Nonhuman Perspectives Research Articles

Designing harvesting tools for olive trees: Methodological reflections on exploring and incorporating plant perspectives in the early stages of design process

Sustainability-focused design research is witnessing a change in approach with the emergence of More-than-human Design (MTHD), which challenges human-centered thinking by incorporating nonhuman perspectives into the design process. However, implementing MTHD presents challenges for design researchers and practitioners, such as understanding non-verbal species. Despite the techniques developed to facilitate such an understanding (e.g. contact zone), the growing literature on MTHD lacks studies reflecting on how these techniques are utilized in the design process. In this paper, we present a case study on designing olive harvesting tools from a MTH lens, where designers used contact zone, plant interviews, plant persona, and experience map to explore the perspectives of olive trees and incorporate them into ideas in collaboration with farmers and agricultural engineers. The results indicate the significance of reconsidering decentralization in MTHD from the standpoint of entanglements among techniques and incorporating various knowledge types to manage tensions arising from perspective shifts.

Natural Agency and Community in Paul Harding’s Tinkers

ABSTRACT This article examines Paul Harding’s representation of natural agency in Tinkers as a response to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist perspective on nature, as articulated in his landmark essay “Nature.” It argues that Harding reimagines this essay from both human and natural perspectives to convey the theme of community. Harding presents Emersonian subjective experiences with nature from a nonhuman perspective, envisioning nature’s communication with humans in a natural language comprehensible to humans, and illustrating human-nature interconnectedness as part of a universal connection among all natural entities. Additionally, Harding describes the characters’ active pursuit of understanding natural mysteries and experiencing its beauty through their senses to form a bond with nature. This description illustrates human interconnectedness through a shared identity with nature, which is fostered in humanity’s collective relationship with the natural world, and in Emersonian practice of solitary communion with it. Natural agency is highlighted in the community-building amidst human-nature interactions as portrayed in the protagonists’ narrative, and through a nature narrative depicting a collective of both the human and the nonhuman. Through these narratives, Harding’s work challenges anthropocentric notions of collectivity, demonstrating fiction’s potential to engage with the nonhuman in the context of growing ecological crises.

Re-evaluating the agency of non-human subjects in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dogs of War

Adrian Tchaikovsky is renowned for exploring animal consciousness and non-human perspectives in his works. His 2017 novel Dogs of War exemplifies the dominance of anthropocentrism within the novel’s transhumanist context, wherein genetically engineered non-human bioforms are exploited by humans. This study argues the way humans perceive and treat non-human subjects in the novel, which are reduced to “disposable bodies” (Braidotti, 2013, p.15), extends the reach of human-centred ideology into transhumanism. Therefore, the termination of the bioforms once they are deemed obsolete demonstrates a utilitarian view of life within transhumanist thought. Building upon these arguments, this study examines whether genetically engineered non-human entities in the novel are entitled to the same rights as their human creators, who design and command them in the pursuit of technological and military advancements. By extension, this study proposes Tchaikovsky's portrayal of bioform animals resonating with Donna Haraway’s concept of the “cyborg,” which challenges the traditional concept of humans by attributing agency and sentience to these beings. The study seeks to illuminate the complex interplay between human and non-human agency, thereby questioning the established hierarchy of beings in the context of transhumanist thought.

The Architecture of the Video Game Stray (2022)

The twenty-first century was marked by emerging ways of space- and place-making. The architecture of the virtual environments of video games is one of the alternative practices in which the discipline of architecture got involved. This essay looks at the architecture and spatial storytelling in the videogame Stray (2022). The relevance of studying Stray does not lie only in the game’s enigmatic interiors, rigorous space-oriented narrative, unique patchwork of neon-soaked, post-apocalyptic labyrinthine spaces, or the cyberpunk Kowloon-like ghettoised urban environment in which the game takes place; Stray is an unprecedented case study as its gameplay is narrated through a non-human perspective: through the point of view of a cat accompanied by a small flying robot called B 12. This essay provides a critical review of the game and attempts to dissect how the spatial storytelling of its post/non-human architecture is orchestrated. Spatial puzzle mechanics, the fluctuation of the game between urban, architectural, and interior scales, and the role that platforms and vertical design techniques play are the subjects of the article. The challenges of the interaction of a game character with four legs with spatial elements, video game placemaking, and spatial design of fetch quests are other topics that the essay will look into. The article is supported by comments from an unpublished interview with Viv (one of the developers of the game) and a series of detailed analytical drawings from the reconstruction of the game environments by the authors.

