Human-Nature-Technology Entangelments
Workshop
Ines Weigand
In the workshop, students engaged with current discourses in the environmental humanities that address the underlying paradigms of human-nature relationships that characterise our lifestyles, the need to reintegrate human cultures and economies with ecological systems, and the ethical, political and design questions that arise. These questions were linked to systemic design approaches that, by incorporating systems theory and an understanding of complexity, explore regenerative design approaches that model ecosystem functioning and discuss regenerative practices and cultures based on ecologically literate choices. As eco-literacy is described as the ability to understand the organisation of natural systems and the processes that maintain the healthy functioning of living systems, students were introduced to and played with basic principles of ecological systems. By exploring these principles on site in Corsica at different scales, the workshop took a place-based approach to these issues. In the second part of the workshop, the students delved deeper into what it means to think and act with and within these systems. Questions they explored included: How can we intervene in these systems without disrupting their basic functions? If these principles have proven to be regenerative and resilient throughout evolution, what can we learn from them for our human coexistence, practices and design? How can we mimic nature's patterns, and how can this understanding inform the practices of the Reallabor Wald project?
The ecological principles they explored were:
Nested Systems
Networks
Dynamic Balance and Feedback Loops
Cycles
Development