Rethinking data and data practices through Pheno-data (ontology) and Pheno-fication (epistemology) for a good planetary life
In the session, Youngsil Lee will introduce an ecological data practice grounded in knowing ecological data (embodied, relational and situated), being in more-than-human entanglements (social, technological, and natural), and the doing of design practices (ethical reflexivity and ecological imagination). During this session Youngsil will share how we produce or act upon data (which is rooted in capitalist and anthropocentric logics) but also recognise data emerging from nature, which invites us to fundamentally reimagine a good life in ways that foreground more-than-human bodies, forces, and possibilities. The method is more-than-human in how in that it enables us to recognise, relate to, and reimagine organisms, machines, and hybrids as co-evolving participants, and bring critical inquiry into more-than-human worlds, whether all beings move towards flourishing planetary livingness or not.
Do we, as humans, have the ethical agency in the form of responsibility and care to take the possibilities of other species into account in our co-becoming?
- Do commodified species(tomatoes) live and die well in the stories?
- Are commodified species (tomatoes) capable of responding to and evolving further in their specific ecologies?
- Do they hold the living power for generating diverse and plural narratives?
Youngsil Lee is a design researcher focusing on co-designing sustainability transitions through everyday life with people, communities, and ecologies. Her expertise and interest sit at the intersection of data, digital technologies, socio-ecological systems (especially, food systems), and planetary wellbeing. She earned an MSc from strategic product design at TU Delft and recently completed her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network.