Connecting Humans and Non-Humans

A recent trend in public health campaigns has been to include non-human health data to capture all relevant variables related to human well-being. This specific approach is the foundation of the World Health Organization restructuring in the early 2000s as they adopted the “one health” framework. Politically, this movement is influential and draws significant health funding globally. "One health" is characterized by a multi-disciplinary collaboration between medical, veterinary, and health sciences. Similarly, the post-human turn in medical anthropology recognizes that viewing the non-human contributions to the cultural construction of health as symbolic does not adequately address how non-humans and nature independently contribute to human health realities. Ethnographic studies of the non-human perspective shed light on how humans are not the only beings that influence culturally constructed reality, nor are they exclusively in control of cultural phenomena. Theoretical trends in anthropology and public health seemingly converge; however, an artificial academic barrier between the sciences and social sciences remains. As these two disciplines are coming closer together through their data, breaking down structural barriers that prevent the successful integration of knowledge has potential to improve human health outcomes. Methodological concessions will have to occur on all sides to make the inclusion of the social sciences in public health possible. Doing so can bring academia closer to a comprehensive scientific understanding of human health.

Point/Cloud

Laser scanning holds out the possibility of extreme certainty. Digital scanning has become deeply integrated in contemporary archaeological surveying, and in architectural heritage and preservation contexts digital scans are now common. Certainty in this text-based essay is understood as an affect, an experiential quality rather than an absolute measure. It does not question the possibility or usefulness of precise measurement (although it does question the rhetorical use of exactitude and precision), but explores the imaginative role of exactitude in this form of digital imaging. It makes readings of a series of moving-image works that use point clouds generated by laser scanning. Rhetorically, the term ‘point cloud’ is suspended between the apparent certainty and exactitude of the mathematical point, and the vague ungraspability of vapour. Rather than expressing exactitude and objectivity, the works discussed here highlight ambiguities of human perception, and seek to see from nonhuman perspectives (the driverless car, the kāhu/hawk, and an oak forest). It concludes by suggesting that such works in particular, and point cloud imagery in general, can be understood in terms of a diffusive material imaginary.

Synplant

Synplant is an installation consisting of multiple hybrid plant sensing units. By analyzing biosignals, it can interpret the natural environment from the perspective of plants and translate their experiences into audiovisual expressions that can be experienced by humans. This work is based on a supervised learning system that analyzes the changes in biosignals when plants receive environmental stimuli. The analysis results are used to control acoustic-lighting devices to generate variable cymatics patterns. Through the utilization of wind and rain as vehicles to bridge different sensing units, it creates an immersive audiovisual field that represents the trajectories of the invisible interaction between plants and different elements in the natural environment. This work combines an intelligent machine with botanical perception to extend our understanding of the natural environment and to connect with the land from a non-human perspective.

Untamed Storms: Cinema’s Oceanic Contingency and Mati Diop’s Atlantics

Abstract The ocean, for Jean Epstein, figures the disruption that the cinematograph offers for human perception, presenting a nonhuman view on the world. This article will critically engage with Epstein’s writings on water to reflect on Mati Diop’s Atlantics (2019) and its particular conception of the oceanic. Atlantics positions the ocean within the perspectives of its filmic subjects but also in excess of them. This perspectival nature of the oceanic speaks to a liminal space between male and female, living and dead, human and nonhuman, which mirrors contemporary debates within Black studies around the exclusion of Blackness from the normative category of the human: the contingency of the definition of humanity based on racial exclusion. As a result, it is not only the nonhuman perspective that the ocean provides in Atlantics, but a spectral haunting of those deemed other than human by global capitalism, which disrupts, as a queer prophecy, the veneer of necessity that the neocolonial order requires to sustain itself.

