bank, it would already have been saved.”

“The integration of Nature (spirit), ecology and technology is one of the more challenging problems before us. For many, Virtual reality threatens to obviate experience with natural reality and, perhaps, distort appropriate responses to the events that occur in the natural world”

Traditional means of political and social organising are failing because they are usually rooted in polarising “us verses them” paradigms. 

Expansion:

Everything is material. Humanity is materialistic. The commodity culture we live in, the technological sphere of emerging technologies only exists for the development of products to be sold to the public, thus the best way to understand this is through the exploration of raw materials and man-made materials to provide PERSPECTIVE on our place in the planet, and the configuration of our planet. What is humanities global impact through material alone? – we all know the issues with plastic – we all know about climate change and mass extinction of species – but these things seem so out of reach, this narrative has been going on for years now with no sense of transgression or structural shift. Industry remains, politics remains, capitalism remains – multinational corporations operate in a globalised economy and those who contest it do not have the power they have, so the linear structures continue. The few in power circulate within their tight networks for industry and politics in their own interests, affecting the rest of the world. The imminent effects of climate change (or that humans have had on the planet) did not exist, or were considered fallacy in the world they grew up in. So to change everything one knows for an external factor that has yet to impact the capital flow or entire structures of their business is understandably not in their interests.

We read over post-apocalyptic warnings of both climate and technology because we (think we) cannot operate in the current systems without our comforts. As concepts they are too over-reaching and broad to think about what we can do to diffuse their destructive qualities. However, it is because we have no connection to our surroundings in this generation, or for raw production, and stripped back material. We have lost our connection to the outside world. Studies have shown living near nature is linked to longer lives. Kids sit on iPads – a single unit with infinite games – instead of playing with a ball – we’ve domesticated ourselves and commodified our culture so much that we do not understand the process of making; of extracting, forming, producing, giving. We get lost in the screen-based worlds or colour and endless possibility, so much so, that we forget the basic magic in what formed their instruments we use – raw material (gold, copper, silver) / natures basis / the organic. The food and life this world sustains is unbelievable and alien. The intricacies of the entire planetary system is beyond comprehension. Gain another perspective, and maybe remind oneself of our histories and teachings that seem to be forgotten amongst the chaos of modern capitalist monoculture.

The design solution attempts to produce something that is within reach of the everyday person to come to grips with. It needs to translate nature and humans as one entity not two, where the Earth is our home, and we do not have another one. It needs to express the importance of inter-species connections beyond humanity as a single force that currently operates above and within this world.

Through the use of natural elements and material alone can the design translate:

1. That nature is beautiful, perfect and fragile

2. Nature as an interconnected network of patterns and systems and entities

3. The destructive qualities of the fossil fuel industries

4. The huge imprint humans have on a planet that existed long before and will exist long after – the Holocene gave us the atmospheric composition we need to live, and if we take that away we are only terminating our own existence, not that which operates beyond us?

5. That everything we do online is stored and exists as physical data

Can the design make people:

1. Drive less / consider their modes of transport

2. Use their technologies less

3. Make more conscious purchasing decisions 

4. Engage with nature more

Further findings that the practical wishes to consider:

Ideas of Gaia - the personification of Mother Earth

David Spangler 1990

The sense of living earth enjoyed and practiced by earlier non-industrial cultures grew out of living experience and a closeness to nature that our culture has set aside. It was woven into the fabric of life and culture. The Judeo-Christian tradition arises…from patriarchal social structures, where sacredness has overtones of authority, power distance and maleness, that would have been alien to the spirituality of the ancient Celts of the Native Americas, two cultures that incorporated a sense of the living earth.

We seem to need to call something sacred in order to make it worthy of receiving our highest values and noblest relationships…we should not need to make either ourselves or the earth “sacred” in order to love it and ourselves and to get on with doing what needs to be done to heal and protect the biosphere. How to care about something so large when we have a constant flow of everyday mundane pressures?

Gaia can be an inspirational idea, not mythic or spiritual. Like an Enzyme, it is not important in itself but as it catalyses a process, a means towards something else, a component of a larger emergence.

