This talk addresses the use of the ecological notion of response diversity (Elmqvist Et al. 2003) as a frame to develop coupled natural-artificial systems. It does so through 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.

In this paper I present a design project developed in Córdoba, Argentina, entitled ‘Spices-Species’. Through this case study, I discuss the possibility of designing using two decolonial strategies —"objectivity (or truth) in parenthesis" and " being where one does and thinks"— that can lead to delinking, on a micropolitical scale, from colonial social patterns as well as reconnecting humans with natural processes and beings to which they are detached by means of devices. The paper suggests that these decolonial strategies, combined with the performance of designed artefacts may help to acknowledge not only human diversity, but also the multiple and diverse nonhuman beings that conform and participate in different localities.

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. 

This essay commemorates the 30^th anniversary of the publication of Félix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies. It does so by proposing a ‘diffractive’ reading of the book, suggesting latent potential in each of the overlapping “ecologies” that conformed the ecosophysketched by Guattari. 

There are mainly two aspects of The Three Ecologies addressed in this essay. Firstly, the understanding of the general frame of the interrelation of the three ecologies as an “intersectional” approach. Secondly, the understanding of this form of intersectionality as a possible platform to acknowledge other-than-human ‘intersections’. Through the essay I exemplify with one of my own design projects to help situating the claims and the questions raised. Finally, I propose a multimodal explorative framework of the three ecologies to explicitly articulate human and other-than-human beings inter and intra-relatedness. 

‘3Ecologies’ makes visible factors affecting the sustainability of consumer products. Within engineering and economics, there are a variety of models for analyzing and ‘predicting’ the environmental factors such as energy, emissions and waste involved during production, consumption and disposal. We develop an expanded model, which emphasizes human impact and choices as well as potential consequences and futures. Psychological, sociological and environmental factors are mapped over time – throughout the lifespan (production, purchase, use, and disposal) and the extended lifecycle(s) of products. Case studies of familiar products in everyday life are developed to demonstrate the conceptual model, and three applications are proposed to reach designers, consumers and the general public. 3Ecologies uses diagrams and narratives to visualize the history and possible futures of products, including natural disintegration, active recycling and unexpected adaptations – an alternative view upon the ‘life’ of things that we might ordinarily take for granted

This article addresses the use of the ecological notion of ‘response diversity’ (Elmqvist et al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 1(9), 488–494, 2003) to develop a biocentric approach for natural-artificial continuums through the practice of design. The article elaborates upon examples from the project Dispersal machines, part of my postdoctoral research entitled Symbiotic tactics. Dispersal machines proposed two complementary artificial systems that were conceived to minimize the damages by a moth (Spodoptera frugiperda) on crops (corn and soy predominantly) in the agroecosystems of Córdoba, Argentina. The proposals were ideated 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 minute wasp (Telenomus remus), as well as a nocturnal response, based on the placement of refuges for bats that feed on the adult moth. Considering these design interventions through the notion of ‘semethic interaction’ (Hoffmeyer 2008) as it relates to the more general term, ‘semiosphere’, the article reflects upon (de)sign as a signifying activity and design’s ‘response-ability’ (Haraway 2016), to speculate upon ways to devise and acknowledge inter-species co-adaptive possibilities.

