In this article we examine the experiences of the first and second author who have changed themselves to become newly attuned to the sun, or who have “become solar”. Motivated by calls to approach solar design in novel, less technocratic ways, we reflect on their one-year journey to gain a new relationship with solar energy as an explicitly more-than-human design (MTHD) approach. We argue that their perception of solar energy progressively worked to decentre them as human actors in this new solar-energy arrangement, revealing other nonhuman actors at play, instigating situations of care and attention to those nonhumans and ultimately guiding them towards what it means to be solar. For solar design, we see this approach as creating a new lens for solar designers to draw from. For MTHD, we see this acting as a practical example for designers seeking to begin transforming themselves in their own practice by taking initial steps towards a MTHD approach.
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Vacant land can provide social and ecological benefits to cities as they are informally used by people and spontaneously populated by animals and plant-life. However, planners and policy makers often frame vacant land as ‘empty’, ‘blank’ spaces, making it difficult to acknowledge informal and more-than-human shaping of these places. This paper demonstrates how a reconceptualization of vacant land through a relational lens enables the inclusion of informal and more-than-human placemaking in planning policy. Analysing the recent Scottish planning policy debate on vacant land through the analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews, we demonstrate that the inclusion of informal and more-than-human placemaking in the Scottish planning policy is fostered by growing recognition of concepts such as urban biodiversity, but hindered by persistent nature-culture divisions. Waymarkers for future policy making are, firstly, strengthening the presence of informal and more-than-human actors in policy debates by seeking representatives who can speak on their behalf and, secondly, supporting new placemaking traditions specifically for vacant land that are incremental and collaborative.
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One of the characteristics of arts-based environmental education is that it encourages participants to be receptive to nature in new and uncommon ways. The participant is encouraged to immerse him or herself in nature, to seek a “deep identification.” In my paper I explore if there could be cases where such immersion may reach – or even go beyond – a point of no return. A point, where the “intertwining” with nature causes the subject to sever the “life lines” to the world which would enable him or her to maintain the psychological, cultural and spiritual integrity of the ego. The dissolving of the ego’s boundaries through artistic practice can be seen as having certain shamanistic qualities, specifically in cases when this transgression involves efforts to connect with other animal species. Such undertakings may constitute – at least in the perception of the shaman-artist – a form of “going native,” becoming “one” with the non-human Others.As relevant cases I discuss the “trespassing” from the world of culture into the world of nature by Joseph Beuys in his famous studio encounter with a coyote and Timothy Treadwell entering the life-world of the grizzly bears in Alaska, for which he ultimately paid the price of death (the tragic story was documented in Werner Herzog’s film “Grizzly Man”).I analyze these phenomena along the distinction between Apollonian versus Dionysian sensibility in cultural activity as articulated by Nietzsche. Finally I discuss some pedagogical implications for teachers and facilitators who encourage an attitude of radical amazement and vulnerability in arts-based environmental education.
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In dit project zal ArtEZ onder leiding van onderzoeker Pauline van Dongen samenwerken met het Next Nature Network, UNStudio, AMOLF en het Ecomimicry Instituut aan kennisontwikkeling en -deling m.b.t. het potentieel van shape-changing textiles voor de bevordering van duurzaam gedrag en een duurzame omgeving. Shape-changing textiles zijn stoffen die actief van vorm kunnen veranderen in interactie met de drager of de omgeving. Door hun adaptieve, responsieve en interactieve eigenschappen gaan deze stoffen een andere relatie aan met de gebruiker, wat mogelijkheden biedt voor duurzame gedragsverandering. ArtEZ en de consortiumpartners verbinden hun state-of-the-art kennis vanuit ecologisch-, technisch- en designperspectief om door middel van ontwerpend onderzoek nieuwe kennis te ontwikkelen over hoe deze innovatieve materialen kunnen bijdragen aan verduurzaming van gedrag en omgeving. Aan de basis van dit onderzoek ligt een expliciete praktijkvraag van MKB-ondernemingen, die we op basis van een uitgebreid vraagarticulatieproces als volgt geformuleerd hebben: Hoe kunnen shape-changing textiles, ontwikkeld en ontworpen op basis van ecologische principes en processen, een andere relatie tot de drager/gebruiker en zijn/haar omgeving genereren om duurzaamheid te bevorderen? We willen deze hoofdvraag en een aantal deelvragen beantwoorden door in drie werkpakketten met het consortium te inventariseren welke relevante kennis er op dit moment beschikbaar is. Deze kennis zullen we door middel van ontwerpend onderzoek toetsen en verder ontwikkelen, waarna we de opgedane inzichten vervolgens analyseren en duiden om voor de MKB-partners en ons breder netwerk toepasbare kennis te genereren. Concrete voorbeelden hiervan zijn onder andere prototypes die getest kunnen worden met gebruikers (AMOLF en UN Studio) en de basis kunnen vormen voor een samplebibliotheek van shape-changing textiles. Daarnaast ontwikkelen we met Next Nature Network een speculatief toekomstscenario dat gepubliceerd en gedeeld kan worden met een breder publiek.
