Designing with All Beings

This is design work that puts biodiversity as a starting dimension in order to correct the Modern West's impoverished relationships with plant, animal, and mineral species. Each project is underpinned with a deep experiential relationship with a chosen more-than-human being, a connection that leads to a greater understanding of our complex interdependence with all beings. In post-extractivist times, what we can give back to nature? We come out of these experiences with a visceral understanding that there are many possible points of view in a pluriversal, animist world, and that this research and design work is ultimately relational.

The images below are curated from work done by Emily Carr students in INDD 310 from 2021 and ongoing.

Lan Yang & Edwina Liao

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Rain Garden design kit

Lan Yang and Edwina Liao researched how to care for a river. They came to understand that runoff from city streets carried pollution and debris directly into the river. A properly designed rain garden consists of loose, deep soil that absorbs and naturally filters the runoff, preventing it from entering the storm drain system and eventually, our waterways. The kit includes instructions and components for planning an effective rain garden.

Eden Zinchik

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Design with all Beings Podcasts

Stories are at the heart of new relationships. Eden Zinchik became fascinated with the relationships her classmates were creating with beings of the natural world. She interviewed them, and created a series of podcasts highlighting their new discoveries and relationships.

Gus

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Divining Bag

Divining Bag - to divine is to discover something by intuition, or to discover water by dowsing. This bag is a support to facilitate meaningful connections between people and salmon. Bringing the bag to the beach in order to swim, one encounters the gathas printed on it. For example "Water meets my body. I am reminded I am in the house of the salmon people. Let me be a protector of this place."

Nolan Talbot

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Lichen

Nolan conducted a series of walks, taking the time to enjoy noticing lichen. They developed a series of interventions to bring attention to this often overlooked being, culminating in a proposal for a gallery exhibition.

Vittoria Sutton

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Lichen

A series of intimate responses to lichen done in nature. Media includes illustration, stitching, poetry and mark making.

Lichen, lichen, You easily frighten. You so dearly care what's in our air, Slow to grow, You to and fro,

treading cautiously

As you live symbiotically.

Lucia Ponce Laresgoiti

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Snow beings/mobiles

Studying remotely in Montreal during a snowy COVID winter, Lucia investigated snow. Her tools for creating snow mobiles allow for people to engage directly with snow. As the sun hits the floating snow pieces, they melt re-freeze, and change, a further invitation to animist play.

Julia De la Puente Calvo

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Stream Beings

Julia felt a deep relationship with her stream. She soon discovered that the stream was alive with so much more than just water. She created ceramic discs honouring the almost invisible beings that inhabit the stream, as an offering to the elementary school nearby. This demonstrates an understanding of the extended the contextual relationships possible in design with all beings.

Gaby Abouzeid

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What do you Own?

Through an abstract collection of visual exploration and conceptual written exploration, Gaby begins to question the boundaries of human fragility and our sense of ownership over others, over things.

She invites us to look into ourselves: how do you communicate with yourself? Do you listen to other beings?

Ella Mah

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Camosun bog

xʷməm̓qʷe:m

"Asking myself, “what is respectful design?”, helped me through this journey and guided me in the direction to make a spiritual connection with a space, while also creating a physical design that helps support it and the beings within it."

Un-puzzle is a discussion facilitation game made for use within the Camosun Bog. Designed around the idea of family and relationship building, the objective is to explore the relationships between the beings of the bog, and build deeper connections with those that you know and love.

Alexander Swanson

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Having a Sit Down

"Fireweed gives without asking for anything in return. She heals wounds both of the earth and of the body. She is strong willed and beautiful."

After researching about all the ways fireweed gives to the beings around her, I decided to start my practice by giving back in a similar way. I turned the kettle to a boil and made tea to share with my friend fireweed. What started as a means to create connection soon grew into a deeply spiritual practice. As the semester progressed, I came to call my tea practice a Sit Down. Wanting to emulate fireweed as a companion, I began to invite my peers to have tea with me outdoors in order to share the peace that I found in this practice. As a final gift, I threw three ceramic teacups: one to give away, one for fireweed, and one for me to receive.

Dres Somasco

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Le Crowbusier

Looking for a way to create relationships with crows, Dres was rebuffed by them several times. Eventually, he decided to meet them on their own terms. He created a platform that could be suspended outside an apartment window that would invite crows to visit, to have food, a place to clean their beak, a drink of water.

Yutaan Lin

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Tales of Manoomin (Wild Rice)

... a gift box of wild rice with prompts for sharing stories.

In this project, I called on a companion some know as Wild Rice -- Manoomin in Ojibwa dialects-- to facilitate conversations of sharing, learning, collaboration, and connection. Rice has been present in and part of human history for longer than we can remember-- they have effectively always been a guest at our dinner tables. I have, through my life, come to know rice as a facilitator, a being that helps people connect with family members, understand different cultural perspectives, that nourishes us. In this project, I want to embody the role rice plays in our lives. I ask how we can emulate rice by engaging in rice rituals and starting conversations to share, teach and create. How does rice help us be open and generous with each other? What different kinds of stories can we bring to each other, and what do these stories teach us?

