Becoming Tree

Design Research, 2017

There are only two paths ...
... the end of the world;
... the beginning of the New.

The New Nature Institute initiates projects to question what policy-making processes could be if we listened to non-human entities. These are traditionally excluded from politics, particularly those related to climate negotiations.
        Accepting that humans are currently limited by speech, language, and our very cognition, the institute explores what happens to human politics when we attend to other voices. Through progress in ornithology may we regard human language as a further development of communication systems, rather than being uniquely human. The ecological term of symbiosis describes an interaction between dissimilar organisms living together in a more or less intimate association. The two organisms—birds and trees—are nearly inseparable.
        Becoming Tree is the first experimentation of a series. This project explores modes of attention and interactions. Learning to listen to the non-human, in paying very close attention to voices talking in our surrounding environments, is the focus.

Process artifacts

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Credits

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Special thanks to Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby at the Designed Realities Studio.