2019 MFA THESIS
FUTURE COEXISTENCE
INTERRELATED SYMPHONIC
RELATIONSHIP WITH ANIMALS
REIMAGINE
THE
RELATIONSHIP
We share our environment with other creatures, and we are coexisting with other living beings on this planet. Our current relationship was formed during thousands of years, and caused the situation worldwide now. As we all know, in this modern world coexistence, humans are in the position of dominating other animals. We make use of them as food, materials, labor, and experimental subjects. At the same time, however, we admire their unique abilities that we don’t have. We learn from non-human animals and develop biomimetic technologies inspired by them. At our best, we care for them, and act as though we are connected to them.

When we mention animals in general, we separate ourselves from this notion. In this work on earth biotics, I want to discuss all forms of life, insects, fungus, and even vegetal life, since we are all connected. There is a scientific fact about human’s body that “microbial cells outnumber human cells in your body by a ratio of around 10:1.”1 Are we too arrogant to cut ourselves apart from other lifeforms since almost 90% of our body is made up of genomes of bacteria, fungi, protists?
We are animals absolutely, but our behavior says that we think we are superior to the notion of being an animal. We take it for granted that we are the most intelligent beings on Planet Earth, yet we seem to be the whole cause of destroying our planet. Since we are all connected, we used design to draw a line between our biology and humanity, but maybe the line is blurry.

Should we rethink our relationship with other lifeforms instead of assuming that they should be our tools? We call for environmental protection for our own existence, but a healthy environment is based on the well-being of every species in the ecological chain. Everything is dependent on that interrelated symphonic relationship. How can humans and animals live together? How can our future be like if we reimagine and redesign our relationship? Can we rewrite our score and explore alternative possibilities in the symphony to take amore integrated part? What’s the point of imaging the future coexistence with animals?What are the options for remodeling it?
Read the Thesis Book →
Lemon Talks
Vegetal life speaks
“Lemon Talks” is a magazine page I designed for imaging interviews with three lemons. These three lemons are in different phases of life. One of them was just bought by a human from the supermarket, while the second one was just cut into half. The third one was squeezed for lemonade and is facing the end of its life. I was trying to connect plant life spans and human emotions by thinking about the ontological and ethical concerns of vegetable’s soul.

Starting the thesis project, my first attempt is to think beyond the animals. The concept of mutual understanding is the attempt to put ourselves in other’s shoes. We rarely think about vegetal life. If we see a lemon on a table, it’s rare for us to think about the common points of us. You will probably not ask yourself what they are “thinking” right now. If you really sit beside a lemon and spend some time with it, it can be a start of communication with them to think of what life is like as a lemon. Can you imagine that they communicate with each other and live a life totally different from us?

This is a project extending the boundaries of empathy from humans to animals to plants. I would like to invite the audience to think about life forms other than those with flesh and blood. Their silent behavior makes them seem unalive to us, but beyond our dimension, they do have their stories to tell.
Fungus Station
We are tools in urban environments
Our life depends on urban facilities. Do you feel the power of nature when you go to a Shell gas station?Have you ever thought of humans building urban facilities by imitating the primitive way of how nature grows.Fungi have mycelium growing underground to connect the whole community and all the other plants. Their grills spread spores into the air for reproduction. The gas station has a system of tubes underground for transferring gas, and using them carbons are emitted into the atmosphere, not unlike the spores of the mushrooms.

These juxtapositions help us think more flexibly about what really makes life-being, helps us think in a different dimension. If I imagine the gas station system as similar to an organic existence, we have to ask, what is our standpoint inside of it? We become tools for operating the system to run, even though we think we are manipulating and dominating the system.

This model is to show the juxtaposition by telling the story with architecture model building. I connect the fungus system and gas station by these three layers, air, ground and underground. I intersect the form of organic and industrial systems to create the mushroom station.

It’s an abstract representation that reminds us that we are a part of a whole system. Humans build cities apart from nature, but it seems like no matter how much we want to separate ourselves from nature, the artificial things we build reflect that we still cannot resist imitating nature. It’s a gravitational pull that betrays our role.
Blood Tribute
Symbiosis of humans and mosquitoes
Is there a necessity to develop a better coexisting way with creatures in parasitic relationships like mosquitoes? This project imagines a scenario where we give back to animals by offering something from our bodies.

In this future I am depicting, we will have to find a new way to coexist with mosquitoes because we are facing a sharp decline in the overall amount of the insects globally, and we may reach the danger of losing the species due to the radical ecological change. In this model we see the interconnectedness and fear ecological disturbance, even though we don’t like mosquitoes. Isn’t it reasonable for us to give a little blood to form long lasting coexistence, to keep the symphony going?

