Listening in the Wild
Spectra 2022: Rough Cut Preview, March 8, 2022
Sensing Environments: Learning Laboratories for Design Futures
Leah Barclay, Tricia King, David Harris (2022)
'Sensing Environments' is an audio-visual piece that explores a new paradigm in immersive design education from three leading interdisciplinary artists and designers based at the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) in Queensland. The COVID-19 global pandemic has resulted in major disruptions, challenges and rapid changes in the higher education sector globally which has provided an opportunity for more innovative learning models and exploratory environments for interdisciplinary practice. This has been a catalyst for experimental practice to foreground new ways of thinking about the world and our future.
Design education globally is shifting at rapid paces as interdisciplinary artists and designers continue to play an increasing important role in navigating the uncertain future. The world's leading design institutions have identified the need to pursue a model that is interdisciplinary, evolutionary, diverse, experimental, and iterative (Meyer and Norman, 2020). The reimagined design program at USC has developed a series of inquiry-based interdisciplinary courses and experiments responding to local ecosystems with a deep connection to Indigenous knowledge systems and environmental science. These programs allow emerging practitioners to make discoveries and connections and see design and research as a living entity that can plant the seeds of curiosity, critical thinking and creativity.
This audio-visual work traverses a diversity of local environments across the Sunshine Coast exploring this inquiry-based method of discovery from a non-human perspective. This includes satellite imagery from the perspective of a Black Cockatoo in flight to sensing soundscapes as migrating whales in the depths of the ocean to reveal the multiplicity of contemporary design education that is deeply connected to place and community.
As artists that recognise we rapidly need new ways of being that rupture our deeply unsustainable ways of thinking and acting, this work offers a series of provocations for design futures and climate actions. What does it mean to navigate the rainforest canopy from the perspective of a microbat? How can we learn from the temporal complexity of seasonal algae? How does our body change when we listen from the perspective of plants? We recognise our species is in deep conflict and offer an experimental expedition at the intersection of art and science that looks to answers and solutions in the natural environment with ideas from human and non-human perspectives.
Design education globally is shifting at rapid paces as interdisciplinary artists and designers continue to play an increasing important role in navigating the uncertain future. The world's leading design institutions have identified the need to pursue a model that is interdisciplinary, evolutionary, diverse, experimental, and iterative (Meyer and Norman, 2020). The reimagined design program at USC has developed a series of inquiry-based interdisciplinary courses and experiments responding to local ecosystems with a deep connection to Indigenous knowledge systems and environmental science. These programs allow emerging practitioners to make discoveries and connections and see design and research as a living entity that can plant the seeds of curiosity, critical thinking and creativity.
This audio-visual work traverses a diversity of local environments across the Sunshine Coast exploring this inquiry-based method of discovery from a non-human perspective. This includes satellite imagery from the perspective of a Black Cockatoo in flight to sensing soundscapes as migrating whales in the depths of the ocean to reveal the multiplicity of contemporary design education that is deeply connected to place and community.
As artists that recognise we rapidly need new ways of being that rupture our deeply unsustainable ways of thinking and acting, this work offers a series of provocations for design futures and climate actions. What does it mean to navigate the rainforest canopy from the perspective of a microbat? How can we learn from the temporal complexity of seasonal algae? How does our body change when we listen from the perspective of plants? We recognise our species is in deep conflict and offer an experimental expedition at the intersection of art and science that looks to answers and solutions in the natural environment with ideas from human and non-human perspectives.
This research is supported by the USC Maker Space and the Design Program in the
School of Business and Creative Industries at USC Sunshine Coast.
School of Business and Creative Industries at USC Sunshine Coast.
