The path and tools described above have opened new reflections and allowed to identify the key questions from which to develop the provotype.
Resuming a reflection by Chapman on the current condition, to escape the cage of our anthropocentrism could be one of the greatest challenges and, as Crabu states during the Ph.D. Summer School 2021 organized by the Polimi Ph.D. program in Design, design could be “a potential way to shape a more-than-human alter-biopolitics, able to consider the entangled network between technoscience and interspecies relationship, so to challenge the current capitalist regime in which design, as a way of knowing/intervening in our common world, is currently embedded” [55]. We, as humans, need a change of direction, shifting away from the human-centric view and imagining new ways of living and relating to the environment in which we live. But how to provoke people, and especially designers—through the design of a provotype—to change their point of view? How to encourage them to shift their perspective, to force themselves to start again from thinking that is no longer anthropocentric but more-than-human-centric? How to feed the debate about how to leave behind the idea of design practice that we have inherited from the industrial revolution and the logic of consumerism? These were the main research questions from which the imaginative and experimental work was articulated.
The aim was therefore to design a tool that could stimulate the imagination of a post-human world [6], in which the hierarchies between humans and non-humans are canceled, in favor of new ways of relating based on mutual listening and multi-species collaboration, trying to answer the research questions mentioned above. This led to the provotype project, which on the one hand allowed the researchers themselves to open new areas of reflection, and on the other to experiment in the field of fiction design by finalizing a tool that can be used to share and expand reflections on futures without hierarchies, not human-centered, sustainable progress and hope, participative futures.
The provotype is based on a fictional event, “the first Multispecies Symposium,” which takes place in 2100. In terms of method, the experimentation consists of several stages: the creation of a fictional scenario, to help imagine a socio-political context of origin; the definition of a timeline: a succession of events starting from the present and evolving up to 2100, useful to contextualize the fictional event; the fictional event itself: the provotype.
Fictional scenario and timeline. Towards the inter-species justice, from the rights revolution of nature to a new era of cooperation
The first step in designing the provotype was the creation of a fictional scenario to help researchers imagine future worlds and solutions. The exercise was to build on current events and themes to develop a timeline culminating in 2100 with the beginning of a new era of inter- species cooperation formally marked by the 1st Multispecies Symposium, the actual provotype.
It is useful to mention the timeline because it lays the groundwork for the event that constitutes the provotype, by providing the opportunity to develop in-depth reflections.
The starting point, 2021, concerns the current situation: environmental and social crisis, desertification, migration, decolonization, pandemic, endangered species, etc. Within this framework, the main focus of interest was directed to the controversial topic of biopolitics, nowadays exploited to exercise human control and the need for “alter-biopolitics” in a more- than-human perspective.
Against this catastrophic framework, some states have already started to recognize the rights of nature [12, 56, 57] or enact environmental protection laws. Starting from the current scenario, we have therefore assumed a positive development based on inter-species justice.
The first temporal “phase” of the fictional scenario consists of two opposite “sides” who try, for different reasons and in different ways, to let their ideology become fundamental. Another pandemic leads the majority of people to understand our role as humans in different crises. This radical shift has been called the “Rights Revolution of Nature,” and it brings different legal, political, and social transformations, and it results in a balanced collaboration between humans and more-than-humans. In a more long-term phase. More-than-human co-design becomes a tool for collective cooperation, and technology is used to create fluid communication between different beings and entities. In this scenario some fictional key events represent the milestones that bring to a new era:
2030 (short-term)
First dialogue between a man and his dog through technology and design.
#cooperation between human and non-human
2045 (mid-term)
The rights of nature tribunal is now a strong and widely recognized institution.
#rights of nature
2060 (mid-term)
The first plant constitution is signed.
#plant constitution
2080 (long-term)
A more-than-human Artificial Intelligence (AI) redesigns and implements the legal basis for more-than-human and human relationships.
#inter-species justice
2100 (long-term)
Fictional event: the 1st Multispecies Symposium opens a new era of inter-species cooperation. Humans represent a very small part of the new society. AI support inter-species communication.
#inter-species cooperation.
Fictional event: the provotype. The 1st Multispecies Symposium
Starting from the narrative flow constituted by the milestones of the timeline, the provotype is based on the mechanisms of identification of the researchers in non-human beings, in a sort of roleplay.
The 1st Multispecies Symposium formally marks the beginning of a new era of inter-species cooperation, an era in which technology becomes the medium that enables and facilitates communication between the species involved.
The symposium, therefore, relies on a digital platform. The interface is similar to those commonly used for remote meetings, but the participants are representatives of different species: bees, corals, trees, bacteria, and fungi. The species selected for the provotype (Fig. 2) are significant in terms of their heterogeneous characteristics and allow to open parallel reflections on multiple levels, touching on themes such as hierarchies and the place of humanity in the ecosystem; inter-species cooperation for the collective good; the relativity and partiality of the human-centric vision; and the role that design and AI could play in facilitating communication between species that use different languages and have different conceptions of space and time.
The storytelling is organized as follows: the conference is introduced by the AI itself, which does not only act as technical support but becomes a real interpreter, the mediating tool allowing inter-species communication. The event and the debate are structured as a dialogue between beings:
AI speaking: “Today is a historical day, the first day of the 1st Multispecies Symposium, which hosts representatives from more than 150 k species across the whole natural realm.”.
Bees delegate: “zzzZZzzZZzzzZzzZzzzzzzz…”.
Bees translation (by AI): “We’ve always lived on the planet in harmony with other beings, and our needs are simple: trees, pollen, water, and some spaces. We want to directly address the human representatives, asking them what took so long to understand that we, like all the other beings, are part of a higher system and so strongly necessary for balance”.
Plants delegate: *Roots tremble*.
Plants translation (by AI): “Our roots vibrate together with the soil and the water. Our branches are home for the animals. Our leaves dance with the wind. We watch the sun that flows inside us”.
Bacteria delegate: *Chemical signals*.
Bacteria translation: “We live inside and outside everybody. We are everywhere and we exist since the beginning of everything. You should listen to us, we can narrate the tales of the Planet, we bring inside us the memory of the eras”.
Mushrooms delegate: *Vibrations*.
Mushrooms translation: “We can dissolve the wastes and create the water, the minerals, and other substances that feed the plants. We are fundamental for the beginning of new biological cycles, and we can also be the end of them. We can live in symbiosis with other beings because we have understood long ago the necessity to collaborate”.
Corals delegate: *…*.
AI: “It seems that we are experiencing some technical issues. The system advised me that we are not able to translate what the coral’s representative is saying. Sorry for this impolite inconvenience”.
The experience ends with all the speakers communicating together according to their own languages.
The event was performed by the researchers during the closing of the Summer School, which was held remotely. The remote context made it possible to really simulate the symposium through an audio-visual presentation. The performance opened new reflections and provided ideas for future developments.