In collaboration with Risk Hazekamp, this presentation emerges from practice-based art & design research, in which ‘otherworldly’ expressions of agency by our More-Than-Human co-researchers have been witnessed. Drawing on these experiences, we reflect on the position and situatedness of our human embodied, messy and opaque relationality with the More-Than-Human. Following María Puig de la Bellacasa, we shed light on the many blind spots regarding the (un)necessity of human care for other species, which sometimes even result in forms of ‘violent care’. By asking why organisms wish to collaborate with us, we subvert human-centred power hierarchies and open up the question of More-Than-Human consent.
Presentation: 26/06/2026 at UNLOOP symposium on interaction and computational media design, FBAUP
UNLOOP symposium explores the friction, inconvenience, and playfulness in the interaction with computational media as inducers of meaning, reflectiveness and higher-order thinking.
UNLOOP aims to question the dominant paradigms of Human-Centred Design, that centre on flow and user satisfaction and that, despite having been contributing to the production of usable artefacts, have also been leading users into hedonistic loops that reinforce automatic, familiar, and repetitive behaviours.
UNLOOP takes place in the context of the Break the Loop research project, explores how friction, inconvenience, and other playful strategies can be used to promote meaning-making and reflectiveness in users, and to develop tools for designers and other stakeholders to access this knowledge.