S3E9: Re-Design with Michelle Westerlaken

Claudia speaks to Michelle Westerlaken about the concept of Re-Design and how design can be used to generate multispecies worlds and opportunities. They discuss Michelle’s background in design with and for animals, how she finds theory incredibly important for design processes, and the ways in which trying to create positive urban design might generate new multispecies opportunities. 

Date recorded: 26 April 2021

Michelle Westerlaken is a Research Associate on the Smart Forests project in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in Interaction Design from Malmö University in Sweden where she did her dissertation on “Imagining Multispecies Worlds” in which presented 10 protagonist species and stories in a Multispecies Bestiary to illustrate a repertoire of world-making practices. As a designer, Michelle works with participatory methods that examine possibilities for humans and other species to propose interaction modalities for multispecies ways of living on this planet. So far, these projects have involved design negotiations together with cats, dogs, ants, and penguins, and various interactive technologies. Central to her work are the ways in which theory and participatory research practices continuously inform and inspire each other. Connect with Michelle on Twitter (@colombinary) or via email and find out more about the smart forests project at www.smartforests.net

Featured: 

 It Matters What Designs Design Designs: Speculations on Multispecies Worlds (Video); Imagining Multispecies Worlds by Michelle Westerlaken; Designs for the Pluriverseby Arturo Escobar; When Species Meet by Donna Haraway;

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Transcript

Michelle Westerlaken: 0:00

This is another IRA podcast. What are those elements that we find already in the city that can inspire this multi-species thinking? So instead of thinking of what is kind of problematic, you know, in the city right now, let's try to see if there are small examples of of those spaces that already exist. And that is very much what I try to do. Welcome back to the Animal Turn. This is season three where we're focusing in on animals and the urban. And in today's episode, I'm going to be speaking to Michelle Westerlacken about the concept of redesign. But before I introduce Michelle, a couple of housekeeping matters. The Animal Turn is officially on Patreon and buy me a coffee. Yay! It's uh I've been kind of toying with the idea of whether or not to go on Patreon for a while because I do have wonderful sponsorship from Animals and Philosophy Politics, Law and Ethics Apple, you know who you know sponsors this podcast. But that money just about covers the costs for me to get onto the variety of platforms. And I'm hoping to slowly over time start to accrue a little bit more money so that I can dedicate more time to the podcast, slowly start generating more and more episodes as well as other value-added material like that found on the blogs or in reading lists or other kinds of lists made of other podcasts to listen to, et cetera, et cetera. At the end of the day, I'm really dedicated and committed to the Animal Tone Podcast. All of the content will remain open to use for everyone, whether you support the show via Patreon or buy me a coffee or not. I just thought I'd, you know, put it out there in the universe and open up these platforms for folks who might want to support the show in a financial way. But there are other ways you can support the show too, of course. If you head over to wherever you listen to the podcast and leave a review, that goes a super long way in terms of generating more listenership and getting the podcast out there. Um, my favorite, as you know, my favorite place to get reviews and read reviews is on Podchaser. I also really like to make lists and stuff there. So if you're interested, head over to Podchaser. Um, anyhow, I have no idea how long I've already been rambling on for, and you're probably itching to get into the show, and what a great show it is today. Even in editing and getting the show ready, I found myself jotting down ideas, uh, wanting to scribble those ideas and thinking of ways to be more creative. And so far in the season, we've focused a lot on relationships and challenges and some of the spaces in the urban. But what Michelle Westerlanken brings is she starts to challenge us to think about design and urban design and what this means for animals. And we talk in this whole episode about everything from creating architecture to games and other designs that kind of generate multi-species opportunities. Michelle Westerlanken is a research associate on the Smart Forests Project in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in interaction design from Malmor University in Sweden, where she did her dissertation on imagining multi-species world, in which she presents 10 protagonists' theses and stories in a multi-species bestiary. And actually, her thesis recently won an award for the best thesis in Faculty of Culture and Society at her university. As a designer, Michelle works with participatory methods that examine possibilities for humans and other species to propose interaction modalities for multi-species ways of living on this planet. So far, these projects have involved design negotiations together with cats, dogs, ants, and penguins. And central to her work are ways in which theory and participatory research practices continuously inform and inspire one another. She absolutely oozes thoughtfulness and creativity throughout the conversation. And I'm hoping that you'll leave the end of the episode feeling the same itchiness I did. Hi Michelle, welcome to the Animal Time Podcast. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I'm super, super excited to be talking to you today because this whole season's been focused on animals and the urban, as you know. But uh a really important part of the urban is what the urban looks like and what spaces look like, and you think about design, which is really cool. So could you uh just right now at the beginning of the interview tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about the work you do with design? Sure, yeah. So, I mean, starting from the beginning, I grew up uh in in the Netherlands, um in the countryside actually, together with many other animals. And you know, I always found have found animals to be like more interesting than than humans. So animals have always been part of my thinking and part of my my work as well. And so I did my undergraduate in media studies, and then so towards the end of my undergraduate studies, I started turning towards game design and specifically like the concept of play. Because I think I at that point I found like play to be such an interesting meeting point. I mean, I still think that uh between humans and animals, because play is some is is a place where I mean most, if not many animals, or if not most animals actually uh do play. And I think it's an interesting process of negotiating you know boundaries between our understanding and how do we understand each other and challenge each other when humans and animals meet, and that then often happens in very surprising ways. So that was kind of the entry point for me into starting this research. And then I moved to uh to Sweden to to the south to a city called Malmo, where then I did the master's in interaction design. And then um, what was very important to me then is the notion of participatory design. So, how can animals actually become participants in various stages of the of the design process? And I started my PhD also very much from that angle, then also in in Malmo in 2015. And then I early in the PhD I did projects, uh design projects, uh, together with like cats, dogs, ants, and penguins also at the time. And I mean, we can talk about that more, of course, as well, about each of these projects. Um but at some point, about like halfway in my PhD, I got stuck with the with the project. And this was like specifically when I when I was working with a colony of penguins in a zoo, uh, where I was trying to this, there was I was trying to design like playful interactions with these penguins. And at that point I was thinking a lot about the concept of speciesism and you know, animal as as understood here as animal oppression. And I was trying to think of like, okay, so how can I create a playful space with these penguins in a zoo that could be considered like a non-speciesist interaction? And I got stuck with that because I was only kind of describing what it was not, yeah. So I was only thinking about like, you know, against the speciesism, and so that's when kind of the question for my PhD starts to be formulated as in trying to find like traces of what I then came to call like multi-species worlds, as in like the opposite of species. Um, so then yeah, that was the way in which I then wrote up my PhD. And then most recently, I'm trying to take this uh yet in a new direction in my postdoc here in the University of Cambridge in the UK, where I'm working on a project about smart forests, um, which we can also talk about, of course. So yeah, I've traveled through like various disciplines, I guess. It's amazing with various animals to come.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 7:38

Wow, and and so firstly, I had to grin when you said uh you were at Malmou University, because I did my my first master's at Lund University. So you said that there's like you said a small city called Malmo, and I was like, yeah, Malma. Um so I got weirdly personally excited uh at the idea of Sweden again, beautiful, okay beautiful country and place to to study, I think. Uh, but your stories are just amazing. So you spoke about games for for animals, and I I saw you know one or two of the videos that you've created uh with animals, and I remember there being a buzz not too long ago about cats playing with fish on iPads, and this is some of what you were doing is you were playing games with animals. Uh, could you perhaps tell us a little bit about those those games?

