Interspecies interactions are intensely explored in Multispecies Studies, with special attention to the challenges posed by contemporary poly-crises. Scholars like Ávila (2022) emphasize the need for conscious approaches in design research to acknowledge multispecies interdependence and promote practices of care and coexistence for a more equitable (Holland & Roudavski 2024), cosmopolitical (Yaneva & Zaera-Polo 2015), and regenerative “Pluriverse” (Escobar 2018). Bringing these theoretical insights into practice poses critical challenges.
Biodesign (Myers & Antonelli 2012), an interdisciplinary field engaging with living organisms—from bacteria to corals—explores new ‘living’ materialities (Karana, et al. 2020) through prototypes, artifacts, and architectural structures. While intense collaboration takes place with biotech disciplines, there is limited inclusion of other-than-academic, vernacular, and tacit knowledge, such as cultural craft techniques and field-based multispecies ontologies.
We advocate for fieldwork as an underexplored diffracting method that can enhance multispecies sensibilities, deepen engagements with situated configurations and ecologies, and foster reflexivity and sensitivity in Biodesign processes. This panel seeks to elaborate on experimental field-based contributions to Biodesign.
We aim to explore how ethnographic methods, practice-based designerly ways of knowing, and development of knowledge in actu (Mareis 2017) can contribute to the study of interspecies interactions in the field. We also want to examine how prototyping can become a diffractive practice, engaging with the flux of materialities (Ingold 2007) and organisms in situated contexts. Furthermore, we are interested in how Biodesign-artifacts can foster invitational practices (Lindström and Ståhl 2020) through regenerative socio-materialities in situated configurations and ecologies.
We welcome critical discussions on epistemological, ontological, and praxiological translations across diverse sites (Latour 1983), attempting to bridge academic and other-than-academic and disciplinary boundaries.