Track 2: Pluriversal More-than-Human Design
Local: Casa Gonzaga
August 3
- 13:30–15:30 — Paper Presentation: Pluriversal Reflections (Cosmologies and Concepts)
- 15:30–15:50 — Panel Discussion
- 15:50–16:00 — Break
- 16:00–18:00 — Paper Presentation: More-than-human Encounters (Case Studies and Practices)
- 18:00–18:20 — Panel Discussion
August 4
- 14:00–14:50 — Panel Discussion (with audience participation)
- 14:50–15:00 — Break
- 15:00–18:00 — Workshop (open to all)
Description:
Organized by Annan Zuo (University of Oxford), Claudia Westermann (Curtin University), Frederick Steier (University of South Florida)
Across many cultural worlds, designing is a collective process emerging from reciprocal relations among humans, animals, plants, landscapes, materials, and spirits. Drawing on pluriversal and more-than-human design frameworks, this track explores how cybernetics can participate in world-making processes by engaging with ontologies in which agency is distributed and more-than-human beings are co-creators of living systems. We invite contributions that demonstrate how alternative cosmologies and relational practices inform systemic and ecological design projects across scales, from artefacts and installations to architecture and landscapes.
Presenters are invited to speak from, narrate, or perform the perspectives of more-than-human agents, presenting their work through the lifeworlds, sensory capacities, and communicative features of their chosen more-than-human beings. This might include articulating Amazonian forestry practices through the view of a harpy eagle or reimagining Satoyama landscape recovery through the voice of a cypress tree. Through connecting performativity, situated knowledge, and multispecies attunement, this track aims to reveal shared relational ontologies embedded in cross-cultural more-than-human design practices while celebrating their distinct cosmologies.
We welcome papers, performances, artifacts, stories, and design speculations. Participants who need an accepted publication for funding reasons should ideally contact the track chairs for publishing options and timelines prior to submitting an abstract.