Designing with Free Nature: The Role of Technology

Author: Chidi Usanga

PDC 24: Contribution Reworlding: Giving a voice to nature

Introduction

This reflection explores how we can represent and give voice to natural entities without enslaving them through science and technology, particularly within the evolving field of Sustainable Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Historically, science was based on the belief that humans are the only rational beings, but a shift is occurring towards perspectives that attribute agency and even legal rights to non-human entities. This shift brings HCI closer to metaphysical debates, raising questions about the boundaries of science and design in representing nature.

Nature’s Ability to Communicate

Communication and design are traditionally seen as human activities, but recent studies, as well as our daily experiences at home, suggest that non-human species also possess these abilities. For example, the concept of the "Wood Wide Web" affirms Suzanne Simard’s suggestions that trees can communicate (Angrish 2022), and plants can exhibit emotions and memory through bioelectrical signals (Calvo et al. 2017). Researchers at Tel Aviv University even demonstrated that plants in distress emit airborne sounds that can be recorded (Khait et al. 2023). Additionally, some HCI researchers have shown how animals can co-design technology with humans through indexical semiosis, a communication system based on signs and symbols (Mancini and Lehtonen 2018). Co-design with plants has also been demonstrated, involving up to 250 different plant species (Tomico et al. 2023).

Agency and the Freedom of Species

Despite this, the agency of non-human entities in these processes is often limited as their actions are usually induced by humans and for human purposes. For example, dogs cannot be participants the way humans are due to lack of autonomy or self-ownership; “unlike humans, dogs cannot make a phone call if they fall in a ditch, they cannot explain where they come from or ask for directions if they get lost” (Mancini et al. 2012). Similarly, plants co-designing in indoor environments are “exiled” from their natural habitat, which can limit their "freedom" to behave naturally. So, results from such research may not be fully reliable. 

Philosophers like David Abram and Donna Haraway offer perspectives on humans becoming animals or embracing the earth. Abram coined the term "more-than-human" to suggest that humans should be re-interconnected with the earth, not in the sense of becoming substantially homogenous with other species but through acknowledgment of the constant interrelation (Abram 1996, 2010). Re-establishing this interdependence between species calls for mediation where barriers exist, e.g., levels of perception and language.

We are Already Animals

Abram’s position calls for empathy, but not necessarily sympathy, with nature. Humans already empathise with nature this way by acknowledging some superior capabilities among other species and aspiring towards those. For instance, humans have designed cars, airplanes, ships, speedboats, trains, bulldozers, military camouflages and other technologies in order to ‘become’ animals; to attain the speed and power of cheetahs, falcons, sharks, billfish, snakes, bulls, grasses, etc., respectively. A key point here is the possible complementarity between our rationality which allows us to create these technologies but which is now rather selfish if not ecocidal, and the animal physicality. But animals can also benefit from our rationality through our technologies. Acknowledging this type of empathy in interdependence, rather than emotional attachments and possessiveness, can help us set nature free.

Mediated Empathy

Co-design with nature by direct personal interaction is difficult because of the aforementioned levels of perception. For instance, except I capture and substantially domesticate a lion (which is slavery), I cannot sit next to him for PD or interaction. I would become his next meal instantly. Else, how can I get the informed consent of a research participant I hold in captivity? Likewise, Tomico in his co-design with plants in his home, had to pay the price by staying away from home 8 hours daily for 5 days weekly, and rationing home time between his plants and his visiting friends, because of the IoT grow lights installed for the plants (Tomico et al. 2023).

Truly altruistic and less colonizing empathy towards nature may only be cognitive, not emotional. Emotional empathy feels what the other feels but cognitive empathy understands what the other feels. We cannot feel what the animals feel in their natural state and environments because we are not there and cannot be there, neither can we become animals in the sense of shutting down our rationality. But we can understand what they feel, and understand how their comfort is part of a causal chain for our own comfort, e.g., the causality of our current environmental crisis.

