Agential Placemaking: Relating Material and Place through More-than-Human Agencies
What does it mean to consider place as a constituency of matter? Do place and matter co-constitute each other, and if so, how might place be represented through an extension of sensing through design? This workshop asks participants to challenge the notion of place as a site where design happens and instead consider it as an active assemblage of the co-constituting, contingent effects of agentic matter. Lauren will share how the sensing of agencies might diffract the categorisation of place, and how this might provide more-than-human designers with alternative approaches for attending to relationality. The workshop will prompt participants to consider the possibilities and limitations of this framing by tracing the sensed agencies of designed-with matter (materials) together on Miro, and then they will be asked to share the results of their discussions in plenary.
Lauren Thu is a designer and PhD student in the Everyday Design Studio at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Vancouver, Canada. Her research concerns methodological and material practices for designing with more-than-humans, specifically in how place is reflected in designed materials. She is particularly interested in the ocean as a place, and how sensing technologies may mediate oceanic constituencies.