Michelle Westerlaken: 8:26

Yeah, exactly. And I think this is also an interesting comment because these cat games have done, I think, quite a quite a lot in the in the area of of uh digitally mediated play with animals. I was in a conference, there is a field called Animal Computer Interaction, and there is a conference, a yearly conference about this as well. And there I was talking to a zoologist, and this person was saying, well, you know, nowadays there are like only a few animals in zoos that have not seen iPads at this point. So apparently these kind of this there's a lot of that. But I think in many cases, what the zoo keepers do is actually showing them these cat games because they are they're just there uh quite you know growing amount. And and when when we first saw these, I was uh working with with other game designers as well, and we were thinking like, how can we create actually something that is not just kind of a moving object on a screen, but how can we create something that is perhaps more meaningful in terms of how, for example, cats or or other animals uh you know play, play with us and play with uh could play with with toys, for example. So I tried to bring that also a little bit in the physical space to um to think about it more broadly about interactive toys or robotic toys, or you know, going away a little bit from the digital screen uh by itself as well. So those were some of the projects early on in the in the in the PhD and also during my master's that I did d with cats and uh and with with my own dogs that I was living with at the at the time specifically as well. And what I tried to do in the project with the dogs was to create a very slow process. So instead of kind of more of a traditional uh design um process where I would create a prototype and then do user testing, I wanted to see like how could the animals, you know, and the dogs in this case, how how could they become part of this process? So instead of kind of designing like a um a high-tech prototype and then presenting it, I started out with you know a little ball and then building something on top of it, and then you know, each each time trying to play with the with the dogs. And of course, I I know them very well because I was living with them. So um so I tried to incorporate everything about our playful scenario, about our play that we already did, and the way we knew each other, and the way we already challenge each other and negotiate our relations into that process to create a much slower, um, slower way of coming to new design iterations. I think I learned a lot from this process.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 10:50

I think so. I mean, even you know, my interactions with with my own doggo and and you know, other folks who have their own, you realize that they're individuals and some of whom like some sort of games and others who don't. So we're constantly swapping toys with one another because you know, you'll go to the pet store and you'll say, Okay, I'm gonna get this toy. And it's just not your dog's game. They're just not into it. Um, and yet somehow I find that when I'm at home, I never thought of it in terms of design before, um, but just adaptation that I I make little pockets out of uh toilet paper rolls. I just put kibble in toilet paper rolls, and Linus enjoys shredding those. And then eventually it became putting, I mean, he doesn't even shred, he figures out how to open them up. And then I've realized putting that inside of a ball makes it even more interesting. And it's just become this ever-evolving game.

Michelle Westerlaken: 11:43

Iterative design process, as we would say.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 11:46

Well, there we go.

Michelle Westerlaken: 11:47

I'm a designer now, thank you very much. But I think you do hint that's something interesting here in the in the definition of design, because I think I mean many people are really confused by this, and and me included, you know, we we are constantly talking about design without really having a clear definition of what that then would be, right? So I think it's important to broaden it out. And to me, design, I mean, traditionally, many people have seen design as a sort of problem-solving things, right? Designers come in and solve problems. But I think that has also been challenged nowadays in design as well, that where we, I mean, people go in and and what I would say is like negotiate possibilities. It's not really kind of a problem-solving endeavor uh anymore. It's more of an ongoing process. Like it doesn't really have an end to it, you know, it's it's always continuing. So it you don't come in as the all-knowing designer um with your sort of design skills for solving things.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 12:41

You said uh I I watched a talk you gave towards the end of your thesis, and you had said, yeah, designing as negotiating possibilities. And another, I think, really cool definition you spoke to was a material form of doing ethics. I thought that was a really fascinating way of thinking. Yep. Um so yeah, maybe this is a good time for us to switch to thinking. I mean, we're already talking about design, and you're saying here that you think about design as negotiating possibilities, what could be, not as a matter of uh fixing what's already broken or a problem. Could you talk us through how you came to shifting or thinking about this uh this way, thinking about design in this way?

Michelle Westerlaken: 13:30

Yeah, I think it is informed by by various different readings in the field of design, but perhaps also more broadly. So, so I mean, Verbake would be a Peter Paul Verbake would be a really interesting example here, um, but also um the work of Arturo Escobar, where he talks about designing for the pluriverse. Um so seeing design as something that is also aligning with more like post-structuralist ideas, or you know, um, scholars like, for example, Donna Haraway or Anat Singh, or perhaps even Timothy Morton may come into view here as well, and thinking more broadly about what I describe nowadays as worlds. So I'm aligning more with the kind of heroine tradition here as well, but thinking about um the fact that there's just not just kind of one fixed um world or one fixed um view of uh of the world, but more as in like seeing that humans and animals are enacting these spaces and enacting perhaps what we can call enacting these worlds and and design and sort of seeing design in this also multiplicity um uh view as different ways, different possibilities that can be enacted. So I think it aligns sort of more theoretically with those traditions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 14:47

So it's a lot more fluid. It's about I mean, I suppose design is still about correcting problems. You wouldn't necessarily want to live in a world where there's something that's clearly problematic that's not being addressed. But if if I'm understanding correctly, what you're saying here is it's not just about seeing a problem and reacting to the problem, it's about imagining what a potentially better and better is for who, but what a potentially better future might look like. How can design come into play with creating a more equitable space or a more um fun space or whatever your goal is in design?

Michelle Westerlaken: 15:25

Yeah, and I think moving towards seeing design not as going towards a certain end goal or like a final uh solution to things, but more about seeing it as this unfixed, um moving towards something that perhaps we can see as better, but where this idea of better is also continuously negotiated. Okay. So we don't have also like a sort of final ethical standpoint there.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 15:53

So it's not this is right and this is wrong. The idea of what could be appropriate right now is shifting, and we need to be adaptable with our designs to see how. Okay. I'm with you. Maybe if we bring the urban in uh a little bit, this will help us grapple with what we mean about design. And then we'll get to to redesign, uh, which is the concept and focus a little later. But when you think about what you know, what you call multi-species, I I always struggle with any isms at the end, uh, as a way of imagining the world differently, a multi-species world instead of just uh as as you say in a lot of your work, instead of just considering what it is not, uh, you know, not just looking at the negative speciesm, but trying to imagine what the future could be. But you look at the city, right? And you think about the architecture in the city and designs in cities. When you are walking in your own hometown, or when you lived in Malmo or now at Cambridge, when you walk down the street and you look at the city as it currently stands and you think about multi-species, what do you see when you think about design?

