Contributors2019
SPECULATIVE DESIGN
‘ This project is for my simple, ignorant 20 year old self ‘
‘ This is my moment of awakening ‘
Speculative everything is now a widely accepted but relatively new design method. It's called speculative and critical design.Designers use this design method to develop the infinite imagination of the future.As a future-leaning design practice, it has a wide range of applications in many fields including media arts, as well as in a variety of design disciplines including product design, human-computer interaction, and biological design(Laine Nooney & Tega Brain 2019).Speculative pasts approach is intended to question dominant paradigms of design, paradigms Rosner(2018) identifies as individualism, objectivism, universalism, and solutionism(Laine Nooney & Tega Brain 2019).In this essay,my paradigm is about individualism.My speculative design - Pest Protection project named ‘CONTRIBUTORS’ .It is a 3D printed model construction. There are different layers in the model, and this model is a small house for termites.When this model is placed in the soil, the termites in the model release the water the plant needs.I don't think humans can make judgements about the attributes of animals, let alone determine the life of any animal in the natural ecology, even the so-called pests.What I want to argue is that, leaving aside the law of the jungle, all things are equal in the ecological environment.
I have named my pest conservation project 'Contributor'. This means that I believe that humans may not be able to define animals as good or bad in a completely objective way. In this project I'm going to narrow it down to termites, which are known as pests.Termites are temperature-loving insects, which are distributed north and south of the equator. The lower the latitude is, the more species there are.Termites are polymorphic, social insects. All individuals live in groups, and large groups can contain more than 1 million individuals. Population members are polymorphic, divided into several types, usually consisting of worker ants, soldier ants, and breeding ants.Termites are so called pests because they cause billions of dollars in damage to American homes each year, sometimes eating pennies. Most importantly, termites was responsible for 2% of global carbon emissions, because of their large number, they breed is fast and simple, and they like to munch on carbon-rich substances.When termites appear in cities or homes, people tend to be uncomfortable with their ugly or unusual appearance, and entire industries are preparing to eliminate termites.However,Experts have found that one of nature's best cellulose enzyme is found in termites body.Termite body can effective digest cellulose enzyme gene, if using transgenic technology to the gene cloning on microorganisms, then use the production of large numbers of microbial cellulose enzyme, using cellulose enzyme to digest cellulose, can be abundant in the nature of cellulose into simple sugars, then fermented and ethanol production.So its energy application prospects are very broad.Moreover,Scientists found that where termites were concentrated, the soil remained moist, more saplings germinated and the ecosystem continued to function well despite a long period of severe drought.Whether termites are pests or not, at different places, at different times and under different conditions is obviously controversial.
Humans can't be completely objective in determining how good or bad an animal is, but they can decide at will that some species will die. So this is the central idea of the "Contributor" project - to turn killing into use, based on the human dimension, and in fact a form of conservation.where is actually a form of protection.I introduced ‘CONTRIBUTORS’ at the beginning that this project is a 3D printed model.This is based on the ecological model of termites in their natural environment,because termites rule the soil kingdom of the forest, munching leaves under trees, digging tunnels and loosening the soil, and are the "engineers" of the entire ecosystem.The evolutionary hierarchy of different termites determines which layer of the model they live in. So the point of this model is to distract termites from eating the furniture and focus on the ‘CONTRIBUTORS’ in the soil, thereby liberating the primitive nature.This is a before and after comparison of using contributors.The project also continues to push the imagination into reality. I've managed to transfer termites instead of using pesticides, so that pests and humans can live in harmony. I always believe that human beings and animals should coexist peacefully, even some of those that are harmful to us. What would happen if there was a constant practice of killing and destroying? For example,Scientists discovered that they could control disease vectors or kill pests with gene drive technology, which developed into a gene change box. Although this technology appears to have humanized elimination,its negative impact is more serious.First of all,accidental laboratory release, cross-breeding, or gene flow can potentially allow a drive to move beyond its target population(s). Secondly,it is possible that a foreign DNA sequence inserts itself within the gene drive cassette mid-drive, thus allowing unwanted traits to “ride along” on the spreading drive. If this inserted DNA sequence brings up, unluckily, a benefit to its carriers and a detriment to humans, it will spread, for good and bad.In the end, even when the new traits' direct impact on a target population might be understood, the drive may have side effects on the surroundings, and these are difficult to estimate and quantify(Courtier-Orgogozo,Virginie,Baptiste Morizot,Christophe Boete 2017).If blindly eliminate the immediate harm to us, its impact is unpredictable.There are also disadvantages of this project.People may find the appearance of termites disgusting and not want to use them in their gardens,and how to transfer termite transport to ‘CONTRIBUTORS’ is also a challenge, which I will think about in the future to overcome them.However, it is certain that the contributor is a method of relatively low risk, danger and harm.