Thus;
1) The idea of Gaia heightens our awareness of ecological environmental necessities and responsibilities

2) Gaia focuses our attention on issues of life

3) It inspires us to develop modes of thinking and acting that are holistic, systemic, symbiotic, connective and participatory; allowing us to see the world in terms of pattern and not just positions and points, in terms of networks and lattices, not just centres and peripheries, in terms of processes not just object and things

4) Allows us to explore the interrelationship of religion and nature; eco-theology; ‘a deeper dimension of spiritual interaction and communion with our environment’ just as animals do? Understanding that we cannot simply use the image of Gaia to meet emotional, religious, political or commercial need without allowing it to transform us in unexpected and radical ways

5) Gaia inspires us to reflect on our own natures – the development of the individual beyond ourselves, the bigger picture, a mirror to see ourselves anew 

Lovelock writes in Gaia his Hypothesis that humanity might be the evolving nervous system of the earth. At a time when our society seems motivated by no higher purpose than endless expansion and the making of money and when humanity seems to have no purpose beyond itself, this image is striking and refreshing. It would seem to suggest a direction, a connection, a role that we can play in a world that is more than just the sum total of human desires.

The nervous system governs, guides and controls the organisms through reception and integration of sensation and the transmission of thought. Interrelationships between organs play as much role in structuring and transmitting “thought” as does the nervous system itself. Thus we must integrate with all the systems of the earth. We must enlarge our vision of human purpose and activity beyond the personal and the local and put it into planetary perspective and cosmic context. The actions of Gaia are local and specific so that we are made more aware of our interactions with the particular places we inhabit. Its meaning now lies in what it can inspire us to discover about ourselves and the nature of life, in rallying our energies to meet the needs of our environment.

BRUNO Latour – advocates for Gaia and technology to coexist and work side by side

'Now the Anthropocene is a kind of fabulous acceleration of one of the many connections inside Gaia around the question of the human. If Gaia is local, the Anthropocene is even more local: it is local in time. It is the result of one species, and it’s impossible not to be anthropocentric about it. So, it’s about one species, and one small time span. That is what interests Dipesh Chakrabarty so much—it’s simultaneously a deepening of history, because it now moves CO2, plate tectonics, pollution, etc., but in an extraordinary restriction, because it is basically describing a period of only 200 years, or even sixty, which provides a very different view of history. I think it is very important to maintain the distinction between the two, even though you can consider that the Anthropocene is an acceleration, a sudden acceleration, a tipping point of Gaia’s history. Because of the Anthropocene, the destiny of Gaia is connected to ours in a way that’s not predictable, which would not have been predicted by Lovelock twenty years ago. There is this argument from James Hansen, a scientist and activist from NASA who retired recently, who put forward a scenario that because of us the earth could become like Mars: that is, a dead planet. It’s one of the scenarios; in that sense, Gaia is linked to us in a way whereby it or she cannot be indifferent to us.

the question of turning to Gaia becomes interesting…The book attempts to change the view of technology in a way that is not the way of mastery, which then allows you to modify the ways which law and religion are understood, and then you can begin to negotiate with other techniques. But it’s also a slightly bizarre project because it asks, in a time of urgency, to think slowly about what we have done.

when something is networked, you can do something to it and something against it; but you cannot do anything against what is assumed to be overpowering, immense, definitive, and gigantic. '

WHAT IS THE DIALOGUE / NARRATIVE I WANT TO PROJECT ABOUT EACH OF THESE PLANETARY ASPECTS?
MATERIAL CONSIDERATIONS

• Use of heat sensitive plastic for cover – because our imprint matters 
• The material has been created using high-quality chemicals that offer a stunning display of change with the additional input of an outside source such as temperature, moisture or light. 
• Photochromic reversible materials change colour in the sun or under intense UV lighting 
• Thermochromic reversible material changes colour when touched with warm hands
• Hydrochromic reversible material changes colour when wet 
• Lenticular material changes its appearance when viewed from different angles. Liquid crystal material reacts within bandwidths of temperature by exhibiting a spectral change of colour including red, green and blue. 
• UV; cannot see in normal light only under ultra-violet (black) light 

