The presentation “Responding through design” addresses the use of the ecological notion of response diversity (Elmqvist Et al. 2003) as a frame to develop naturecultures. It does so by focusing on the practice of design, making explicit the type of performativity that design proposals could enact by devising complementary responses designed to support the life of specific beings in specific ecosystems. The talk elaborates upon examples from the project Dispersal machines, part of my postdoctoral research entitled Symbiotic tactics and financed by the Swedish Research Council (2013-2016). Dispersal machines proposes two complementary artificial systems that attempt to minimise the damages by a moth (Spodoptera frugiperda) on crops (corn and soy predominantly) in the agroecosystems of Córdoba, Argentina. The proposals attempt to biologically control this species by interventions that disseminate and/or host species that predate or parasitize the moth at different stages of its life cycle: a diurnal response, based on the dissemination of parasitized eggs of the moth by a tiny wasp (Telenomus remus), as well as a nocturnal response, based on the placement of bat refuges that feed on the adult moth.

Interspecies care demands response-ability (Haraway 2016); the challenges being the development of a practice of design tuned to respond dynamically to multi-scalar phenomena and multi-species abilities. Addressing the “semiotics of hybrid natures”, the presentation reflects upon “abilities to respond” and the notion of semethic interaction (Hoffmeyer 2008) as it relates to the more general semiotic term, semiosphere. With this context in mind, it addresses pattern-making through design, co-evolutionary possibilities, and the human capacity to respond through design, and design as a form of response. 

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka sammanfogningsmöjligheterna mellan skaft och redskap med tånge som förutsättning. Följande frågor ställs i rapporten: Hur kan skaft och redskap sammanfogas med hjälp av tånge?  Hur kan man förstå de praktiska dilemman och möjligheter som uppstår när man ska sammanfoga ett skaft och en tånge? För att svara på frågorna tillverkade jag fyra skaft efter skriftliga instruktioner, och applicerade sedan de kunskaper jag förvärvat i tillverkandet av ytterligare åtta skaft. Jag dokumenterade observationer under arbetet, och sammanställde de steg som ingick i skaftningen. Processen analyserades efter Esko Mäkeläs perspektiv på kreativa processer i slöjden.

Förutsatt att man väljer att forma skaftet efter att det limmats på tången, kan man säga att en skaftning består av sex steg:

1. skissning, 2. förberedelse, 3. bearbetning, 4. limning, 5. utformning och 6. ytbehandling.

Tången påverkar främst vilken metod som är lämplig eller enklast för att bearbeta skaftämnet och göra plats för tången, det vill säga steg 3.

De tekniker som finns för att skafta ett redskap kan med få undantag delas in i två huvudgrupper, baserat på om steg 3 bearbetning- är grundat på sågning eller borrning. Under de olika stegen i skaftningen präglades arbetet och valen jag gjorde av olika kreativa och gestaltande överväganden och berodde helt på hur ett steg påverkade slutresultatet.

Bio-based products is a hot topic for the future. The industry needs new materials and production methods. This project is looking at the consequences for industrial design when creating bio-products. The time perspective of the project is 30 years ahead. A future scenario was created based on extensive trendspotting research. The result is a product together with new design tools.

This salt and pepper shaker is grown with the use of bacteria that creates a biofilm. The bacteria are killed after the process and the biofilm remains. This growth process allow variation and give unique results every time, which opens up for an emotional bond to the product. Also if it breaks, it can heal itself, and you can keep on using your favorite shaker.

The result of the project is a proposal of how to deal with randomness in the design process and industrial production.

In different areas of handicraft and textile production, teachers, researchers, purchasers and others have to judge products based on different factors such as function, aesthetics, taste and so on. The whole process of designing – from ideas and visions to finished product – includes aesthetic judgements: In the first planning phase, several sketches are made that can later be changed, adjusted and further developed. When a product is finished, further judgements are needed: designers and artisans evaluate the result of their efforts, teachers judge the works of pupils or students and purchasers or consumers judge the suitability of the textile based on their particular needs. Because different persons make different choices when making or buying a textile product, it is interesting to study people’s experiences of fabrics as well as their reasons for making certain aesthetic judgments. This article presents a study of judgments and values expressed when designed printed fabrics were displayed for designers, teachers of textile crafts, consumers and schoolchildren. The present study shows that subjects make their judgements on the basis of formal, functional, cultural and emotional contents. These aspects should therefore be in focus in design work and design education.

: In our designed culture, every environment, object and picture is analyzed from the viewpoint of colour and light. Colour and light play an important role in social life and culture. This paper springs from an epistemological project about concept formation in the field of colour and light. Based on own observations and scientific and scholarly references it presents a graphic model describing possible constituent relations between colour and light experiences. Design is the art of using knowledge – implicit or explicit – about how humans perceive, experience, and relate to the world around. In design all senses are involved, but when dealing with colour and light we can confine ourselves to vision; designers must understand the conditions of visual perception. Human experience of colour and light has many sources; the given cultural context (conventional meanings of colour and light), the direct experience of the world around (colour and light expressions) and the basic perceptual functions (formal aspects of colour and light). There is need for distinct concepts and concise approaches to understand coherence of aesthetic and functional expressions. Design education calls for coherent and well defined structures that can be used to describe connections and distinctions between experiences of different kinds.

Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters reclaims the notion of alien encounters together with strange, but queerly loved companions, Vulgar slugs, diatoms (micro-algae), and familiars (spiritguides of witches), the book’s three human co-authors ask: what would it take to establish more-than-human, bio- and geo-egalitarian co-existence on a planet in trouble?  

