Seeding digitally induced disruptions as affect mediations – One approach to the climate and ecological emergency

Emotional disconnect of feeling affected as site/space for designerly intervention(s)

The climate and ecological emergency (CEE) needs our full attention to meet the future we are facing. Nevertheless, through politics not acting according to it and media depicting a reality of it being far in space and time, it can be perceived as “It is somewhere else” and “It does not happen now, – it is not urgent” to the unaffected human being. As the urgency and emergency of the CEE is distortedly depicted, the unconscious, yet unaffected human does not have bodily experiences with it themselves – just through the digital, problematic translation of it through media (technologies).

The notion of distances of the CEE can result into the largest disconnect at all – the disconnect from emotionally feeling affected by the CEE. But how can we make humans emotionally affected, to activate and mobilize them, before the CEE will mediate the urgency and emergency through catastrophes occurring more frequently and coming close to the body in space and time? How can we mediate affect before the CEE will do it anyway? The emotional disconnect of feeling affected is the site/ space of designerly intervention(s) within the frame of the thesis.

Disrupting the coded infrastructure(s)

While the consequences of the inaction regarding the CEE will come close to human more and more in space and time, climate activism is trying to practice close-making of the issue and notion of feeling affected. Nevertheless, climate activism is often executed in the physical space by disrupting the publics, but digitally translated and spread through media. Humans being affected by the action itself are way less than by consuming the digital translation of the action. The majority of humans do not get affected by the practice of close-making through the action, but the distorted media depiction and media technologies.

“Although media and media technologies have operated and continue to operate epistemologically as modes of knowledge production, they also function technically, bodily, and materially to generate and modulate individual and collective affective moods or structures of feeling among assemblages of humans and nonhumans.”[1]

Through alternative ways of knowing that are not only “knowledge” through scientific reports, but are human knowledge being situated within a specific context[2], the CEE could possibly be mediated through making emotionally affected. By knowing through feeling affected, I argue that bodily experiences with the CEE have to be created.

The pace of technological changes and achievements has its origin in the progress of computer chip capacities.[3] Since then they became systemically part of our life. Most of the human needs are connected to technologies – we buy food with digital money, we contact people via smartphones or laptops, we travel by using transportation structures, we cook with electricity, and we work more and more together with and through technologies. We are dependent on technologies on different levels. We enter the technological world personally through devices and interfaces on a product level, that are run by larger power structures and connect ourselves to systems to cover most of our natural human needs alone. The human body-mind-life became highly entangled with technological products and structures which made the human an embodied and disembodied creature. 

How can intervening and disrupting the coded infrastructure(s) – which serves as a body-mind-life extension – and seeding affect mediations through that, make humans experience the CEE being close in time and space and therefore make them feel affected?

By mapping out and exploring the coded infrastructure(s) that surround me, I was aiming to identify niches, interaction possibilities and entry points for digitally induced disruptions as affect mediations and a practice of close-making in the physical as well as virtual infrastructure of mine. By zooming out of my physical coded infrastructure, I documented technologies I could sense within my environment. I started with findings close by around my home. I arranged them in a radius around myself and evaluated them regarding the emotional attachment I have with them. I way paying attention to technologies I could identify by seeing them as well as paying attention to the invisible – structures behind, sounds and signs of them. I continued to map out the environment by expanding the circle and documenting my path to university and around my regular paths.

By zooming into my virtual technological environment, I was exploring interfaces and structures behind the technological devices I am frequently using. I documented and clustered interaction possibilities within my smartphone and laptop – applications and platforms I am visiting.

Digitally induced disruptions as bodily experiences and therefore affect-mediations

By proposing digitally induced disruptions as bodily experiences and therefore affect-mediations, I am aiming to practice close-making of the CEE and make it feel-able to the unaffected human.

As the thesis project is done in collaboration with Björn Paxling, PhD Licensed psychologist and full-time activist at Extinction Rebellion (XR) Skåne, not only the Design project will be made accessible to the activists, they will also choose who to make emotionally affected by seeding digitally induced disruptions in their environment specifically within a local context. A workshop series was set up to explore, test and ideate together on digitally induced disruptions to make the proposal accessible to activists. The ideation workshop was tested with fellow Design students at first.

The Design Project: A platform

As XR is a decentralized movement and multiple local groups are formed, a platform should incorporate the workshop as an ideation tool, which local groups could access and execute themselves. This should empower local groups to implement the proposed digitally induces disruptions as bodily experiences and therefore affect-mediation(s). By facilitating the workshop(s), the thread of input and tasks was tested by asking to explore the technological environment physically and virtually to push local demands. Digitally induced disruptions were ideated and an action plan was implemented. The workshop as an ideation tool is the core to the platform, but is supported by the possibilities to archive ideas, globally support each other through skill-sharing and pushing local demands digitally. The pool of ideas generated presents entry points for the activists to intervene and disrupt as well for Design Research exploring the question of: “How can digitally induced disruptions as bodily experiences mediate affect?”. The platform was conceptualized.

Affect-mediation prototype in the virtual and physical space

During one of the workshops, two ideas emerged from participants, which were executed as prototypes by me. One prototype was aiming to seed a digitally induced disruption in the virtual space by setting up “Eco-profile” within the dating application Tinder. The images shown in the profile were highlighting the local entanglement with the CEE here and now within Växjö by addressing the reader directly. A possibility to respond was given. Unfortunately, but also as an outcome of an experiment, the account got deleted quickly.

Another prototype aimed to seed a digitally induced disruption as an affect-mediation. By exchanging QR codes on a e-scooters in the public and physical space, it was aimed to make people accidentally scan it and access a pdf file. By doing so, an entry point to someone’s smartphone was tested and executed to seed a bodily and affecting experience by encountering the digitally induced disruption.

Conclusion

By proposing digitally induced disruptions as bodily experiences and therefore affect-mediations, ethical frictions must be taken into account. Disrupting individuals or groups experiences and making them affected through that is definitely also subject to ethical frictions. One would say that individuals should not be the target and that pressure on politics and economics would help achieve environmental sustainability. Although it is agreed on the fact that not all disruptions should target individuals, but groups and individuals in an economic or political context, pressure on citizens can bring about a mass social movement which provides collective power and therefore can be successful to create change.

”In other words, to stay with disagreements and uncertainities is the very breeding-gound for collective and extended engagement across humans and nonhuman living in the interconnected here and there.”[4]

As feminist technoscience treats science, politics and technology as closely entangled[5], I argue, that not only through pushing local demands, but also intervening in technology, politics might be impacted.

Notes

[1] Richard Grusin, “Radical Mediation,” Critical Inquiry 42, no. 1 (September 2015): 125, https://doi.org/10.1086/682998.

[2] John Wood, Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene (Taylor & Francis, 2022), 123.

[3] Ann Thorpe, The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability (Island Press, 2007), 154.

[4] Lindström, K., & Ståhl, Å. Patchworking publics-in-the-making : design, media and public engagement (PhD dissertation, Malmö University). Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-740 (2014), 148.

[5] Ibid, 143.