Futurity Island

" Pipe is the primary structural and symbolic unit of the Island, referencing the material that has facilitated worldwide land reclamation throughout the modern era. Once used to drain swamps, pipe becomes a metaphor for a human-centered ecology, an infrastructure of environmental domination and one of the prime symbols of the Anthropocene. In Futurity Island, a network of pipes becomes an artificial skeleton that employs sound to channel what we used to call “nature.” Futurity Island builds a sound infrastructure that brings humans and non-humans into a more symmetrical, collaborative relationship, aiming to transmit and to hear the silenced voices of this planet. " -- Publisher's websit

Tricks and treats: designing technology to support mobility assistance dogs

Assistance dogs are a key intervention to support the autonomy of people with tetraplegia. Previous research on assistive technologies have investigated ways to, ultimately, replace their labour using technology, for instance through the design of smart home environments. However, both the disability studies literature and our interviews suggest there is an immediate need to support these relationships, both in terms of training and bonding. Through a case study of an accessible dog treats dispenser, we investigate a technological intervention responding to these needs, detailing an appropriate design methodology and contributing insights into user requirements and preferences

Living With Parasites in Palo Verde National Park

Bruno Latour has tried to bring a parliamentary democracy to the domain of nature. Wading through the swamps of Palo Verde, a national park in the Guanacaste Province of Costa Rica, and wandering onto neighbouring agricultural lands, I failed to find a central place where people were speaking for nature. Departing from a failed attempt to speak for another species (the fringe-toed foam frog), this paper considers how diverging values and obligations shape relationships in multi-species worlds. As spokespersons articulated competing visions of nature on the borderlands of Palo Verde, multiple social and ecological worlds went to war. The haunting specter of capital joined the fray—animating the movements of cattle, grasses with animal rhizomes, rice seeds, and flighty ducks across national borders and through fragmented landscapes. Amidst this warfare, the fringe-toed foam frog was just one tenacious parasite, a noisy agent eating at the table of another, which began to flourish in worlds designed with the well-being of others in mind. Cattails, charismatic birds, and a multitude of insects began interrupting human dreams and schemes. Final solutions to the problem of living with parasites failed in Palo Verde. Humans and parasites, who became para-selves of one another, maintained an abiding presence in the landscape