Transdisciplinary collaboration in architecture: Integrating microalgae biotechnologies for human and non-human perspectives

Abstract This article investigates the role of architectural research in addressing the current ecological, geopolitical, and socioeconomic challenges by exploring the potential of symbiotic ecosystems, particularly microorganisms such as microalgae, in architectural and design applications. Microalgae biotechnologies have the potential to offer a wide range of applications in architecture and design, encompassing small-scale objects, living systems on building exteriors, as well as urban and rural scenarios, thereby allowing for systematic research. When using these biotechnologies in architectural designs, it is crucial to consider maintenance requirements, environmental impacts, and the potential for enhancing public spaces and society across various dimensions in both short-term and long-term perspectives, and potential environmental impacts before implementing microalgae-based systems in real-life scenarios. This study describes a collection of interdisciplinary projects and research that involve microbiology, architecture, and design and proposes various experimental scenarios concerning the integration of both human and non-human perspectives. Through collaborative academic efforts, these projects demonstrate the potential for combining microalgae cultivation with architectural applications. The projects include Photosynthetic Landscape, a modular photobioreactor system, Synthesizing/Distancing which addresses coexistence in global epidemics, Biotopia, a permanent interior installation incorporating microalgae, Exchange Instruments, a semi-closed cultivation system, and Cultivated Environment, a small-scale microalgae cultivation apparatus. The article highlights the implication of controlled environments, maintenance, and interdisciplinary cooperation while showcasing the potential for these systems.

Highlighting elephant’s perspective through umwelt exploration: textual analysis of the novella River Storm

ABSTRACT The elephants are the most important animal characters in Nirmal Ghosh’s novella River Storm, and they both metaphorically and literally permeate the entire story. This article explores how viewing these animals through the lens of sensory ecology enables more accurate identification of the ways in which the elephants’ olfactory, tactile, and auditory senses help in communicating with their environment and a better comprehension of the nonhuman perspective. It also tries to illustrate why understanding an elephant’s sensory capabilities is necessary to acknowledge the non-human perspective in a society where humans predominate. Drawing on the premises of Jakob Von Uexkull’s umwelt theory, this study acknowledges the elephants’ agency by contradicting humans’ generic conception of animals as objects or symbols or allegorical subjects in the epistemology of literary discourse about animals. To emphasize the elephant’s distinctive perception of the environment, the narrative specifically moves beyond the boundaries of human perception. Furthermore, it clarifies how an elephant interacts with their surroundings using their sensory faculties, how misinterpretations of their umwelt can result in a number of conflicts between humans and elephants, as well as how a clear understanding of the elephant world can result in a cordial relationship between humans and elephants.

Urban Forest Tweeting: Social Media as More-Than-Human Communication in Tokyo’s Rinshinomori Park

Urban parks are places that have significant impact on the physical and mental health of citizens, but they are also for safeguarding biodiversity and thus fostering human–nature interactions in the everyday landscape. The exploration of these spaces through social media represents a novel field of research that is contributing to revealing patterns of visitor behavior. However, there is a lack of comparable research from a non-anthropocentric perspective. What if we could use social media as a more-than-human communication medium? This research aims to reveal the possibility of communicating the urban forest’s voice through the examination of the official Twitter account of a metropolitan park in Tokyo. To this end, an analysis of the content of the messages is carried out, focusing on the narrative voice from which the message is told, the protagonists, the action performed, the network of actors deployed, and the place where it occurs. It is found that the majority of these messages are delivered from a non-human perspective, where plants, animals, or meteorological agents behave deploying complex networks of more-than-human interaction. The current study reveals the latent potential of non-humans as possible agents within the realm of social media, which can mediate the relationships between humans and their environment. It introduces a layer that can be incorporated into future lines of research, as well as provides a model case that illustrates a good practice in the management and communication of urban green spaces.

