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Life in a multispecies world depends on temporal coordination, or as anthropologist Anna Tsing reminds us, “each living thing remakes the world through seasonal pulses” (Tsing, 2015). Changing climatic and environmental conditions are reshaping these pulses, as plants, animals, insects, and fungi adjust their behaviours in response to shifting cues that often remain unnoticed.

This short hands-on workshop takes phenology as a way of paying attention to these timings. It invites participants to attune to more-than-human temporalities in order to support more responsive and caring forms of cohabitation. Participants will be introduced to phenological ways of creating knowledge and will be able to develop observation protocols for non-human subjects outdoors. These will be shared, tested by others, and assembled into a shared repository of methods, alongside a reference observation from the day. By creating and exchanging observation methods, the workshop supports participants in bringing more-than-human temporal perspectives into their own work.

In this workshop we will consider phenology as a practice that can support (designers and non-designers) to attune to the timings of other beings, and envision more specific methods for the attunement inspired by phenological ways of knowing and making sense of the world. Scientific protocols for phenology have their own agendas of what data should be collected and how. In this workshop we will consider, what is our agenda for more-than-human design? What would be valuable for us to know from design perspectives? 

It might be
How is the tree benefitting others throughout the seasons? 
What are this plant’s sensory qualities across the seasons? 
What does this insect need at different times of the year? 
How is the bird using different urban environments at different times of the year? 
How long does the budburst stage last? 

As a group we  will assemble our more-than-human collective interests and hopefully lots of interesting ways of observing MtH timings that we could test out in our work in the future. 

Program 
Introductions
Phenology + more-than-human (MtH) timings 
Questions of interest about MtH timings 
Going out to find the subject, observe and define a protocol 
Sharing a method with someone else 
Observation with someone else’s protocol 
Assembling the collective documentation and discussion

Purpose
Participants introduced to aspects of phenology that can be applied as strategies in bringing more-than-human perspectives into the design/working process Participants will have time to consider what is valuable or useful to know about MtH (temporalities) they are cohabitating with for their own work or interests.

Participants will envision, share and learn a number of observation methods for tracking a phenomena through the year.

Facilitator
Keili Koppel is a design researcher with a master’s degree in Design Innovation and Environmental Design from the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh exploring phenology through design and environmental humanities approaches, and is visiting the department of Design at Aalto University during January.