Michelle Westerlaken: 17:05

So then I yeah, I think we can very much continue the sort of more theoretical trajectory we were on and try to apply it more practically. And for me, that is very much about finding traces. So, so to me, thinking about the space or thinking about like a particular encounter between humans and animals that is already there, that perhaps inspires us to create these multi-species scenarios. So instead of thinking about the concept, as in, I mean, this is why the multi-species ism is a bit of a wordplay also in a concept, because it's like I want to multiply the ism there as well, right? To say that there's not like one sort of ideology, but perhaps we can multiply that as well, which is a bit of a maybe risky thing to do as well. But so I think that walking through the city and thinking of um of what are those elements that we find already in the city that can inspire this multi-species thinking. So instead of thinking of what is kind of problematic, you know, in the city right now, let's try to see if there are small examples of of those spaces that already exist. And that is very much what I try to do in the thesis project. And I I try to illustrate those. So in the in my in my PhD ended up with a lot of illustrations uh of these perhaps different encounters that that could hint at those traces. So one of them I think that I like to bring up when it comes to the urban is the is the drawing of the fly and the window, uh, where there is a person opening the window to let a fly out that was stuck. And to me, that is just just a small trace of thinking about, well, okay, the fly is stuck behind the window, we can sort of ignore it, we can wait for the fly to die, or we can open the window and let the fly out. But what does that tell us also about the way that these windows or doors or whatever are designed to have these insects being stuck there? You know, can we then think of, you know, how can this inspire us to think to think of designing such windows uh that perhaps do not get those uh insects stuck there? And the same, I mean, another another, oh sorry, yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 19:13

No, no, so I was I was gonna firstly just comment you comment on your thesis and how beautiful it is um with your designs. And I'm currently writing my thesis, and I think uh just seeing yours was refreshing, uh thinking about how you could put forward uh academic knowledge, but in such a creative and beautiful way. Um and for the listeners, she's got uh sketches throughout and like ants crawling up pages and all sorts of little um drawings throughout her work that try to reiterate and explain some of the complicated concepts that um Michelle's speaking about. But um yeah, it's it's really beautifully done. And when you think about the fly now and the window, so is that a I don't know you don't want to see it as a design problem, but as it currently stands, is that window for the fly a design problem? Or is for you that's just a non-starter? That's not helpful to start there. You just want to see what the future could be like for the fly.

Michelle Westerlaken: 20:13

I think the thinking would be the the ladder, yeah. Uh although I can also see why in some circumstances it may be really useful to think of that as a design problem. I mean, if you want to write a specific design brief, that might be a particular focus to take, right? And so I think that from these kind of stories we can also isolate those as problems and then sort of think about that further. Uh so I yeah, it could go both ways, but in in terms of sort of the the trajectory that I'm on, I like to think of this more as the yeah, as the kind of stories that emerge. And the the way that we tell those stories can can then be sort of retold in these different encounters that we have. So I think yeah, both both could work. How did you retell the story with the the fly? Um I think that one of the one of during the time that this particular drawing came up was when I was doing a design project with ants. So I was thinking a lot about insects. And so I think that I mean I'm moving now between the fly and the and and the ant, uh the fly and the ant. So I'm I'm I'm sort of bridging a little bit there. But I was um trying to live with a colony of black ants at the time, and thinking of like, you know, I was I was doing projects with with mammals and uh mainly domestic animals like dogs and cats and designing games with them, and I wanted to broaden it. So I wanted to think of um of how we can design actually together with, if we can even say that, with it with an insect, for example. So I obtained a colony of black ants and live with them for a while and then tried to see like what happened. So it was very open-ended of just like having the um getting the ants and um uh convincing my my boss at the time at the university, can I please have these ants on my desk? Because I I want to have them in the university space. And she said, Okay, that's fine, but please make sure that they don't escape. And I said, No, no, they won't escape for sure. I will make sure. And of course they they they they lived there, and after a while they were crawling all over my desk, you know, at the keyboard of the computer on the mouse, uh, etc. And uh and I tried to initially I tried to kind of cover it up because I didn't want other people to notice because I thought when they notice, I need to remove the ants from this, uh from this space. So I wanted to, and I wanted to keep them there, so I tried to cover it up, but then I kind of started to like maybe in a sense, like with the the drawing with the fly and the window is a little bit present there as well, try to kind of follow them and see what were what are they actually up to. And then I followed the ants around and I noticed that they were getting these kind of pieces of carton from another place on the desk, and they were carrying them back into that kind of nest where they were uh where where I kept them. Um, and they were stacking those pieces of carton between this opening to kind of make this space bigger and to crawl in and out more comfortably. At least that's what I observed. And of course, I'm not like an animal behaviorist, so I maybe I'm not sure if that was actually what I saw. That was what I observed. And so I was um then so intrigued with this that okay, we I need to do something with this escape story. I need to kind of foreground that story rather than the kind of I want to design something for with the animals here, and so then um I tried to turn that into a design project, and I organized like a game jam, which is like an um event where people come together and in a specific amount of time design a game. And then we um I we had several groups in the workshop and we designed escape rooms for the ants. And so I asked the participants to think of how they could design um an escape room that would not be too difficult and not be too easy for the ant to solve, like as a challenge, and they prototyped these. So we had all kinds of prototyping materials, and I gave all of them like a kind of box where the ants could go in and out, and then uh the participants designed like five different prototypes that we then also tried with the ants later, and I live streamed this process, and of course, that also generated a lot of discussion like, well, what is actually going on here? You know, like um are you isn't this cruel because these ants are in captivity and now you're designing their escape, and and what you know, but also what does this mean for us living with other insects, you know, when we take them a little bit more seriously and see actually what they're up to and how we can kind of do something with that in design. So this generated a lot of discussion, and also among the participants themselves, I had them fill out kind of surveys thinking about like asking them how they were thinking about the ants, and if this has this workshop has in any way changed uh the way that they were thinking about the ants, and people were also responding there. It's like, well, I had actually never considered that ants may be playful or that ants may be curious, or what an ant would be doing in their leisure time, or or this kind of thing. So um it did do something with the the participants who were part of these workshops. And and I think that that is kind of to come back to the drawing with the fly and the window, that is kind of a way to try to try to pay attention towards the insect in a different way and to kind of foreground them in the design process. Um, and that would lead to entirely different designs compared to like a design of a house where the human, for example, is the main person living in the in the space and the insects are not really seen as a stakeholder.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 25:35

So you might imagine someone now who's designing their house or an urban set of apartments as saying, okay, well, insects are abound in the urban landscape. And instead of uh instead of the immediate solution with an insect being we should kill them, um, rather recognizing and appreciating um urban ecologies and starting to create, I don't know, little little escape routes, I guess what you're saying, escape routes through apartment walls. And and it I guess it poses a whole variety of new interesting design questions is what happens when you start to view the little a burrow through a wall not as a problem uh that now, oh, mildew is gonna get in there or you know, insects and bugs are gonna come in and out, but that that's actually the the um the goal, the objective. Similar, I imagine it's similar to thinking of like uh wildlife bridges or wildlife tunnels that you often see um that are starting to emerge in cities where some cities are starting to take seriously how many animals die on roads, that the number of road death when it comes to animals is just staggering and so normalized. You see, you see a dead animal and it's just like, oh, it's it's kind of just part of the urban experience, which is really tragic. And instead of thinking now about little tunnels going under or over roads, you could imagine little tunnels going through apartment buildings that are taking seriously some of these um multi-species needs, which is really fascinating.

