As a design agency, we witness how emerging technologies are reshaping everyday life on a social, economical and political level. Together with global challenges it makes us question and reevaluate the “human-centric” design paradigm we are used to. The more-than-human discourse aims to challenge this and offers a way to deal with the complexity, agency and relationally that modern transformations and challenges.
The more-than-human discourse often stays within the boundaries of academia and artistic practices. At BMD, we believe there is a strong need for designers to consider how humans cohabit with other more-than-human entities, especially those that might be less obvious when defining a design space. To bridge the gap between academia and the arts to more practical and industry fields, we created the more-than-human card deck. This card deck can be seen as a tool to think through some complexities that arise when we create things that live in a system.
What to expect in the workshop?
The card deck can be used as a game to explore different human and more-than-human entities and their relationships in a playful manner. The card game can be used in a project, to explore the web of actors in a project and question their involvement and their ethical implications on society.
During the workshop, we invite people from different expertise areas, research, design practice and artists to come together and explore different ways to include more-than-human thought processes into their practice.
In groups, you will be creating a more-than-human system that includes a co-performing generative thing and/or generative twin intelligence within physical objects. The context of this system will be the Volkshotel, which could more than the hotel itself, consider the Amstel around the hotel, the spaces within the hotel or other. You will be using the card deck to create such a system and to reflect on more-than-human concepts in this system. Ultimately, we want participants to reflect on intelligences that might only come to the forefront when they are viewed in relation to others.
About Bureau Moeilijke Dingen
At BMD (Bureau Moeilijke Dingen) we love tackling the difficult projects. With our unique blend of technical expertise and our design background we approach complex technical challenges from a user perspective. This results in elegant design solutions that are not only innovative on a technical level, they also meet the needs of your target audience.
Presenters and designers
Eva van der Born, Anna Merl, Kuangyi Xing and Tom Kuivenhoven