an
artificial
being:
piona
Climate change is the biggest evidence of the problems that could not be foreseen and prevented during the development of modern society, causing the ecosystem to deteriorate. In order to slow down this change and restore the ecosystem's balance, individual, systematic and political changes are needed. However, the problems occurring within the systems formed by societies, through disabling the balance of nature, cause the solutions to remain human oriented.
One of the biggest causes of climate change is plastic pollution. Ninety percent of the world's habitat, the oceans, is filled with one of humanity's most influential inventions; plastic. This pollution causes many creatures in the food chain to starve, poison, develop problematically, drown, die and to go extinct.
This project provokes a nature-centred approach and offers a solution to the difficulties that ocean creatures experience, especially because of the plastics they ingest and supports the changing balance of the ecosystem. The fictional product named Piona produces 'pyde' that contains plastic digesting enzymes. She mimics the food source of the marine beings and locates the pydes in their digestive system. As a result of this, creatures gain an ability to digest plastic and filter the plastic in nature via Piona.
"With reports of some children becoming terrified by climate change and protest group Extinction Rebellion holding “grief-tending workshops”, there is an increasing awareness of so-called eco-anxiety."
Penny Sarchet
26 October 2019
New Scientist, pg.12
Scope
It is started with an article about eco-anxiety. Society has been provoked to act for climate change and demanding for infrastructural and systematic changes. People feel inadequate and this causes them to feel anxious and stressed out.
As individuals, people often report feeling hopeless that they can effect change on a scale that matters for something as big as climate change. But individual behaviour change when taken up by billions of people makes a decisive difference.
Scientists agree that humans are the primary driver of global warming, and that this process is
happening at an unprecedented pace; we need increased political will to act and deliver on agreed global temperature targets to avoid the most catastrophic consequences. However, climate change needs
to become everyone’s business.
To get people to change, we need to design innovative solutions that meet them where they are, using the power of emotional appeals, social incentives, and choice architecture as expertly as we apply economics and policy .
Williamson, K., Satre-Meloy, A., Velasco, K., & Green, K., 2018.
Climate Change Needs Behavior Change: Making the Case For Behavioral Solutions to Reduce Global Warming. Arlington, VA: Rare.
Methodology
The Double Diamond (Design Council, 2003) is created the base of the methodology and it is adjusted for the speculative design process. But the main structure is stayed exactly the same: ‘designing the right’ and ‘designing things right’
research
Research process is divided into four.
social problem
eco-anxiety
climate change
causation
plastic pollution
marine life
speculative
scenario
marine life
scientific and technological developments
narrative
speculative design
technical methods
research analysis: eco-anxiety
Climate change problem requires a long-term commitment to solve, which expects people to change their acquired thoughts and behaviours. It is found out that it has the same steps as the ‘Addiction Recovery Process’.
1
Awareness and Early Acknowledgement
It is needed to grow awareness about the problem through reading articles, news, watching and producing documentaries following that creating conversations in society to understand it more deeply.
2
Consideration
The awareness changes into action, stepping toward solutions, learning more about the climate change and the impact in human life and environment. Looking beyond individuals and understanding other living beings is important to see the negative effect of the actions in the planet Earth. By taking the step of learning more about the climate change and its effects on planet helps to make the important transition from awareness to action.
3
Exploring Recovery
After acceptance of the problems, small steps are taken into account to explore the concepts of moderation and alteration in behaviours.
4
Early Recovery
In this step, the thoughts and behaviours which comes from nurture and moderated living conditions cause a big challenge in current politics, production and consumption systems.
5
Active Recovery and Maintenance
Acting for climate change and preserving the new thoughts and behaviours will be easier for the next generations. And hopefully, there will be more action for the bigger systems after it has been processed and overcome by individuals in societies.
This adaptation and recovery cannot think separately from the bigger social norms and economical and political systems.
And this crisis also requires renewing and revising in the systems such as the production and consumption politics.
Plastic is one of the biggest problems in this crisis, it occupies every part of our life, medicine, communication, transportation…
Therefore, it is decided to narrow down the research on that topic and in marine life. In work in progress exhibition, nature-centred approached is followed and tried to connect nature with human-made plastic objects.
work in progress exhibition
Everyday objects are reinterpreted to exist with marine beings in their natural habitat while making them evolve artificially.
Central Saint Martins WIP Exhibition / 2020
clay / an octopus tantacle
Central Saint Martins WIP Exhibition / 2020
The aim, research analysis, and project idea were explained by more than 20 people in the exhibition.
It is realised that the evolution of beings with plastic is not a strong narrative for the aim. Therefore, direct relation with plastic and the beings is extracted from the scenario and decided to make a bridge between the material and the being.
ethically positioned
speculative design
Speculative design scopes the big societal issues and explores the possible future scenarios for the products or the systems.
It starts with the exploration of the designer’s thoughts on current scenarios and then broadens into future possibilities. It is believed that before imagining the future, it is important for the designer to explore the thoughts about social perspectives. In that way, the designer can place itself in the system and create a better understanding of the problem that needs to be portrayed and articulated. That is also the reason it is called ethically positioned speculative design because it includes the perspective and the discussion of the designer about the problem via solution.
In the process, The Pionism is created. The movement which advocates that during the development of humankind, nature should be included in human’s progress and it should be synchronized.
Pionism believes that if humankind develops something which is beneficial for its own kind but harmful for nature, it has to be the concern of humankind to reduce its effect in the ecosystem. I am not only talking about systematic and political changes in society. It is more than that.
‘Pionism’
The movement which advocates that during the development of humankind, nature should be included in their progress to synchronize nature for its benefit.
design discussion
Humankind continuously develops and makes progress. We create our own world on the planet.
But how do we define nature within this progress? Has nature been able to keep up with the advancements of humankind?
Oceans cover 90 percent of the world's habitat and they are filled with man-made plastic objects. How do marine creatures interact with these objects?
They die and go extinct as a result of the ingesting of plastic, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning, entanglement.
They ingest the plastic.
fish
They starve, because there is no room left to digest food in their stomach.
whales
They ingest the plastic.
Since their excretory systems are blocked, they suffer intensely and then die.
seabirds
They ingest the plastic.
They cannot fly because of their increased body weight.
What kind of a perspective or understanding do we have, to expect nature to adapt to ‘us’?
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