“Fellow-creatures, colleagues, dangerous equals”: Designing with, and for, the more-than-human- Talk by Dr. Anne Galloway

When we talk about the future of technology, we assume that the resources that we enjoy today will be available to us as freely as they are today. Around 3 billion people use simple technologies that take coal, wood and animal dung as raw material. But what will be the future of these technologies when we are facing scarcity in the field of natural resources?Under these circumstances, is the human-centered approach our best way forward?

Not just natural resources, the dependency of humans on the non human entities is non adjacent in nature. With economic development, humans have managed to place greater demands on resources in turn degrading the eco-systems and reducing biodiversity.

Dr. Anne Galloway and her colleagues at the More-Than-Human lab explore this codependency of humans and non humans. With an aim to recognize and respect humanity’s deep interdependence with other animals, plants, materials and forces of the earth, More-Than-Human designs with, and for, the more-than-human entities. To evaluate the relationship, the researchers reassess the values and re-evaluate our practices and re-imagine more sustainable ways of designing for the ecosystem.

Sometimes, in design, we talk about research about, for, and through design — and I think that anthropology is well suited to contribute to each endeavour. As we know, ethnography (including material, visual, and discursive culture) can tell us a lot about the roles of design in everyday life. Ethnography also provides us with valuable information that can be used to design “better” things — or to design nothing at all. And although research through design is perhaps less obviously related to anthropology, I think that every kind of anthropological research could create and employ objects and images with as much nuance as we’ve come to use words.

-Anne Galloway- ‘Anthropology+Design’

Her contribution to the field of HCI consists of a decade of research and teaching in multi-species ethnography and speculative design. Inspired from the ‘Stay With The Trouble’ by Danna Haraway which talks about interacting with different species, Anne and her team believe in immersing in the messiness to come up with different interactions and representations. She is particularly interested in creative research method for understanding of issues and controversies related to science, technology and animals.

Apart from leading the lab, Dr Anne Galloway is Associate Professor in the Design for Social Innovation programme at Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Anne publishes widely and speaks internationally on matters related to design, culture, technology, ethics, and human-animal relations. She also raises sheep and ducks.

Through her talk, she will bring us stories from her work that highlight our inter-dependencies with multiple other “ animals, plants, materials, and forces of the earth.”

Check out their work at http://morethanhumanlab.org/projects/