This Professional Doctorate (PD) project explores the intersection of artistic research, digital heritage, and interactive media, focusing on the reimagining of medieval Persian bestiaries through high dark fantasy and game-making. The research investigates how the process of creation with interactive 3D media can function as a memory practice. At its core, the project treats bestiaries—pre-modern collections of real and imaginary classifications of the world—as a window into West and Central Asian flora, fauna, and the landscape of memory, serving as both repositories of knowledge and imaginative, cosmological accounts of the more-than-human world. As tools for exploring non-human pre-modern agency, bestiaries offer a medium of speculative storytelling, and explicate the unstable nature of memory in diasporic contexts. By integrating these themes into an interactive digital world, the research develops new methodologies for artistic research, treating world-building as a technique of attunement to heritage. Using a practice-based approach, the project aligns with MERIAN’s emphasis on "research in the wild," where artistic and scientific inquiries merge in experimental ways. It engages with hard-core game mechanics, mythopoetic decompressed environmental storytelling, and hand-crafted detailed intentional world-building to offer new ways of interacting with the past that challenges nostalgia and monumentalization. How can a cultural practice do justice to other, more experimental forms of remembering and encountering cultural pasts, particularly those that embrace the interconnections between human and non-human entities? Specifically, how can artistic practice, through the medium of a virtual, bestiary-inspired dark fantasy interactive media, allow for new modes of remembering that resist idealized and monumentalized histories? What forms of inquiry can emerge when technology (3D media, open-world interactive digital media) becomes a tool of attention and a site of experimental attunement to cosmological heritage?
"Rising Tides, Shifting Imaginaries: Participatory Climate Fiction-Making with Cultural Collections," is an transdisciplinary research project that merges information design, participatory art, and climate imaginaries to address the pressing challenge of climate change, particularly the rising sea levels in the Netherlands. The doctoral research project aims to reimagine human coexistence with water-based ecosystems by exploring and reinterpreting audiovisual collections from various archives and online platforms. Through a creative and speculative approach, it seeks to visualize existing cultural representations of Dutch water-based ecosystems and, with the help of generative AI, develop alternative narratives and imaginaries for future living scenarios. The core methodology involves a transdisciplinary process of climate fiction-making, where narratives from the collections are amplified, countered, or recombined. This process is documented in a structured speculative archive, encompassing feminist data visualizations and illustrated climate fiction stories. The research contributes to the development of Dutch climate scenarios and adaptation strategies, aligning with international efforts like the CrAFt (Creating Actionable Futures) project of the New European Bauhaus program. Two primary objectives guide this research. First, it aims to make future scenarios more relatable by breaking away from traditional risk visualizations. It adopts data feminist principles, giving space to emotions and embodiment in visualization processes and avoiding the presentation of data visualization as neutral and objective. Second, the project seeks to make scenarios more inclusive by incorporating intersectional and more-than-human perspectives, thereby moving beyond techno-optimistic approaches and embracing a holistic and caring speculative approach. Combining cultural collections, digital methodologies, and artistic research, this research fosters imaginative explorations for future living.