Designing innovative digital platforms from both human and nonhuman perspectives

Digital platforms are becoming critical infrastructures for supporting a variety of innovative services that enhance our everyday lives. These platforms need to offer not only rational services but also ludic or slow services that focus on human pleasure. One important aspect of creating innovative digital platforms is that their concrete requirements and potential opportunities are vague before they are designed. Thus, designing, prototyping and evaluating digital platforms iteratively is essential for refining or customizing them, as knowledge is gradually gained throughout these iterations. However, it is costly to develop prototype platforms and evaluate them with traditional methods. A better tool that can be used to reveal these platforms’ potential opportunities by conceiving them in a simple and rapid way is needed. In this paper, we present our journey to develop nine digital platforms that share collective human sight and hearing with the Human-Material-Pleasure (HMP) annotation method, which is a tool that we use to describe the visually structured annotations of multiple digital platforms based on the annotated portfolio method. The most significant part of the paper presents annotated portfolios based on the HMP annotation method for the nine digital platforms that we develop and shows how these annotated portfolios play an essential role in revealing and exploring the potential opportunities of our platforms during the refinement process. We also discuss how the HMP annotation method is used in the context of exploring the potential opportunities of wearable shape-changing robotic devices; these devices have significantly different characteristics from our digital platforms, which allows for showing insights more objectively by extracting diverse insights from an alternative angle.

Luma and Gunda Stare Back: Integrating Nonhuman Perspectives in The Ecofeminist Documentary

Documentaries about non-human animals abound, but how many of these films are truly attempting to narrate their perspective? Both blue-chip ‘nature’ documentaries narrated by David Attenborough and animal rights advocacy documentaries have an anthropocentric approach: either the non-human animal is turned into a spectacle for the human gaze, or into a helpless “victim in need for human mercy and rescue” (Freeman & Tulloch 2013, 6). The aim of this paper is to make a case for the potentiality of the documentary form as a means to find new, interspeciesist ways of representing non-human animal subjectivities. It also investigates some of the methodologies used to explore the possibility of integrating the non-human animal perspective in documentary. To do so, this paper looks into examples of recent documentaries Gunda (Kossakovsky 2020) and Cow (Arnold 2021), suggesting that these films are able to put critical ecofeminist thought into practice. Moreover, this paper argues that methods such as those invested in sensory ethnography can be useful to let the nonhuman animal ‘speak’ for him or herself, in line with the ecofeminist aim of exposing the underlying power structure resulting in all forms of oppression. Furthermore, this paper explores Anat Pick’s notion of vegan cinema (2018)

Medieval Things: Agency, Materiality, and Narratives of Objects in Medieval German Literature and Beyond

Medieval Things: Agency, Materiality, and Narratives of Objects in Medieval German Literature and Beyond

Storytalk and complex constructions of nonhuman agency

Abstract Recent work in environmental philosophy has uncoupled the notion of agency from the human domain, arguing that the efficacy of nonhuman entities and processes can also be construed as a form of “agency.” In this paper, we study discursive constructions of nonhuman agency as they appear in a set of interviews revolving around fictional narratives. The participants were asked to read microfiction engaging with the nonhuman perspectives of entities such as a melting glacier or an endangered tree species. The analysis of the interviews centers on “complex” attributions of nonhuman agency – that is, attributions that involve a combination of agencies attributed to the nonhuman. We show that these complex attributions emerge more frequently in discussing the story (what we call the “storytalk”) than elsewhere in the interviews. We also explore the way in which such complex constructions of nonhuman agency challenge widespread assumptions about the natural world.

Umiar, wspólnota i perspektywa nie-ludzka jako ekologiczne strategie (post)sztuki wobec kryzysu klimatycznego

Moderation, Community and Non-Human Perspective as Ecological Strategies of (Post-)Art Towards Climate Crisis The foundations of the culture as well as of the current climate and ecological crisis rely on two paradigms that require deconstruction in context of the anthropocene, namely the capitalistic and anthropocentric paradigms. The author not only criticizes them, but also looks for alternatives among the post-humanistic philosophies and post-artistic practises that exceed modernistic traditions as well as autonomous and representative art. New tools for describing and changing reality can be provided by post-artistic practices which focus on action, social use, communities and immaterial benefits. This situates post-art in contraposition to institutionalized overproduction, anthropocentric individualism and market-based rules.