Digital Materiality, Metaphors and Semi-Digital Twins

To achieve cognitive empathy, we may need technological probes deployed into the wild. Such probes can help gather more reliable data about the non-human entities without discomforting or attempting to humanise them.

While sensors have commonly been used to remotely study non-human entities, adding actuators could add interaction to such study. This can be achieved using digital materiality. HCI has used digital metaphors to help users interact with real objects and processes through computers. Jung et al. (Jung et al. 2017) trace the evolution of these metaphors through three stages: Semantic (encoded meanings), Cognitive (visual imagery), and Material (embodied interaction in ubiquitous computing). Materiality has become increasingly prominent, but Jung et al suggest that representing artifacts be designed to bear not only the represented model’s forms but also its technological and sociocultural environments.

This new materiality can be likened to the Digital Twin technology used in industrial settings for simulations, control, and maintenance. In the context of nature, a "Semi-Digital Twin" could be deployed—a physical but electronic artifact that mimics the form and behavior of non-human natural entities. This artifact would be placed in the natural environment to gather data without disturbing the entities it represents. It would have the form, environmental characteristics, and embedded technologies like sensors and actuators, allowing it to serve as a proxy for natural entities.

Conclusion

To ethically design with nature, we must grant non-human entities some degree of volition. One way to achieve this is through the use of interactive artifacts that resemble the entities they represent. These artifacts, equipped with embedded technologies, could be deployed in natural environments to gather information and help us understand the needs of non-human species. By using proxies like these, we can give voice to nature while respecting its autonomy, avoiding the need to domesticate or enslave it in the name of research or co-design.

References

Abram, D. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous - Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World.Pdf [online], New York: Vintage Books, available: https://ia601404.us.archive.org/15/items/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-perception-and-language-in-a-more-than-human-world/The%20Spell%20of%20the%20Sensuous%20-%20Perception%20and%20Language%20in%20a%20More-Than-Human%20World.pdf [accessed 15 Jul 2024].

Abram, D. (2010) Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology [online], New York: Pantheon Books, available: https://ia801601.us.archive.org/17/items/becoming-animal-an-earthly-cosmology/Becoming%20Animal_%20An%20Earthly%20Cosmology.pdf [accessed 14 Jul 2024].

Angrish, R. (2022) ‘The Wood Wide Web’, Resonance, 27(8), 1429–1441, available: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-022-1435-x.

Calvo, P., Sahi, V.P., and Trewavas, A. (2017) ‘Are plants sentient?’, Plant, Cell & Environment, 40(11), 2858–2869, available: https://doi.org/10.1111/pce.13065.

Jung, H., Wiltse, H., Wiberg, M., and Stolterman, E. (2017) ‘Metaphors, materialities, and affordances: Hybrid morphologies in the design of interactive artifacts’, Design Studies, 53, 24–46, available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2017.06.004.

Khait, I., Lewin-Epstein, O., Sharon, R., Saban, K., Goldstein, R., Anikster, Y., Zeron, Y., Agassy, C., Nizan, S., Sharabi, G., Perelman, R., Boonman, A., Sade, N., Yovel, Y., and Hadany, L. (2023) ‘Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative’, Cell, 186(7), 1328-1336.e10, available: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2023.03.009.

Mancini, C. and Lehtonen, J. (2018) ‘The Emerging Nature of Participation in Multispecies Interaction Design’, in Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Presented at the DIS ’18: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2018, Hong Kong China: ACM, 907–918, available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3196709.3196785.

Mancini, C., van der Linden, J., Bryan, J., and Stuart, A. (2012) ‘Exploring interspecies sensemaking: dog tracking semiotics and multispecies ethnography’, in Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, UbiComp ’12, New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 143–152, available: https://doi.org/10.1145/2370216.2370239.

Tomico, O., Wakkary, R., and Andersen, K. (2023) ‘Living-with and Designing-with Plants’, Interactions, 30(1), 30–34, available: https://doi.org/10.1145/3571589.