Speculative tales: world-building methodologies for more-than-humans as story makers

For the more-than-human (other sentient creatures and other living organisms the very existence and core onto-epistemic (Barad, 2007) assumptions of media architecture are deeply problematic (Foth & Caldwell, 2018), existing within a set of symbolic meanings drawn from human cultural symbolic systems at the conceptual level and dependent on infrastructures of materials, production of disruptive light etc. at the material level. This workshop proposal invites playful, speculative story world-building based on the premise that, as Ingold (2009) announces, animals inhabit meaning-full worlds. Such worlds may be inaccessible via human cultural symbol systems but they may be accessible through world building and speculative fictions. The work builds on previous research about animals as story-makers (Turner & Morrison, 2021) which explores narrative methodologies and co-performance (Haraway, 2008) as opportunity to evidence agentic meaning-making on the part of companion animals, and the use of narrative inquiry methods (Green, 2013; Haydon, van Der Riet, & Inder, 2018) and stories in the creation of narrative identity (Ricœur, 1984) in place (Tuan, 1977) and in particular, in the built environment. When it comes to more -than-human as agentic makers in media architecture, there are opportunities. Foth and Caldwell (2018) point to emerging meaningful media architecture projects which contribute to our understanding of the more than human experience or which are created according to standards emphasising our relation ship with nature. Enabling more-than-human contribution in media architecture is not so problematic e.g. Carbon Arts’ Melbourne Mussel Choir where mussels are wired up to produce data streams based on reaction to water quality etc. is described as giving them ‘a voice’ (allowing them to become rock stars). Others have considered a range of participation ‘rungs’ in the same way that citizen participation has been categorised (Arnstein, 1969). In the case of companion animals for example, Hirskyj-Douglas and Reed (Hirskyj-Douglas & Read, 2015) differentiate between training (animals participate without agency), freedom (participate with a degree of choice e.g. play or don’t play), informed e.g. the animal understanding its choices (perhaps through repetition - although this creates a difficult line re ‘training’ and empowerment - this latter being a speculative level of participation e.g. we understand that the animal might understand at an intuitive level - especially with close animal companions where much of the activity is co-performance (Mancini, 2018). However, stewardship (with all that it entails) of the more-than-human remains a feature of a number of projects and including more-than-human as agentic meaning makers is a challenge (Wolch & Owens, 2017). A pathway into the nexus of the dilemma posed when we endeavour to understand non-humans as agentic meaning-makers in their own right (Ingold, 2009) is to explore what Freire (Freire, 1970) would call problem posing. Here, the western onto-epistemic goals of seeking answers and solutions is disavowed in favour of deep reflection and criticality with a view to engaging in meaning-making, even if, as in Australian Indigenous community meetings, no decision is made. The process and the stories being created being considered more important than some concrete ‘outcome’. Anne Galloway (2019) suggests that asking ‘what if?’ questions and engaging is speculative design and fictions is one approach that can be powerfully used (Galloway & Caudwell, 2018). Key in Galloway’s approach is the idea that speculative design critiques design itself and aims to create alternative realities, opening up pathways for the imagination and (other) world building (Dunne & Raby, 2013). References Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of planners, 35(4), 216-224. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: design, fiction, and social dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foth, M., & Caldwell, G. A. (2018). More-than-human media architecture. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 4th Media Architecture Biennale Conference. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder. Galloway, A., & Caudwell, C. (2018). Speculative design as research method. Undesign: critical practice at the intersection of art and design. Routledge, 85-96. Green, B. (2013). Narrative inquiry and nursing research. Qualitative Research Journal, 13(1), 62-71. doi:10.1108/14439881311314586 Haraway, D. J. (2008). When species meet (Vol. 224): U of Minnesota Press. Haydon, G., van Der Riet, P., & Inder, K. (2018). Narrative Inquiry in Nursing Research: Tensions, Bumps, and the Research Puzzle. International Journal Of Qualitative Methods, 17(1). Retrieved from https://journals-sagepub-com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/doi/full/10.1177/1609406918801621#_i130 Hirskyj-Douglas, I., & Read, J. C. (2015). Doggy Ladder of Participation. Paper presented at the Workshop on Animal-Computer Interaction, British HCI. Ingold, T. (2009). Point, Line and Counterpoint: From Environment to Fluid Space. In A. Berthoz & Y. Christen (Eds.), Neurobiology of “Umwelt”: How Living Beings Perceive the World (pp. 141-155). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Mancini, C. (Ed.) (2018). Animal-Computer Interaction: Animals as Co-Designers of Multispecies Technologically Supported Ecosystems. Participatory Design Conference (PDC), Hasselt & Genk, Belgium. Ricœur, P. (1984). Time and narrative I (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans. Vol. 1). Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Tuan, Y.-f. (1977). Space and place : the perspective of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Turner, J., & Morrison, A. (2021). Designing Slow Cities for More than Human Enrichment: Dog Tales—Using Narrative Methods to Understand Co-Performative Place-Making. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 5(1), 1. Wolch, J., & Owens, M. (2017). Animals in contemporary architecture and design. Humanimalia: a journal of human/animal interface studies, 8, 1-26.