Aisha Nasutian

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Interconnections

A deep exploration of mycellial networks involved several in-class explorations of tangible connections; bodystorming at its best.

Tenaya J. Fogelman

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Wearing Rain

"My second workshop, ‘Wearing Rain’, was a low-stakes, informal workshop where we created miniature rain jar accessories so that we could carry collected rainwater on our bodies. This workshop was an iteration of the rain jar probe, and served to question whether our relationship with rain would be affected by having her on our person."

Aisha Nasutian

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Interconnections

A series of worn artifacts designed to celebrate interconnection. The intent is to inspire rituals of care through the affordances of bands, hooks, and cord that mimic mycelium structures.

Ameya Shawak

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Bowls for growing Phytoplankton: Educational tool.

Connecting with the Phytoplankton seemed like a difficult task when I was only approaching them through the perspective of science. Over time I started exploring new ways to get to know them and this process was a transformative experience for me.

I engaged in lots of conversations about the role of phytoplankton in our world, I took long walks on the beach at night to get a sense of being in their environment, I developed mindfulness exercises that helped me get a better perspective of phytoplankton as sentient beings and I explored lots of different creative processes like writing from their point of view and creating artworks around their capability of exhibiting bioluminescence.

By engaging in these practices, I developed a deeper understanding of their significance and I began to appreciate the delicate interconnectedness of all life on Earth. This connection I developed was spiritual and made me view the world with a sense of wonder.

Connor Simpson

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Rocks as Beings

The project began with mapping they ways that Rocks interact with Human systems and other systems within Nature.

I soon found that while Rocks are widely used within human systems, the relationship between Humans and Rocks is generally a one-way arrangement. In this project, I wanted to explore this relationship and propose alternatives. All rocks used were rescued from construction waste in Vancouver.

Stine Fiil Brønnum

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Ants

These are made as a puzzle to amplify the nature of how ants collaborate and devote their lives to the colony. Their individuality serves a bigger purpose.

The black boxes is a symbol of the complexity in both human and ant beings, and the mystery I find in both of them.

Stine Fiil Brønnum

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I Am, Because You Are

Biodegradeable sitting spots.

"How can we improve our relationships with other beings? By choosing a being and understanding how human behavior is interfering with their ways of living. Finally designing a piece with their needs in mind. This fosters an understanding of humans as a part, and not the center, of a system."

Lena Tarr

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The Humpback Project

"The Humpback project was very special. I connected so deeply with my species that I started to see them show up in the little things in my life, like comparing their size to busses. I saw how similarly we behave. I am really proud of the iterative process I took on and the amount of detail I went into. I am also proud of myself for learning how to make for the sake of respect and love, rather than making to solve a problem, and that made this project so significant to me."

Lukas Balthazar

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Beings of False Creek

Looking into the former inhabitants of False Creek, Lukas designed a platter to set a table of the foods these beings would have eaten.

Matthew Bordeleau

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Bridging Wild and Domestic Coastal Douglas Fir through acts of Sonic Nurturing and Awareness

"Designing with and for Coastal Douglas Fir has been a very special moment in my four years here at Emily Carr. The Coastal Douglas Fir is a being that’s been with me my whole life. Every day walking home from high school I would go through Bert Flynn trail which is home to many of these beings. I saw them as my walking buddies, keeping me company on my my home. Now nine years later this sentiment has further increased."

Parnian Anaa

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A Living Diaspora: A story of Water Relations and Migration

Research and Poetry, Experimental Performance Art, culminating in a book of images and poetry. (Extract below:)

watermisogyny

waterstories

watermyths

watermysteries

what is the way

to the blue dot?

move within water

she holds a part of all beings

and now you hold a part

of her

of Sand

microbial, economical, and cultural exchange

circularity of growth and migration

Matthew Bordeleau

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Bridging Wild and Domestic Coastal Douglas Fir through acts of Sonic Nurturing and Awareness

"Through sound I have travelled to where these firs are fighting for their right to the land. Some of them completely disconnected. Through this disconnection I found a connection within myself. Separated from a homeland that exists faraway, a second generation immigrant and a Domestic Douglas Fir both yearning to be back home. Through sound I have found an awareness for processes that go unnoticed. Through sound I discovered dialogues between physical spaces, and the need to investigate them.

My philosophy of design has shifted into a realm of reciprocity where I hope others can take the baton. Where we can connect to beings at a level that respects their agencies. This semester has been a reflective, and healing time. I’m going to visit the sapling I planted every few months to see how it’s doing. With time I hope it will thrive, and be untouched by the sounds that it was born into."

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