Michelle Westerlaken: 27:04

And I I would also like to add to that specifically, and I think this this um I think is a wonderful idea. I would love to explore this more, like to think of escape routes in buildings for all kinds of different animals that make use of this space, because there are so many animals in urban space who are constantly sort of escaping or moving from somewhere to somewhere, right? Whether or not we call that escaping is of course another, yeah, it's another thing to theorize about. But I think this um this reflection on the on the wildlife bridges and the roadkills is really interesting because in order to, as a, as a person to come up with the idea to make a bridge, uh that also requires a designer to take seriously the fact that an animal does something. It's not merely a sort of victim hitting, you know, being hit by a car and dying, but it is an animal able to create like this roots and to take these certain paths, right? And so that is a different orientation that you can have as a designer compared to to the more critical perspective with in which the animal is a victim of our design or our oppression. And I think that is a really big shift, right, when we see the animal actually as a stakeholder or as a user or as a primary user, even of uh the things that can be designed.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 28:22

I mean, I I I would probably sit and say both, you know, just because uh many of these animals are uh in in ways victims of poor design, uh, you know, already existing design. And and I think to not at least vote for my own. I'm not a designer, but I feel as though it would also be somehow erroneous to not recognize that they are somewhat they are victims of structurally not thinking about them and what their needs are. Absolutely. Yeah, but but as you point to, it's one thing to speak to the historical and contemporary ways in which they are not considered. It's another thing to try and imagine how they could be considered not only as victims, so to not totalize them as victims, I think. Um but yeah, it's so an another, sorry, another follow-up question with the the ants, and I'd be remiss if I didn't ask. Uh how do you deal with the ethics of of kind of a situation of bringing animals into these design experiments? So you so you said you you obtained a colony of ants, um, you know, you had a whole bunch of people that were watching this and started to ask you questions about uh ants and the ethics of involving them. What, what, what do you how do you contend with uh these really difficult uh questions?

Michelle Westerlaken: 29:40

Yeah, exactly. These are these are difficult questions, and that is also very much part of a whole like transition I went through as a uh as a um designer and researcher during the PhD, because when I started, I didn't I never heard of the term speciesism, for example, and I didn't really consider these questions, and and I that that became just more and more of an issue to me. Throughout the PhD. So I think that now towards the end, like I don't think I would do that again. I don't think I would kind of obtain an animal, put them in captivity, and design something with them. Because that is like if you if I simplify, that is exactly what happened, right? Um, so that I think that is an important, I think I would look for design spaces in which these encounters already happen. So I think the urban space in that sense is a really interesting space to look at uh because there are already so many encounters between humans and animals that that happen and in which animals and humans are negotiating uh their interactions and their interactions with the space already. So I think that there are many interesting spaces to look at without having to obtain an ant colony in that sense. At the same time, I also want to broaden that in a bit more of a riskier practice, as I think that sometimes in design we also enter into problematic spaces in order to um experiment with these possibilities. And these are not this is not like an innocent process at all. Where you know, when you do theory, uh especially critical theory, for example, we see that a lot. We can kind of write write up the problematic ethics of certain spaces, but as a designer that is really difficult. Like you are um you are involved ethically and and you make certain interventions, so you're always uh changing an existing situation into something else, and that always brings up um ethical issues, and maybe they were not issues that you were thinking of at the time, but they can also come up later, they can also come up during the process. As I was like in the zoo, that was really like a big, you know, now I'm here with the zoo animals, and I don't I'm reading all this stuff about zoos and colonialism, uh, and and of course, yeah, the whole like issue with zoos that we can we can expand in in various different directions. Um, but it's not I as a as we if we do design carefully, we don't sort of we don't like um ignore ethical issues, that wouldn't be that wouldn't be a good thing. But but we also perhaps we don't need to run away either, you know, if we are in the situation, perhaps there is a way to think of these ethical issues with care and attention. And that is a very risky and and a very risky process. So I mean But it's somehow inevitable. So sorry, yeah, no, it's okay.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 32:29

Um yeah, so I think the zoo is a really fascinating space to think about because it is frequently an urban space as well. So we'll we'll think about a zoo as being removed, and somehow we're trying to create a wild space inside the urban space, but it is very much an urban phenomena, unless you're going to like a wildlife sanctuary or or you know, there are roadside zoos, but some of the big zoos that you think of, you know, like a Brooklyn zoo or um whatever, whatever city you're in, I guarantee you've got a big zoo that's got a whole bunch of uh animals in it. So what do you do as you point to? So you're you're looking at these animals and you're trying to create a better environment for them. And you see in a lot of zoos, animals are not stimulated, they're often bored, they're there for the entirety of their lives. It's a fairly sad place for many animals who have been removed from family and kin. Uh so how do you then contend with making a bad place more manageable for them? And I think this maybe points to some of the kind of broader discussions about abolition versus rights or welfare. Um, how do you, as a as a designer, do you think this is just a personal thing that every designer needs to contend with? Or do you think it's a matter of do good where you can? Like what do you do you walk away from a project that could pay pay your bills?

Michelle Westerlaken: 33:56

Like yeah, I don't have a good answer to that because I did walk away from the from the zoo project uh without um yeah, without delivering sort of the design that I was originally asked to do. And I think that for me that became more and more clear in talking to the different stakeholders that were part of the project. Uh, where and they were most most of them were humans, and the penguins were one of them. I wanted to talk mainly to the penguins, but the project became also kind of overshadowed by the people that wanted to at some point they were suggesting that maybe I could design a game in which the zoo visitors could also play with the penguins, and that became kind of like a PR story then. And so then I I didn't feel like that was going into the direction that I wanted it to go in, and and I couldn't like foreground the penguins anymore. And I think that is maybe a crucial issue to think of when you find yourself in these kinds of situations is um how can I keep the the animal in the foreground, the stories of the animal in the foreground? Because perhaps when we can manage to do that throughout the project, then we we can find uh different ways of telling the stories of the problematic space in which the animal is still kind of foregrounded as the as a protagonist, let's say, of the stories. And what I found in the project with the penguins, then so the way that I tried to do that in the thesis, in writing up, you know, the story of the penguins, because they are still there as a as a protagonist in the speak in the thesis itself, let's say, what I tried to do was to think of the different ways in which the penguins uh surprised me in their playful interactions. So the focus of that chapter became about the things that the penguins did that I did that I didn't um that I that I couldn't imagine as a designer, that I didn't foresee. And that surprise then could inspire me to think further with the penguins. Even though I didn't do that in the design, they really still did teach me a lot about you know various different ways of being penguin and the things that they do actively.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 36:00

And thinking about redesign then and and the idea of penguins in cities, um, is there then a realm in where you start to think about design as also having some space for exclusion? Um, where maybe there are some areas where instead of thinking about designing a city as somehow being a place that's more compatible with the penguin, uh maybe the urban is not the place a penguin would like to be. Um so is is there room in in redesign for for thinking that way?

