seminars - week 3-4

week reflections

These two weeks of Bio Zero and Agri Zero gave us (and reminded us lost highschool knowledge) basic understanding of the functionning of cells, proteins, amino acids, DNA, genes... and the possible modifications on them.

We spent also almost half of the time experimenting: preparing mediums for samples analyzis, conducting a PCR, creating bioplastics, analyzing soil, making essential oils... Nuria and Jonathan shared with us a lot of resources easily accessible to everyone who wants to run an experimentation without needing to access expensive lab material. It was really encouraging to start experimenting at home.

This seminar raised for me some questions about our possible role as designers in relation to these topics. What could be our intervention? How to imagine collaboration?

refarm the farm

topics that particularly raised my attention

Access to scientific papers. Sci-hub is a great tool to give free access to all scientific papers. It is very useful once you know the exact name of the paper you are searching. However I am still wondering how to ease the way to find a paper without necessarily use Google Scholar. If reading scientific papers should be a frequent practice for everyone, what tools could make it enter in our habits?

Ethical issues related to gene editing. Who should decide what we accept as a society? How to bring these conversations to more people, to the scientific community and not restrict important choices to a few? Could design contribute to make these choices more collaborative?

Concept of "shifting baselines". What we understand as 'normal' in our natural environment is based on what only 1 or 2 generations above considered as normal. How to keep memory of the ecological changes? How to avoid the loss of information from generation to generation?

Farmers.Jonathan started that class asking everyone who was a farmer. Only two or three people answered. How could there be more?

Agro-industrial complex. How to change it? How to rethink these systems?

Praxis. Data is not information. Information is not wisdom. Wisdom is not practice. How to encourage learning by doing? How to be constant gardeners?

Open Source Beehives Project. The project was very inspiring not only for the purpose but also in terms of model. The idea of making the project open source and creating a network of beekeepers in the world. How to ease the merging of communities (here makers and beekeepers)? Which projects could be scaled by an open source approach?

New tools. Projects such as ROMI give open tools to farming communities. Can computational agro-ecology be a way to engage youger generations?

Agrology tenets. Promote biodiversity - Encourage local seeds - Promote product variety - Provide ecosystem services - Improve connections - Knowledge infrastructure How to take them into account when designing?

Farmer's almanach.observing, seed selection, propagation, pollination, pruning & grafting, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, transportation, weeding, irrigation, sowing, propagation, powing / tilling, elaboration, packaging = Possible areas of intervention?

Refarming the farm. How can we reinvent the way we do agriculture? How to change what happens in farms? Why don't we see farms in the city? How to reduce the romance of what a farm is? How to begin a transition towards restorative agriculture? Different type of sustainable agriculture with polycultures are experimented. But how to scale them up? Can food forests be experimented on a larger scale? What tools & systems can be designed?

Farms & cities. We cannot change agriculture without changing society. How to rethink how we consume food in cities?

bio & agri zero

19th to 29th of October 2021

faculty: Nuria Conde, Jonathan Minchin

week reflections

topics that particularly raised my attention

seminar assignments

what I want to read/ explore