October 10th to 14th 2022 : Atlas of Weak Signals¶
“A weak signal is an indicator of a potentially emerging issue, that may become significant in the future” Mikko Dufva.
Assignment: “Choose your weak signals and arrange them on a board, attaching relevant reference projects, questions and interventions”
I approached the Atlas of Weak Signals exercise discursively. Because my plans for the future include creating a biodesign residency in a rural area, I chose the cards that corresponded to this goal: Interspecies Collaboration and Rural Futures.
If I have to distill them, these weak signals are the two forces I feel will drive the future I hope to live in. Rural Futures are crucial because this archetypal territory is the interface between the city and the wild. It is the liminal space where research into new ways of making can more adequately be explored because it is more exposed to the non-human. The City is too alienated, the Wild should be left alone. Rurality is the frontier of futures exploration, and it should do so through Interspecies Collaboration.
It is well known we are ushering a new massive extinction. We do not know well how to relate with the non-human. From the antibiotic resistance crisis to unhealthy breeding practices and industrial farming systems, we have pushed the limits of the unethical. As we develop our understanding of synthetic biology, it is crucial we establish new frameworks and vocabularies for Human/ Non-Human relating. And while bioethics have been explored in the past, we need explore this beyond academic methods, creating toolkits for a wider public of makers, designers, and researchers. O
Ancestral Futures, Digital Fabrication, Material Development, Cognitive diversity etc are all cards that come in complement to the two main themes. They are the areas of research that can come out of a rural biodesign residency
Questions I want to explore this year that are reflected on the board are:
- How do our homes welcome non-human others?
- How does the Rural push the edges of innovation ?
- How does what we learn in the rural space affect the urban space?
- How do we work ethically with other species?
- What forms of storytelling help us shape our futures?