Michelle Westerlaken: 36:33

I do, yeah, I think so. Um and this goes for humans as well, I guess. I do have a, I mean, this just brings to mind the work of another uh PhD scholar in Sweden called Eric Sanderin, who is working on the notion of a human design, um, building on the work of Patricia McCormack, uh, where it's also about with with like deliberately withdrawing from a space or deliberately designing, deciding not to design. So kind of leaving B as a design decision, because often design becomes about doing something, right? But perhaps a design decision can also be not to do something. And I think this could be uh relating to this question as well for uh yeah, for certain certain other animals that could go as well, I think.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 37:19

Yeah, it's really uh really yeah, it's really hard to, I think as humans, we just want to we want to be part of the action and we want to do things. And whether it's a problem or a solution, we we want to do something. And sometimes, I mean, I don't even in saying it, part of me wants to resist the idea of saying doing nothing just doesn't seem it just doesn't quite seem right when when there's so much uh so much going on. But I suppose this is also what you're challenging with your concept of redesign, is is if you focus on the problem. You you said something really um great in one of your presentations where you you spoke a bit about the the paralysis of focusing on problems, that if you constantly look at what's wrong with the situation, you end up you end up really um paralyzed, almost unable to move. Yeah, paralyzed, that's the word. Yeah, uh unable to move and and to actually do something imaginative. So why don't I stop speaking for a minute and give you an opportunity to maybe reflect on and give us some cool imaginings for the urban. Uh so we've spoken now about potential burrows through apartment buildings that could help animals, you know, be different. And and you've spoken about foregrounding, sorry, this is like question on question, but you've spoken about foregrounding animals in design. But I suppose you also have to foreground designers in design and how they can think about the urban differently. So how would you help fellow designers to think about urban design in a more multi-species way? Oh God, that was a mouthful. I'm so sorry.

Michelle Westerlaken: 39:03

I hope that is a big question. I think uh, yeah, so let's let's let's turn to um to the words of Donna Haraway. She's very good at dealing with big questions, I think. Um because she and she builds on actually the words of Marilyn Stratton here when she writes that it matters what worlds, world, worlds. I don't know if you've come across this quote or it it matters what knowledge is no knowledge. Um and so I've been thinking about this also in terms of design, and it becomes again one of those funny wordplays, but it also matters what designs, design, designs. And I'm saying this because I think that it is important to think to to challenge where our designs come from and to challenge you know what ideas we use to think of other ideas. And I think that if we if we if we challenge that a bit more, we as designers can also see like what are the ideas that our our urban spaces are currently you know inspired with and what what ideas are we building on, and and so what what ideas are are perhaps neglected. And I think that I mean I'm not an urban designer myself, so because I've I've been more in the area of of game design, interaction design. Um, but I do think that some of some of those kind of sterile urban design um renderings, for example, can tell us a little bit about the also the almost like the absence of of complicated stories and and and sort of situated stories where they become like sort of very clean, almost like perfect utopian spaces. So I would I would suggest to kind of abandon the idea of the utopia or the perfect city and and think more about the really small stories that happen perhaps in everyday spaces or in in um you know, also as I said, that the traces there are already there. And I think that is that is to me that was a very important orientation because I you know either the the problem the sort of the critique or the paralyzing problematic space was a I got stuck there and also then I turned towards like sort of utopian ideas and also got stuck there uh because I couldn't imagine of of the perfect solution either, right? Um I mean we shouldn't also because I I don't think those really exist. And so I think that I was trying to create this kind of hybrid creature between like the critique and the optimism, and I think that's the creature that we can sit with. And Haraway then calls this um big enough stories, right? Uh so things that are not too small and not too big, but the big enough one. And those are the kinds of stories that we can tell.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 41:49

Yeah, so one of the cartoons you have uh in your thesis is of uh two people standing hand in hand about to go and drink at a fountain, and they see a pigeon a pigeon sleeping at the fountain. And I suppose the fountain was originally designed, not with pigeons in mind. Um, it was designed with the idea of either an aesthetic for the city or uh for people to gain access to water. Pigeons were never part of the original plan, but that doesn't mean that pigeons are not using these designs to their advantage. They're not, they're but they're using them differently. They bathe in the the fountains, they drink water from the fountains, they are using these urban design elements. Uh, you know, they find, we we spoke about it quite a bit with Nicola Delon, you know, pigeons, they use the the urban design of buildings and how they're currently structured because they very much resemble cliff cliff cliff faces. So they are using urban design. But then of course you've got instead of respecting that use, you've kind of got counter, you know, counter design where you've got really um the host of Beyond Species actually sent me uh some incredible images of just like pigeon spikes to stop pigeons from landing on trees because they don't want poo to flit around. So I guess what you're saying is this is a a trace opportunity here. When you see the pigeon at the fountain, you've got a choice to make as to how you interpret that use of design.

Michelle Westerlaken: 43:21

Exactly. And this was a situation that I ran into with a friend. So I think everybody also uh experiences these kinds of moments where you encounter another animal in the city and perhaps see something that is yeah, that's interesting. I just tried to take note of those and kind of collect them in a way. And so that the pigeon fountain example, of course, we can expand on that and think, well, can we design public squares that perhaps allow all kinds of different animals to have to rest or to drink? Or, you know, I when I lived in Mammu, my neighbor was actually a pigeon who um built their nest on these spikes, you know, that they install to actually um keep the pigeons out, but they kind of found a way to sort of make it more structural, like stable to build their nest there. And that is also a way in which those urban animals are responding to our design.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 44:12

Yeah, like the ants who the ants who escape or the pigeons who use, they they're not I was gonna say best intention. What's that saying? Roads are paved with best intentions. I never get sayings correct, but what what you intended with your your ant colony and what those spikes intended isn't what what ended up happening at all. Um so I guess this speaks to what you're talking about with design being uh, as you as you said, negotiated possibilities. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, uh, thank you so much. Um I just I like the idea of thinking through some of the material ways you're offering a lot of conceptual ideas on how we can see animals that are interacting with the space, uh, and think about how design enables those interactions, which I think is really, I think we have to start to see animals firstly, um, uh which you're pointing to. And then the second step to start to think about how design can uh, you know, design can enable maybe playfulness in the city or or or use of the city in a way that helps animals to better claim uh claim the city as their own. And of course, there's a whole bunch of politics that come into that, you know, which animals have access to which spaces. Um, I spoke to Paula, Kari, which animals aren't we seeing? And how does design also in the urban work to kind of make the lives of some animals invisible? Um exactly, yeah. So I really love what you're doing here is you're melding together kind of these conceptually hard ideas with a very material conception as well. It's not just talking about ethics or about ideas of um speciesism, it's about saying, how do we materially change the world, the city, to be a better, to I can't help but use the word better, to be a more inclusive space. Uh, really. If if you could imagine one thing in the city that you would like to, you had all the resources in the world. Yeah. You could do whatever you wanted. If you could do one thing in the city, and I know you said you're not an urban designer, but we all flirt. I imagine you see design everywhere when you're walking. Um, if you could do one really cool thing in the city, what would you do?

