POD: Participatory Ocean Sensitive Design



POD is a collaborative,
socio-environmental game that generates responses to plausible climate change scenarios through systems-oriented thinking and making.





︎︎︎ VIRTUAL EXHIBITION 







About
Contact
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Information Experience Design Programme
the Royal College of Art
 
POD
Participatory Ocean Sensitive Design

POD is a collaborative, socio-environmental game that generates responses to plausible climate change scenarios through systems-oriented thinking and making.
 


> VIRTUAL EXHIBITION


About
Contact
Instagram


Information Experience Design Programme
the Royal College of Art



POD


The year is 2027.

Human societies, largely undeterred by the warnings of environmental scientists, have continued to emit pollutants at damaging rates. The average annual temperature on Earth has risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius. Ocean acidification and deoxygenation have rapidly intensified….

What would you do if you arrived into this scenario?

Or rather, what would you do if you arrived in this scenario … as a sandworm?



A New Normal


The works in this project were developed over six short weeks, by artists and designers on the MA Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, in response to a fictional climatic catastrophe.

The features of the catastrophe the artists and designers were given corresponded to the plausible worst-case outcomes for the ocean,as posited by most recent comprehensive climate report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The catastrophe was realistic.

The design challenge, however, was speculative: Respond to this catastrophe from a non-human point of view.

POD Game Card #1: Ruins 





World building


To encourage collaboration and collective problem-solving, the catastrophe and its aftermath were presented as a game, simulating real-time ecosystem events.

The setting for this game was based in reality, modelled on our local environment of the Thames estuary. In responding to design challenges through the game, designers and artists were asked to consider and work with the actual constraints and real ecosystem dynamics of local habitats.


Habitats: Tidal city, Saltmarsh, Mudflat Shore, Deep Ocean


Identity Shift


Play with multiple perspectives is the central theme of the exhibition. The ways in which this plays out can be understood in many ways: as opposition, as collaboration, as transformation, as reveal. Each experimental design story includes the real impact of climate change on marine ecosystems, where interconnectedness is key.

Each designer was given a species identity to explore, developing understanding of the local environment in relation to that species’ needs and characteristics. To connect emotionally to their new identities, species groups developed proxies for species culture: origin myths.



Experiments in inhabiting non-human species 




Sand Warms




Opossum Shrimps




Otters




Avocet (bird)