The presentation gives an overview of the book Designing for Interdependence: A Poetics of Relating which is about the practice of designing and design’s capacity to relate (or not) to beings of all kinds, human and others, in ways that are life-affirming. Sensitive to power differentials and the responsibility that this entails, the author develops the notion of alter-natives, a concept that exposes the alterity of artificial things and the potential of these things to participate in the sustainment of environments. The notion of alter-natives indicates the alterity of a thing, its own foreignness to environments by being artificial, fabricated by humans. It demands thinking how some-thing alters the relations to those that live in an environment, how it makes them different in some way. It suggests the possibility that these ‘others’ (alterity) may enter a process of ‘nativization’, if they are designed within the ecological and biological constraints of the particular places where they will be used. Finally, the notion of alter-natives does not explain, does not explicate; it demands answers, the implications need to be unfolded, traced, maintained. Alter-natives emphasize vulnerability in order to become life-affirming. The book immerses the reader in a poetics of relating, a semiotic practice of interrelating humans, artificial things and other-than-human species, a design practice that can make us more explicitly dependable on life and communication across species, a designing for interdependence that can support the necessary rewilding that must happen if we are to contribute to the stabilization of planetary dynamics and the affirmation of cultural and biological diversity. By challenging anthropocentrism through design, a practice emerges from questioning human mastery, and thus a poetics of relating is developed by means of a letting go of control acknowledging other-than-human needs and capacities. In this sense the book is about control, at least to the extent that a human can let go of control by designing something that affirms her living. Avoiding dualistic thinking and the dichotomies harmful-benefit, construction-destruction, natural-artificial, and life-death, the author pursues the work of caring for how our mattering through design becomes both, constructive and destructive in more-than-human ecologies.

This thesis studies and speculates upon the interrelations of artefacts with human and nonhuman agents. These interrelations form assemblages, some of which have emergent properties, becoming manifestations of processes that we cannot fully control or understand. The work started by exploring the theme of hospitality and hostility with the ambition to better understand the ecological complexity of the design process and its results. As an assemblage, this work combines different literary, philosophical and theoretical discourses and traditions with experimental design in order to develop and articulate the concept of device. A device organizes, arranges, frames our environment and thereby defines and limits possibilities of relation. Since relations can only be thought through a so-called natural language such as English, they must be taken into consideration through the process of languaging, understood by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela as communication about communication”, and as the most characteristic feature of the human species. My focusing on linguistic and biological phenomena is a response to this concern, in an attempt to understand how this process influences our perception of the world. Through a series of design projects, the thesis examines the potential range of an artefact’s relations. It does so by exploring grammatical associations that affect design onceptualizations, creating tools (prepositiontools) as well as studying and articulating forms of symbiosis that an artefact might develop in and with its environment (¡Pestes!).

Feminist theories have long been concerned with the violent impact of (normative) Universal Man on society and nature, aconsequence of a modern phantasy divide between Nature and Culture. In this planetary era some call the Anthropocene, it isclearer to us how the environment is in us, and we humans are fully in the environment. The modern Nature/Culture divideimplodes violently on itself. For too long those regarded as less cultured, less-than-human and particularly nonhumans,like the very ecologies that sustains us, have been approached as mere resours or background for Universal Man. What canbe done - in practice, in thinking and in scholarship in such a situation?The present postnatural situation disrupts modern figurations of thought and scholarly practice, and begs new ones. Withclimate change, oceanic disturbance, habitat loss and rampant species extinction on the one hand, and new syntheticbiologies, technobodies and algorithms we live by on the other, it asks feminist sciences and arts for extradisciplinaryresponses, for new designs of practice.No longer can a division of academic labour be sustained, where technoscience does naked facts, use/abuse nonhumans andextract raw nature while artistic research, humanities and social science does culture, ethics and politics. Spurred by morethan-human feminisms, thicker forms of situated knowing have already emerged, for instance as practices of critical, creativeand feminist posthumanities.Such more-than-human humanities come in response to the pressing need to a) alter and decolonize such dividing knowledgeforms and to b) change the very ways we think, eat, and live with nonhumans in society. Sharing a Darwinian feeling forhow everything is connected, critically and creatively, with a relational ethics of care and concern, more-than-humanfeminisms and postdisciplinary disciplines, have paved way for environmental humanities and other more-than-human formsof the posthumanities. What are the stakes and challenges in these transformations? Why do we need them? And whatfeminist genealogies gets recognized?This lively round-table talk brings diverse scholars together for a spirited conversation on the usefulness and potential impactof feminist theorizing on sustainability, design, and on how to bring art and science to the social humanities, and insights tothe people living in a more-than-human world. It will be fun, but deadly serious.