Symbiosis
Cluster Members Anna Schaeffner and Rasa Weber Presented at Major Event on the Global Electronic Art Scene ISEA2023
On May 17th and 18th Cluster Members Anna Schaeffner and Rasa Weber Presented at a major event on the global electronic art scene, that aims to strengthen the dialog between artists, researchers, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs from the cultural and creative industries who participate in the advances of research and creation. Anna Schaffner gave an artist talk »For a Design of Deformation« and Rasa Weber presented her paper »A Sympoietic Ocean. Design Research with/in the Marine Holobiont«.
17 May 2023
3.50-4.05 pm
Rasa Weber
A Sympoietic Ocean. Design Research With/in the Marine Holobiont
In the light of profound human impact on planetary systems, the global ocean, as a main source of life, is fundamentally transforming its interactions, flows and ecologies. These critical changes raise questions of other-than-human cohabitation on Earth, beyond the terrestrial ground also below sea level. In response to these radical ecological struggles, the design discipline seeks to reorganize its methodologies towards forms of multispecies collaboration with/in environments of anthropogenic change. In this paper, Rasa argues for activating the evolutionary theory of Symbiogenesis, disseminated by biologist Lynn Margulis, based on the preliminary work of Mereschkowsky and Kozo-Polyansky. I am highlighting how Symbiogenesis can serve as a point of departure for challenging and reinventing our disciplinary protocols in design. The ocean, as a prototypical space for symbiotic system relations serves as my experimental contact zone for shaping these multispecies encounters. Alongside a young generation of designers, the presented design research seeks to evade an extractivist mode of production in favor of developing process-oriented methodologies for interspecies design. A design research practice in underwater environments, together with sponges, algae, electrical circuits, marine biologists, fishes, cameras, limestone, polyps et al., gives rise to a new design strategy, which I suggest naming Sympoïetic Design.
18 May 2023
12.25–12.45 pm
Anna Schaeffner
For a Design of Deformation
»For a Design of the Deformation« is a creative research project, as part of a practice-based PhD, carried out at ENSADLab, in the Reflective interaction research group, Paris and at the Cluster. Through the methods of design, the subject of soft robotics is explored, in its materiality, its dynamism and the possible functions that result from deformation. Looking for new modes of creation and material agency. The project seeks to develop interactive devices, which question the conditions that allow a soft robot to adapt to its environment. That is to say its capacity to create a form of symbiosis with its milieu by its deformation.
Forum des Images
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