NATURE

• Interconnected systems that are all related and affect each other (string figure game?) 
• The world as one pattern of ebbs and flows in systems that operate alone and together 
• How little we know about it all because we are just one factor of it 
• Perfect symmetries (shapes) 
• Natural organic materials, fresh smells, 
• Dissolvable qualities 
• Hyperbolic forms (sacred geometry, golden rations, Fibonacci) 

CAPITALISM / INDUSTRY / FOSSIL FUELS

• Capture the dirtiness of it 
• Linear 
• Focused on ONE element (e.g. if you only feed a plant water and nothing else it will drown, only sun it will dry up, 
• Bashing plasticine down makes it flat – bashing it a little bit from all sides keeps its shape (depict that using lots of resources is sustainable as gives time for the earth systems to balances out and replenish, and the over-extraction of oil / one energy supply will cause our planet to implode / collapse – consider solar and wind and always elements that are there 
• Archimedean solids and structures 
• Colour pigment that changes in the sun – looks grey and bland but give it sun and it becomes rich and blue 
• Plasticine – hydrocarbons - made from petroleum jelly – paraffin-like substance formed on the rig and made it malfunction, so ironically, they used to use it on cuts and burns as they believed it to have had healing powers 
• William Harbutt, an art teacher in Bath, England, formulated Plasticine in 1897. Harbutt wanted a non-drying clay for his sculpture students. He created a non-toxic, sterile, soft and malleable clay that did not dry on exposure to air. 
• Plasticine represents a man made material that is resistant to air – a natural element 
• It doesn’t harden – it doesn’t dissolve 
• Mirrors ideals of industry – the enduring man / leaving our print (evidence of our existence will remain for thousands of years due to nuclear and plastic) 

TECHNOLOGY

• The storage and capacity of the 0s, 1s, 2s, 3s 
• The space that data takes up; one day on humanities data, printed on letter sized paper in 12pt font double-sided, stacked up, would reach from the surface of the Earth to the sun 4 times over. 
• Technology as a natural element that came from the Earth’s core – we should use it to assist our development and entwine it to assist natures progression of which we made the damage 
• The ‘in-between’ space – cyberspace – exists within our world in another dimension 
• UV pen that exposes things we can understand but cannot see (messages, drawings, dots etc) 
• HEAT – heating up metal makes it untouchable, however hugging someone who is cold makes them warm, gives them comfort, builds a (human) connection the same way heat is conducted by metal – visualise this? You will not be able to hug your robot 
• We must consider that which exists which we do not understand, the haptic visual 
• We process line linearly, forward, but outside our space-time time wouldn’t exist 

If we strip everything back to its basics, and we ask ourselves what is naturally occurring and what is man-made, do we get a clearer picture on how the earth operates and what we can prioritise in our lives to secure our future?

What is linear?

- Time

- Days of the week / months / years

- Language

- Electricity

What is organic?

- Sound

- Plants / vegetation (not all)

- Elements (air/wind, fire, earth, water, space/zero)

- Colours (to what extent)


After Peer Critique:
From peer critique it was evident that the game needed a solid target audience as well as a more commercial flavour to it. As such, the design considered the educational sector, as well as the sort of products sold in museum gift shops as they embrace scientific and creative fusions, as well as tending to be higher end, thus cost becomes less of a daunting factor if the materials are to be as explosive as the concept requires. 
In this way, the design can consider lateral material figuring, like has been seen with the installation design examples investigated, yet apply these in a commercial, ethical and educational way.


Possible name: 

phantasmagoria
noun phan·​tas·​ma·​go·​ria | \(ˌ)fan-ˌtaz-mə-ˈgȯr-ē-ə \

Definition of phantasmagoria
1: an exhibition of optical effects and illusions
2a: a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined
b: a scene that constantly changes
3: a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage


Target audience:
Schools – target learning industry (demonstration kit) ?

Museums – gift shops and demonstrations on school visits (science, natural history, design)

Vehicle to human centered design that incorporates play

How its distributed
online / postage / warehouse

Who its distributed to 
the general public / schools / camps

Where is it sold 
gift shops / online shopping

Where do they get to engage with it freely?
requires supervision of someone 16+ due to delicacy

Communication factors

simplified language, neutral aesthetic (monochrome?), all-inclusive design (figure out what this means in this context), encourage participation, encourage lateral ways of learning