WAR, WOMEN AND ECOLOGY: RETELLING RAMAYANA THROUGH SARAH JOSEPH’S THE VIGIL

The Vigil (2014) is the English translation of the Malayalam novel Oorukaval (2008) written by Sarah Joseph and translated by Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan. The novel recounts Ramayana from the perspective of war, women and ecology, through the eyes of Angada, a monkey as evolved as human, whose father Bali was killed by Rama. Angada’s anger, anxiety and agony are picturised in the novel while he is forced to join Rama’s army in search of the later’s wife Sita. When the novel divulges the journey of Angada prepared for the Rama-Ravana war, it also becomes rewriting of Ramayana from an ecocentric, subaltern, female as well as Third world perspective. It also describes the far-reaching consequences of war, the perilous ecological destruction and exploitation of the underprivileged due to the greed and quest for power. While exploring and examining the narration of nature, women, and the marginalised in the novel from an ecofeminist perspective through textual and content analysis, the paper argues that the novel propounds a new sense of eco-masculinity as opposed to the toxicity associated with the hegemonic masculinity that is war here. In addition, the non-human perspective of ecofeminism and the ‘women-other human Others-nature interconnections’ are vividly manifested in the novel. The ecofeminist analysis of war and its disastrous effects on women and the nature also unveil the ingrained philosophical standpoints of the novel with respect to sustainable development. At the end, Angada throws away his weapon, along with the hatred and revenge that he has been carrying, realising its burden over humanity. Over the last thirty years of the political climate of India, Temple of Rama in Ayodhya is a contested matter and re-reading of Ramayana at this context is extremely significant, as the novel urges for re-inventing a culture of mutual co-existence.

Posthuman feminism and global constitutionalism: Environmental reflections

AbstractThere is a need for the field of global constitutionalism to consider a wider array of voices, such as women’s voices and perspectives from the Global South. Here, I argue that global constitutionalism must pay attention not only to a wider array of human perspectives, but also to non-human perspectives and to different understandings of what the law is and can be. Evaluating how international law categorizes the environment and non-human animals as things or objects to be exploited for human needs, I argue that posthuman feminism provides an alternative epistemic frame for rethinking both global constitutionalism and international law.

Transdisciplinarity: Re-Visioning How Sciences and Arts Together Can Enact Democratizing Creative Educational Experiences

The movement from STEM to STEAM, with its emphasis on real-world applications, promises to meet the changing needs of a globally connected world. However, the potential of transdisciplinarity to inspire and deepen our understanding of who we are and how we make sense of a world in turmoil remains undertheorized. This article makes a case for repositioning STEAM education as democratized enactments of transdisciplinary education, where arts and sciences are not separate or even separable endeavors. Drawing upon posthumanist theorizing, three projects will exemplify transdisciplinarity across music, mathematics, and science education. Transgressing and transcending disciplinary boundaries, and attending to both human and nonhuman perspectives, we invite a rethink of the work of schools, going beyond democratizing creativity to fully enact posthumanist transdisciplinarity.

When Two Worlds Collide: Creatively Reassessing the Concept of a House Beyond the Human

This article reassesses the concept of a house from a non-human perspective. The two worlds that collide in this article are philosophical analyses that are “beyond the human” and sustainable engineering house design. By analyzing the houses of ten animal species for shelter/skin properties, life pedagogy (how to live), materials and resources, thermal dynamics, and structural elements, we speculate on the future of housing. The premise of this article is that “beyond the human” philosophy opens a new visage to comprehend and conceptualize what a house could be. Beyond the human theorizing is defined by philosophy that has gone beyond framing an exploration internally to the benefit of themselves, as human subject(s). This article speculates that considering animal house construction is a way forward for thought in a changing climate.