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Memory Code
A term coined by Lynne Kelley. Ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects)
Hiking with Monsters
Notes an a student program run by Theun.
Session1 Fieldwork
- Intro fieldwork practice
- Assignment: what place would you like to explore, how would you do it?
- Assignment 4th year: How do you share that exploration with others?
Session2 What lives here now.
- Intro Nederlands landscape.
- Set up whatsapp (or otherwise)
- Field assignment: find a creature that interests you,
how would you design a way to communicatie with it? - Or what qualities does it have? How do you think it finds its way in the world? Are there talents you share?
Name it based on those qualities.
Session3 Regeneration
- Regenerative practices
What would your area need? How can habitat be reinvigorated, restored?- guest: Vasanth Bosco
- review assignment last week
- Field assignment: Take a 1 hour hike from the perspective of your animal. Try to experience the world through it’s eyes, ears, of antennae. Slow as snail, fast as a bird. Report your experience, what do you notice about the area through the animal perspective?
- Design a way for others to hike with the perspective of your animal. How can someone experience the world from that perspective?
Assignment 4th year: How can local people become active participants in that reconnection?- Research assignment: What lived in your area before? What traces are left, if any? What do you think is missing now? What qualities does your environment lack? Choose one quality and propose a way it can be regenerated.
Session4 Rewilding
What would your area need? Which organisms can regenerate it?- Make groups: if you look at your animals, where are opportunities for coexistence? How could this animal live there? What would be needed? Rewilding.
- In groups: what do each of your animals need? Where do their interests match or clash? How could such different needs be brought together? (Multispecies design) (Afterwards give example of Aboriginal totems).
- What timescale do you design for?
- Field assignment: what natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. (Any size, tiny ant tunnel)
- Choose an environmental process in your neighbourhood. Translate its properties into a being.
Session5 Team work
Based on previous lesson, work in groups on one organism. Who are the experts?assignment: Design a research team: what kinds of expertise are needed? (What is in it for them?)assignment 4th year: Design a research week. Location. Team. Question.(Don’t design the team sitting in your classroom. Do it on location!)- What does your area need? What natural cycles are missing, disrupted? How to reconnect. What qualities are lacking in your area? Make a list of these qualities. Give them to an other group and they will design a creature (character design, mythological being) based on those. At the end of the class we see if those Monsters fit their purpose.
- field assignment: hike with your Monster through your area: what do you notice from the monsters perspective?
Assignment 4th year: How can the monster / creature activate local people? Or more formally: how can locals people become active participants in reconnecting environmental processes?
Session6 Animals as guides
What qualities do animals need to thrive? (Elephants memory, bioindicators, animals/plants as messengers)Ecologist can see this area needs… wolves. (Trophic cascades)Assignment: (I give 5 animals and plants) in groups: what are the qualities of those animals?Assignment after class: translate those qualities into a human being a character.(In what ways does that help to think about the role of animals, in what ways does it hinder?)
Session7
- Qualities of animals and plants in the long now.
- Australia and aboriginals. Tending the wild.
- Assignment: memory walk
Session8
- Memory walk field test together.
- Assignment: design a multi generational knowledge system. How can our understanding and experience of the environment be shared across time?
- (Floppy disc vs. songline)
Session10
- Discuss the multigenerational knowledge systems.