Prototyping a Relational Web

“The struggle to understand and steer the interaction between the bitsphere and the biosphere is the struggle for community in the broadest ecological context." – Ursula M. Franklin (1989)

Can networked technologies support vital communal exchanges while working in just relationship with the Earth? To contend with this, we must center our ecological kin as teachers and co-conspirators rather than voiceless victims of an extractive design process. If we tune into the everyday choreographies of life across its many scales and forms, we may come to re-member more caring and cooperative protocols of entanglement.
In this informal playshop, we will take cues from blood clots, starling murmurations, ant colonies, and mycelial webs alike to explore what makes a network a community. Then with speculative criticality, we’ll try to unravel the messy relationships that uphold our digital infrastructure and sow seeds of consent, trust, situatedness, and collective agency.