Michelle Westerlaken: 46:35

So yeah, I would say, you know, now I live in Cambridge, so this space, so the space has recently also changed because I think the animals in Cambridge here are are really different from the animals that I encountered in Malmo. But when I did live in Malmo, uh in Malmo there are a lot of seagulls. And um I really kind of make a point that I don't want to kind of hate other animals. But with the seagulls made it really, really hard. And and that that I wanted to challenge that all the time. So and I think this relates to the idea of of pests, as you also uh just mentioned, like the animals that we see as pests, and I would like to see more projects in which in which people challenge the idea of what we consider a pest, and perhaps through these kind of, for example, playful scenarios, um, help us to think differently and meet, you know, if I were to meet a seagull in a moment where perhaps it's not screaming at four in the morning or when I'm trying to write my thesis, um, but in a different moment. So perhaps if we if we if through through some of this through some design examples, we can encounter these animals in in different ways. I think that that for me would be something that yeah, that is crucial to our um multi-species lives in the cities, so that we we don't only have sort of one idea about certain species, but we can have we can meet them in in different ways.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 48:03

Yeah, and I mean you pests, I think about rats who here in Ontario in in Kingston, they I mean they're incredibly smart, they're very social, they're anyone who's done even a minimal amount of reading about rats very quickly realizes that they are just exceptional little animals. Uh and I'm always really sad that one of the go-to responses when a rat gets into a cellar is to to kill them. That that's the because you know, several non-lethal traps have been created. And people say, well, they're just too smart. They just figure out the traps, so we've got to kill them. Uh and I just find that that's a really it's a lack of imagination. It's a lack of meeting the animal where they are and saying, okay, if you come into my home and you eat all the electricity, no one in the home, none of the humans are going to be very happy about that. But you, it's in the middle of Canadian winter, you've very cleverly sensed the heat coming from the heaters, and you've used the drain pipes, which were part of design to your advantage to get into the cellar. So you've you've used the design of the city very effectively for your purposes. So for us to just kill you just doesn't seem like much of a negotiated possibility. Uh so it's more of an ending. Exactly. It's an ending, it's a it's very, very final ending for the rat, and it's a very um conceptual ending for us, where there is no. So, you know, what could it mean if people were better um sensitized to rats to thinking, okay, chances are in the winter rats are going to come into your cellar, they're gonna be there. Um, you should just be okay with that. And this is what you can do to keep your electricity safe. This is what you can do to enable the rats to enter and leave your property without much damage. Uh, like what a world, what a world it could be if we were to imagine in those ways.

Michelle Westerlaken: 50:08

I mean, and also the different ways in which the rats do things that are really crucial for the city, perhaps. Um, I do know about different ways in which rats contribute to the ecology of a sewage system, for example, uh, in which perhaps without the rats, there would be other, perhaps there would be other issues that we're not thinking of. So I also think it's important to yeah, think about perhaps some of the positive qualities that rats actually contribute to the city. In a way, of course, without like romanticizing uh them either, right?

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 50:45

I mean, we don't have to always like each other either. And I think that this is one of the the difficult things with with design is you know, who are you designing for, certainly, but sometimes and where do you start with the design? Do you start with the particular species in mind? So you might create a design for for rats in mind, and that might end up creating a whole bunch of endings for other animals that we're not thinking about when we start the design. Because there are many, many animals doing many, many things, uh, and we as humans are not seeing all of them or everything. We're not the all-seeing, all powerful um folk we like to believe we are. So, like where where where do you start with the and and you I think you hinted at it with saying the everyday, and this is an everyday interaction, right?

Michelle Westerlaken: 51:38

Right. And also in the beginning, when I mentioned the slow processes of design, the more kind of slower iterative processes in which we don't think of what we will design already upfront, but we actually go into the situation with smaller iterations and then seeing what happens, so that we don't think of this as a final um, you know, solution to the problem, but more as an ongoing, never-ending uh process. What what you know the city is also that, right? The city doesn't like end somewhere either, it's always changing, and we kind of just keep adapting as we go along, hoping to go somewhere better, but still with the idea that this better is always also up for negotiation.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 52:22

And attentiveness to to the space and to the many that are that are in the space. Wonderful. Uh thank you so much. I think uh now would be a good time for us to hear your your quote. Uh I'm I'm really looking forward to hearing what you have.

Michelle Westerlaken: 52:37

Yeah, so I, you know, I started a new project, um, a post-hoc project, and this uh and I moved perhaps perhaps away from the urban, but not necessarily because we will be looking at urban spaces as well, and and I mean also the idea of urbanization as being, you know, in different places in the world. But I'm I'm thinking about forest these days. And so I am rereading the work of Anat Singh. Um, and um I started reading her book Um The Mushroom at the End of the World in 2015 when it came out when I just started my PhD. And and I was reading it uh very much as look paying attention to all the different animals that she's talking about. Uh, but now I'm sort of turning back to it and thinking more about the forests and the landscapes and the different um, you know, species in the forest that are not perhaps animals or humans. And so I I took a quote from there and um I'm piecing together like two different uh parts of the book here, and I think that these sort of really highlight what I'm trying to do and and also um yeah how I'm sort of seeing the work of designing, and and this is about the forest, but I think that you could perhaps think of replacing the word forest for for urban space as well, so we maybe we can try that out. Um so she writes to walk attentively through a forest, even a damaged one, is to be caught by the abundance of life, ancient and new, underfoot and reaching into the light. But how does one tell the life of the forest? We might begin by looking for drama and adventure beyond the activities of humans. Yet we are not used to reading stories without human heroes. Can I show landscape as the protagonist of an adventure in which humans are only one kind of participant? And then I kind of want to piece that together with something that she says almost towards the end of the book, where she brings up the work of um Ursula Le Guin, the author, and I think she's a very important writer also for designers, I think. And specifically her essay, The Carrier Back Theory of Fiction, which I would really recommend to read. And so Anna Ting writes that in the carrier back theory of fiction, Ursula Le Guin argues that stories of hunting and killing have allowed readers to imagine that individual heroism is the point of a story. Instead, she proposes that storytelling might pick up diverse things of meaning and value and gather them together, like a forager rather than a hunter waiting for the big kill. In this kind of storytelling, stories should never end, but rather lead to further stories.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 55:19

Wow, I love that. And it's kind of the process of research as well, right? You you never want to end a research project with saying, well, I've solved everything. It's always about raising new questions and new avenues for where you can go and and how you can imagine. I really love that a lot. Could I could I ask you a favor? Could you read that first section again and do as you suggested and switch out forest with urban? Because it really, it really was. Let's try. I was I was switching out the word, and I think it's really quite poetic to finish off the interviews here with this kind of thinking of the urban.