I designed a blood-feeding suit called Blood tribute.I designed the artifacts based on how mosquitoes detect human blood. For mosquitos, They search forCO22 exhaled by humans, recognize the visual signs of the human body when they get closer, and look for the blood vessels when they get really near to humans by thermal signs.

The power of this fiction comes from the discomfort we feel when we think about it. It’s controversial, and brings the sense of humor when discussing related issues. Who would like to help some annoying existence we cannot help killing to survive? “No one is going to do that!”This discomfort as dissonance is one of the tools of a discursive designer. The point is to create scenarios “for the audience to fully understand the discourse along the road to reflection”.4 The fiction’s ridiculousness is the clue for the audience to think in a different way. The conflict is what I want to bring to the discussion.
Human Leash
Being a domestic dog
We take control of dogs by leash when we walk them outdoors and train them to learn tricks by tools designed in different functions, but what if we tried to get along with other human-being in this way?What if we try to be a domestic animal ourselves and see how it would feel to be controlled by other people. What if we got along with other human beings in this way rather than by using language? By experiencing a leash for humans, I want to rethink about a new way of more equal coexistence with domestic dogs.

When I see people taking their dogs out using leashes, I always find some confusing awkwardness.I want to extract that point of awkwardness from the scenes. Can you feel the irrationality in this interaction when we imply it in human-to-human relationship? For this project, I designed a series of wearable devices paired with different leashes for people to experience controlling and being controlled called Human Leash. They can be worn on shoulders, back, hip and on wrist, and are made of a variety of materials. Each of them can provide different levels of control. The leashes are made inelastic rope, stretchy rope and hard sticks and can affect the range of freedom and the functions of controlling.
Symbiosis Life Support
Survive the future with fish
Fish are our ancestors in the ocean, but we have a very limited understanding of fish. Our ambiguity about the animal nature of fish is revealed by the common practice of people considering themselves to be vegetarian, but still eating fish. Are fish vegetables? Of course they are not. We use the expression “cold fish” to describe someone whois dispassionate, because we think fish do not have feelings. We don’t think of them as sentient animals, and we take it for granted that they cannot feel pain.However, studies show that a monogamous fish species called convict cichlid becomes glum and pessimistic when they lose their mate. Why would a fish feel less than a cat? Why do we need something to have fur for us to imagine it has consciousness?In this project, I speculate the future of an interdependent relationship with fish.
Fish are our ancestors in the ocean, but we have a very limited understanding of fish. Our ambiguity about the animal nature of fish is revealed by the common practice of people considering themselves to be vegetarian, but still eating fish. Are fish vegetables? Of course they are not. We use the expression “cold fish” to describe someone whois dispassionate, because we think fish do not have feelings. We don’t think of them as sentient animals, and we take it for granted that they cannot feel pain.However, studies show that a monogamous fish species called convict cichlid becomes glum and pessimistic when they lose their mate. Why would a fish feel less than a cat? Why do we need something to have fur for us to imagine it has consciousness?In this project, I speculate the future of an interdependent relationship with fish.
Fish are our ancestors in the ocean, but we have a very limited understanding of fish. Our ambiguity about the animal nature of fish is revealed by the common practice of people considering themselves to be vegetarian, but still eating fish. Are fish vegetables? Of course they are not. We use the expression “cold fish” to describe someone whois dispassionate, because we think fish do not have feelings. We don’t think of them as sentient animals, and we take it for granted that they cannot feel pain.However, studies show that a monogamous fish species called convict cichlid becomes glum and pessimistic when they lose their mate. Why would a fish feel less than a cat? Why do we need something to have fur for us to imagine it has consciousness?In this project, I speculate the future of an interdependent relationship with fish.
WHAT'S NEXT
In my Thesis, I used fictional scenarios as a tool to invite reflection and to initiate questions about our relationship with other life forms. These scenarios focus on connecting and understanding other life forms while problematizing human behaviors by combining things we are all familiar with. By creating discursive artifacts representing these fictions, I suggest the possibilities of change. I present a speculative future where there will be other possibilities of interrelationship or interdependency.Design as a tool can empower us to question, rethink and redefine norms and behaviors. The outcomes of this kind of hypothetical scenario highly depend on the willingness of the audience to enter a state of reflection. The response of viewers may go beyond the intended discourse, broadening the possibilities of the exploration. In the future,I would continue to form the interrelated symphonic relationship in the future context. There is no foretelling the score as we expand the instruments of the planetary symphony.
DESIGNED BY YUAN JIANG 2020