This playfully crafted mixed-genre book is informed by feminist posthumanisms, and co-created with a spectral community of more-than-humans, who are respectfully summoned to contribute with their perspectives. In focus of the entangled artistic-philosophical-poetic investigations are questions of ethics, aesthetics and methodologies to co-exist response-ably rather than based on modern human beliefs in exceptionalism, and entitlement to sovereignty, control and conquest of more-than-human worlds. 

Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters is intended for broad global audiences of researchers, teachers, professionals, NGOs, politicians, students from undergraduate to postgraduate levels, artists, writers, activists and artivists, who are interested in entangled artistic-poetic-philosophical modes of understanding the world as well as in ecology, new feminist materialism, critical posthumanism, and questions about radically rethinking and reimagining human/more-than-human relations on Earth.

What could a post-speciesist world be like?

Critical Animal Studies activists and scholars have developed convincing counter-arguments to speciesism and animal oppression. These arguments are continuously developed and reshaped through contributions from fields like gender studies, postcolonialism, environmental humanities, and philosophy. This broad range of approaches makes for an diverse and growing body of knowledge on the systematic discrimination, exploitation, and oppression of nonhuman animals, not least regarding the treatment of animals today and in the past. We argue, however, that this knowledge production is significantly more sporadic when it comes to constructive proposals of less speciesist futures. Where are the snapshots from potential futures, and alternative presents, where human-animal relations are radically reconfigured?

We suggest that in working towards an anti-speciesist revolution we need to also be able to imagine what living in a post-speciesist society could be like; and explore creative tactics for bringing these material propositions into being.

These kinds of speculations and constructions of scenarios involve future-oriented contributions from fields such as the arts, design, literature, architecture, and speculative philosophy. In other words, domains that are engaged with envisioning, prototyping, and rehearsing potential futures and alternative presents. In this paper, we discuss a number of works that in different ways materialise reconfigured relations between humans and other species. Examples include utopian artworks by Hartmut Kievert, Ursula Le Guin’s ecofeminist stories, as well as our own design projects on sketching already existing post-speciesist animal-human encounters and redesigning recreational fishing practices. We discuss what tactics are employed by the creators and how their designerly approaches might help in generating new ideas about possible futures. We also introduce and reflect on tools and practices from the design disciplines, such as sketching, prototyping, and design fiction that can be of use for CAS scholar-activists.

Importantly, an affirmative approach of imagining post-speciesist futures does not come without risk. It can be argued that constructive, at times hopeful, projects distract from militating against the currently dim situation that billions of animals face daily. It can also be argued that we are nowhere near attaining a world that can be considered hopeful for most animals on our planet. Shouldn’t we focus on bringing about the revolution before speculating on its aftermath?

We argue that research and activism against speciesism ought to be complemented by constructive scenarios for post-speciesist futures. We seek to contribute to the field of Critical Animal Studies by calling for and articulating a stronger speculative and imaginative strand of CAS, without blunting the urgency and critical edge of the field.

Det här examensarbetet speglar tankar och erfarenheter genom posthumanistisk och transhumanistisk teori i hur vi uppfattar klassrummet som pedagogiskt rum, specifikt kring de praktiskt estetiska ämnena och tillhörande undervisning. Undersökningen ämnar bearbeta elevers uppfattning kring det rumsliga i eftermälet av en tid där det fysiska har fått ge plats för det digitala under covid-19 pandemin. Är klassrummet ett pedagogiskt rum, som är en fysisk plats som upprätthålls genom vår närvaro, eller är det en socialkonstruktivistisk överenskommelse som vi kan skifta mellan det fysiska och icke-fysiska? Genom att åberopa tankegångar från allt mellan Foucault, Harraway och Claire Bishop ämnar arbetet synliggöra elevens perspektiv kring hur undervisning har uppfattats, tillgodogjorts och senare bedömts utifrån distansundervisningens parametrar. Genom att kombinera kvalitativa undersökningsmetoder såsom ideografisk etnografi, A/r/ tography och bildelicitering, ställer studien elever inför frågeställningen som ett gestaltandeproblem. Detta dels för att kunna frambringa ett tydligt empiriskt material i form av semiotiskt bildspråk, dels för att producera kvalitativa data som i förlängning kan formuleras och kontextualiseras till uppsatsen; men även ett gestaltande arbete. Gestaltningen har skett parallellt och kan och ska tolkas som ett direkt kommunikativt sätt att kontextualisera elevernas och författarens uppfattning kring det pedagogiska rummet. Relevansen för det bildpedagogiska fältet kan således direkt tolkas genom ett elev- och lärarperspektiv. Ett mångfacetterat sätt att se på en relativt enkel frågeställning - Hur uppfattar elever det fysiska rummet, i eftermälet av en pandemi där distansundervisning har dominerat. 

Resultatet går av att avläsa i empirin som eleverna har frambringat och senare tolkats i en gestaltning som speglar två utbildningar genom pandemin - Författaren och deltagarnas. 

”It ain’t eazy being greazy in a world full of cleanliness and all that other madness.” – Method Man

We all have hair on our bodies. And it is always under supervision.Hair is for instance found on our legs, genitals and faces and is largely removed, no matter the color, size and visibility. Societal norms about the hairless, civilized and attractive human puts many people in both time and money consuming situations where we pull, shock and burn ourselves. The beauty industry is working for you to continue with these behaviors, but have you ever wondered why you do it?

My work tries to combine sustainable design with critical design. Thus, it examines what we do and why, but most of all, there is a critical investigation of the relationship it has to the future sustainable society that has created a balance between society, our environment and our economy. This project embraces our differences while it also demonstrates that the problem goes beyond the choice of environmentally friendly materials in products.

Sustainability begins with us and our behaviors. Are you ready for change?