Michelle Westerlaken: 55:58

Let's see. So okay. To walk attentively through an urban space, even a damaged one, is to be caught by the abundance of life, ancient and new, underfoot and reaching into the light. But how does one tell the life of the urban? We might begin by looking for drama and adventure beyond the activities of humans, yet we are not used to reading stories without human heroes. Can I show landscape as the protagonist of an adventure in which humans are only one kind of participant?

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 56:31

I love that. I love, love, love that. Because our whole imaginings of the hum of the city, we kind of have humans walking up and down streets. And we I don't think it would be helpful to imagine the city without humans, but to shift our focus to to um to place other animals at the front of an urban story, an urban landscape, oh, that's beautiful.

Michelle Westerlaken: 57:00

Yeah, I think so too. It's it's great. And I think she speaks a lot to what you're saying, also towards how research is generated as well, and an idea of generativity in general. I'm taking generativity a lot. Um, so the idea that you know our research also generates new questions, right? So and our designs also generate new designs, and that this is something that is ongoing and non-fixed. I think that's really important.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 57:28

Yeah, and and we also generate. I'll I'll join you with the generate because this is a generative type of episode. Um something I'm I'm thinking through about myself at the moment is that we're also generating new subjects, right? We're trying to think about new urban subjects. Uh oftentimes we've only got very limited number of species that we place at the center of any sort of urban subjectivity. Uh, humans, perhaps some uh, you know, pet animals. But when we start to think about how the space shapes a variety of different animals, a variety of different populations, a variety of different humans, it becomes a really um yeah, it becomes a space where you start to think, okay, how we talk about this doesn't only create new spaces, it creates new ways of understanding those spaces and the beings who use those spaces.

Michelle Westerlaken: 58:23

It's it's really a also thinking about I mean we're thinking about animals, but also I mean other kinds of life in the city, right? I I mean now we're also turning towards viruses and parasites as also occupying the city, living in the city and uh flourishing perhaps in different ways. Um yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 58:46

And I love that you're working a bit on trees now, because sometimes we've got this um kind of dichotomy of the city being, you know, devoid of trees. And I grew up in in Johannesburg and we'd often call it, I think at one point it was called the largest man-made forest, because we just have so many. I don't know if that's still the case now, but it's a really it's lots of concrete, lots of tarmac, lots of all of the stuff you expect in a city. Um, but also lots and lots of trees, lots of insects, lots of birds, uh, a variety of animals in your home, outside your home. And there is at least when when I was growing up, I found very little squeamishness around insects. And I feel as though as I've as I've had the opportunity to live in a variety of different cities, I've been stunned at how the streets are quiet. That's a sign that something else is going on. Why, why are streets quiet? Why is there less bird song? Why are there fewer? Um, I remember flying insects as a kid, and we used to do what now in hindsight was probably really cruel, but we would run around catching them and pulling off their wings, which is not a great thing to do. But, you know, apparently they lost the wings. Anyway, that's what I was told, but they were everywhere. And I think, um, like you said, viruses, the the world is just so much more complicated and interesting. And as Anat Singh's quote points to there, if you allow yourself the the opportunity to be amazed and to imagine, wow.

Michelle Westerlaken: 1:00:22

Yeah, I think she refers to this as uh the arts of the art of noticing. And she has written quite a bit about that as well in others other papers. So I really recommend her work. Yeah.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:00:32

Great. Thank you so much. Um so as as we're wrapping up here now, a bit, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what you're currently working on, which I'm guessing is to do with the forests. Um maybe what you're working on and and some of the ideas you're grappling with. And then also if people are interested in your work, whether it's your game design or some of your musings about uh animal design, um, how can they get in touch with you?

Michelle Westerlaken: 1:00:56

Absolutely. So, yeah, I've uh as I mentioned, I recently um came to the University of Cambridge where I'm working on a project called Smart Forests. And this is a European Research Council funded uh project that is led by Professor Jennifer Gabries. And here, so we are studying how uh digital technologies are reshaping forests and changing our understanding uh of a forest and also the ways that we interact with forests. And I think that it's very interesting. People have been saying, like, oh, but now you're gonna focus on trees. And I'm I think, well, but forests are also much more than trees, right? So and that is to me, that is something that I've just can kind of came into reading about more. That these are also entire, you know, big multi-species ecologies that can be looked at from all these different species, you know, above the ground, under the ground, etc. And I mean, forests are also becoming very crucial for this. I mean, they were always, but they are becoming increasingly crucial in our discussions about environmental change and and sort of you know planetary boundaries. And there are many technologies that are increasingly used in and around these forests. And this is both in quite like remote places, but also in urban urban spaces and urban forests specifically, you know, thinking about technology for uh for deforestation or reforestation, but also like thinking about systems for um alert, like wildfire alerting, for example, or illegal uh logging of trees, or perhaps the use of drones for planting uh seeds for new trees, or we have all kinds of satellites and sensors that are monitoring forests in in various different places in the world, and also more like participatory applications through which um citizens or also forest communities are mapping forest spaces and the different species, the changes in biodiversity and and the presence of different uh trees, for example. And so just like smart cities, like the or like the concept of smart cities, has also been critiqued a lot, you know, for being undemocratic or producing inequalities, for example, in the ways in which animals have been also excluded from the ways that we think about smart cities, right? I think we've you've been discussing this also in the first episode already of this podcast. And so we are asking similar questions uh about forest technologies as well. Like, how do these technologies impact multi-species relations in forests? Or how also do other species act as technologies? Sometimes the species themselves become the kind of sensor, for example, for measuring change. Um, and then of course, who is also like foregrounded then. So who is in the in the spotlight when we talk about these uh technologies, the this the stories of the smart forests? So these are some of the questions.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:03:43

When you said smart forests in the beginning, I was like, hmm, smart. I need to, I wasn't too sure which which way that was going. Um, because obviously there's a lot of research coming up now about how trees communicate with one another, how they share nutrients. You know, forests, as you point to, are really um they're they're really dynamic, interesting spaces, and and they have a lot of stories to tell. And they're ancient and they're old and they're they're deserving of respect. And they're homes to so many animals. So I think you're 100% right to kind of think, oh, but you're looking at forests and not animals. I think it's really magical to have someone going in. Sometimes I think the we go in and we just look at animals, we just look at trees, or we just look at something without having this kind of dynamic, uh, interdisciplinary way of viewing the world. And I think you, you know, you've you've looked at playfulness and animals and our trees.

