Research

Conduct Research – include academic references, art works, literature, products in the market, anything that you think is part of the ecosystem of what you are working on. Pick at least one academic paper, post a link and your response to its claims/insights.

Since the Industrial Revolution in Britain, humans have become a significant force in shaping the evolution of the environment. Scientists have termed it the Anthropocene, which encapsulates the geological changes that occurred during this period. Yet after realizing the role of humans, we once again placed ourselves at the center of the world. In response to this fact, philosopher Tobias Rees, in a recent essay From The Anthropocene To The Microbiocene addressing the novel coronavirus epidemic and climate crisis, noted, “Viruses teach us that we humans are really little more than a multi-species ecosystem among multi-species ecosystems.” [1]

To gain insight into this perspective, I watched the documentary Symbiotic Earth, which offers a comprehensive understanding and assessment of evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’ contributions to contemporary evolutionary biology, theory, and ecology. Margulis was a leading pioneer of the significance of symbiotic relationships in evolution and a strong critic of neo-Darwinism. Through the documentary, I learned that Marguils’ views remained controversial decades after her first publication on eukaryotic cell evolution in the 1960s. Still, her unconventional theories challenged the male-dominated scientific community and continue to fundamentally question how we perceive ourselves and the environment.

Unfolding Margulis’ ideas, what if, instead of assuming that organisms are the basic units of evolution, we see multi-species living ecosystems as symbioses that challenge the notions of Survival of the fittest? The essential proposition of my response is that the current conceptions of living organisms are inadequate for adapting to the contemporary issues of climate and biodiversity. In the face of crises such as pandemics, political upheaval, and the rapid degradation of the Earth’s natural systems, the power of plants in shaping human experience has been demonstrated within a backdrop of untold inequalities. Aggressive pressures associated with climate change have brought global ecologies and plant communities under attack; however, abundant and resilient life continues to adapt and thrive in most places.

To this day, I nevertheless feel that restoration is somehow the essence of design and art. The work I do on human-environment and human-human interaction, bringing back the lost “power of life,” is the magic that designers and artists borrow from nature. In observing their patterns and learning from the context, we could place plants’ healing and restorative qualities, fundamental to maintaining life on this planet, in the foreground of our work as designers and artists. As the first step in all of this, we need to begin by stepping outside of a generally anthropocentric view and learning to communicate with plants in a more equitable way.

[1] Rees, Tobias. “From The Anthropocene To The Microbiocene.” Noema Magazine (2020).

Mood board

Create a mood board combining visual research and takeaway quotes, ideas, studies.

Dream review

Write a ‘Dream Review’ of your project.

Symbiosia is an experiment on interspecies communication in real-time using nature’s own language, electrochemical signals. Research forms the basis of the creative process. This speculative, interactive, and technologically enhanced installation involves two living organisms, a plant and a human. In the system, a natural language algorithm analyzes the semantics and emotions of the linguistic input from a human. The result is then converted into an electrical signal projected onto a plant as a light source. The process by which the plant responds to changes in the surrounding light (similar to photosynthesis) is perceived. A sensor collects the real-time data, which is then translated by an algorithm to form a response; a message that is readable and responsive to the emotions of human input. While full mutual understanding between plants and humans has not yet been achieved in this primitive form of conversation, Symbiosia empowers the human input and the plant output to interact in a unique and novel way. Wedged at the intersection of speculative design, emerging technology, and contemporary art, Danni imagines, engineers, and questions how humans perceive reality. Through Symbiosia, she envisions a more beautiful future where the natural and digital worlds can exist in a harmonious symbiosis.