Abstract
The paper explores the learning possible from including the public in explora-tions of more-than-human future visions. We presented an installation at a de-sign festival of a speculative scenario that emerged from ethnographic research with urban permaculture farmers, using sounds to represent concentrations of nutrients in soil. We studied how visitors wearing a sensor ring experienced the playing of these sounds upon insertion of a finger in the installation’s soil. Re-sponses underscore the importance of cultivating the skill of noticing through deep listening, alongside the profound connection thus established between humans and the more-than-human world. In a further contribution to more-than-human design, the paper examines implications for practices of noticing and pre-sents four principles for problematising and reimagining how data pertaining to the more-than-human world may be sensed and represented.
Keywords
more-than-human design; sensing; sonification; soil care; sustainability
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.829
Citation
Poikolainen Rosén, A., Sanchez, C., and Anand Epp, F. (2024) ‘Does Phosphorus Want to Sound Like That?’: Experiencing More-Than-Human Futures, in Gray, C., Ciliotta Chehade, E., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.829
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
‘Does Phosphorus Want to Sound Like That?’: Experiencing More-Than-Human Futures
The paper explores the learning possible from including the public in explora-tions of more-than-human future visions. We presented an installation at a de-sign festival of a speculative scenario that emerged from ethnographic research with urban permaculture farmers, using sounds to represent concentrations of nutrients in soil. We studied how visitors wearing a sensor ring experienced the playing of these sounds upon insertion of a finger in the installation’s soil. Re-sponses underscore the importance of cultivating the skill of noticing through deep listening, alongside the profound connection thus established between humans and the more-than-human world. In a further contribution to more-than-human design, the paper examines implications for practices of noticing and pre-sents four principles for problematising and reimagining how data pertaining to the more-than-human world may be sensed and represented.