Michelle Westerlaken: 1:04:38

You you don't walk away from the knowledge you have before, right? Uh right. It's I mean, it's difficult to to go into a new project, of course, and and thinking about how to take those knowledge with you know with you. But we do have a very interdisciplinary team with you know, people from geography, people from uh digital media studies, and then also design. And we are somehow situated in the Department of Sociology. So yeah, we will try to look at these questions from different angles without, and perhaps it's also that kind of hybrid creature that I was talking about earlier, sort of not purely critiquing or not being purely optimistic about the things that these technologies, you know, can do or maybe risk and thinking about yeah, what what is going on in this forest. But it's just the start of the project and it's gonna happen over the next three and a half years. So it's gonna, we're gonna have, or I think it's it lasts even longer, five years. It's a five-year project, I think, in total. So exciting. So I hope that uh yeah, we can talk again in some years.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:05:35

Maybe you can create uh I know in your your thesis you created a bestiary, um, which was uh inspired by Vivian Despray's um abcedery. I'd never come across that word before, which is really cool. So, where you put together a compilation of stories um with what you had learned with regards to design. And and I'm gonna share your your thesis in the the show notes because I think anyone who's actually doing animal studies, even if you just browse through Michelle's thesis, it's beautiful. Uh really do that a visit. But maybe you could create in this project a forestry, right? Where you stitch together all of the forest stories. So and then slowly together we'll have a bestiary, a forestry, and then we can have a beastly forestry and a forestry bestiary, and and we should just send them the city too then. Yeah. While we're at it, right? And but also to not recreate that kind of divide between the forest and the urban, because we breathe in the urban because of forests that we don't see, and we also damage those forests. Um, and we've got a relationship with one another. Uh, and yeah, I'm imagining that a lot of the technology that's used to monitor these these uh trees that are really uh the the imagination of them being far away. I imagine a lot of people are sitting in cities analyzing trees that they're not currently sitting among and between. So there is a an urban forest dynamic that I think some of when you start to think about design and the material ways we relate to the research we have, yeah, there's I mean, an urban, urban, urban forestry bestiary story collection game.

Michelle Westerlaken: 1:07:15

That's amazing. I would love to do that. I have my work cut out for me, it seems.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:07:20

Yes, I like to say to everyone on the show that I hope you're just gonna uh fix all the problems and and uh I look forward to seeing them. Uh if folks want to learn more about this project uh or maybe touch base with you and some of the work you've already done, uh how how can they find you?

Michelle Westerlaken: 1:07:36

Yeah, so I'm always uh reachable on Twitter, uh as and we can perhaps link those in the below as well. And also the Pro The Smart Forest Project has its own Twitter page, and of course, there is also always my email, and I can miss that as well. So please get in touch.

Claudia Hirtenfelder: 1:07:52

Yay! Well, thank you again. Have a lovely, lovely day. In today's animal highlight, it seems only fitting that we focus in on insects. From talking about bugs burrowing through walls and plotting escape routes, it seems rather strange that we haven't yet had an animal highlight that's looked at insects because surely insects are the most ubiquitous members of our urban societies. And today I want to focus in on ants in particular for two reasons. One, I think ants to some extent challenge our ideas of what urbanization is. In many ways, I think the season so far has tended to focus on human definitions of the urban and urbanization. We've looked at urban structures as humans have created them. And I don't even know how to define the urban or urbanization without somehow placing the human or human populations or human mobility at the center of what we're thinking about. And I think ants help us to challenge that. Ants help us to think through what urbanization could mean for other animals and in other spaces. But two, I also like the focus on ants because ants are incredible designers. And we've just spent the last hour talking about design. And if you want an animal that really knows how to design and structure a society, they are ants. And I remembered watching a documentary years ago where the, you know, the host of the show had called it a megapolis, a subterranean city. But I went and I found the video again and I've put it in on our YouTube channel under season three animal highlights. And watching it again just blew my mind again and again and again. So what these researchers did is they they found an ant heap in Brazil that had been abandoned by leafcutter ant colony, and they poured 10 tons of concrete down the hole. 10 tons. They let the concrete set and then they dug it up. You know, they use their brushes and their chisels and they dug it up to see like what does an ant structure look like? And it's huge. The size of the structure is awe-inspiring, and uh it has everything from fungus gardens to rubbish pits, tunnels to ensure good ventilation, and a variety of transport routes. And if that is not urbanization, if that is not something that we can call the urban, then I don't know what is. But what it certainly is, is incredible design. It is absolutely gorgeous and is a testament to how complex their societies are. Now, these leafcutter ants are not the only ones to build incredible structures. Fire ants are able to build floating rafts using their own bodies. They're subject to areas in which there's a lot of flooding, and they've figured out how to keep themselves buoyant, putting the queen in the center of the raft. And they can do this for weeks. Not only that, but fire ants can also build the towers using their own bodies. So if they need to build up, and they've got a blade of grass or a piece of stick, they can build upwards, making really incredible structures to keep themselves and their queen safe. Army ants are able to build bridges. So if they're trying to get from point A to point B, some of the ants use their bodies to build bridges, and the other ants go back and forth over the bridge collecting food or foraging or doing whatever they need to do. Weaver ants make buildings by stitching together leaves high in trees using silk. And Argentine ants have the biggest ant colony in the world, or as far as we know so far, that stretches at least 3,000 miles across Europe. Now, these ants are super, super interesting. In fact, they don't make one massive colony or one huge colony like other ants do. What they do is they make really small colonies that are roughly 120 ants per colony. So they have numerous queens, each queen with about 120 individuals. But if they are genetically similar to one another, they don't fight. There are no big battles that are going on. And they actually collaborate and communicate across colonies. So this is why they've got one of the biggest uh networks or colonies in the world. And they started out in Argentina, um, hitched some rides on ships, and have now made themselves quite abundant across North America and Europe as well. Ants are not only incredible for their great design and structures that they're able to build, but they have pretty interesting social skills as well. So most of the ants that you see are females. Males tend to stay within the nest and only stick around for reproduction. And they come from unfertilized eggs. So all the other eggs are fertilized and become females, and they're given a variety of different roles and responsibilities within the nest themselves. These ants interact as individuals through touch sound and chemical signals. Ants have really poor eyesight, but by touching other ants that have gone out to forage food, they're able to get a sense of where that ant has gone, and then they change their route accordingly. So if there's nothing in the direction that that ant has gone, they don't go that way. And they figure out a new, what seems almost random, but is not random at all, route to find different food. And when the ant has found food, they head back to, they head back to their nest or back to their colony, leaving a scent trail. And when they encounter another individual ant, they touch each other, that ant picks up on the signal and says, Okay, I know where the food is and heads over. And then so it continues. Every time an ant meets another ant, they pass on the signal, and so the ants go and get food and come back until eventually someone meets an ant and they've dropped that signal because the food is gone. So I find that really rather remarkable. And in fact, uh, this kind of what seems to be random but simple communication patterns are starting to be picked up by humans that are creating AI and computer design as a way of trying to figure out a really efficient and effective way of covering broad areas, spatially. It seems as though uh ants are not only an inspiration when it comes to creating great design, but they're really an inspiration when it comes to thinking through how to move in space and how to work collaboratively. So that's all I have for today's uh animal highlight. It's been really fun watching these videos and getting to know ants a little bit better. I hope that you learnt something new. And uh that's it for episode nine. Thank you once again to Michelle for being a wonderful guest to Animals and Philosophy Politics, Law and Ethics. Apple for sponsoring this podcast. I'd also like to give a big shout out to Frederick and Christiane for helping me with all the day-to-day stuff, uh, with getting things up on websites and helping to get posters ready. Thank you so much for all the work you do to Jeremy John for the logo and Gordon Clark for the bed music. This is The Animal Turn with me, Claudia Hurtenfelder.com. That's I R O A R P O D.com.