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A term coined by Lynne Kelley. Ways of encoding environmental, ethological and cultural knowledge directly into the environment (or objects)

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 an exercise for others so they can experience 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
  • take 4 characteristics or qualities from your animal and give them to a class mate. He/she designs a character based on the qualities and gives you back the 'monster'.
  • take a 1 hour hike with your monster.
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?
  • Group: Choose one of your animals. Make a list of the qualities of your animal. 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.
  • memory_code.1607537240.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 2020-12-09 18:07
  • by theunkarelse