Bio-Digital Calendar: Attuning to Nonhuman Temporalities for Multispecies Understanding

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Abstract

We explore how actively engaging with the temporalities of a nonhuman organism can lead to multispecies understanding. To do so, we design a bio-digital calendar that brings attention to the growth and health of kombucha SCOBY, a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast that lives in a tea medium. The non-invasive bio-digital calendar surrounds the kombucha SCOBY to track (via sensors) and enhance (via sound) its growth. As we looked at and listened to our kombucha SCOBY calendar on a daily basis, we became attuned to the slowness of kombucha SCOBY. This multisensory noticing practice with the calendar, in turn, destabilized our preconceived human-centered positionality, leading to a more humble, decentered relationship between us and the organism. Through our experiences with the bio-digital calendar, we gained a better relational multispecies understanding of temporalities based on care, which, in the long term, might be a solution to a more sustainable future.

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APA

Bell, F., Coffie, J., & Alistar, M. (2024). Bio-Digital Calendar: Attuning to Nonhuman Temporalities for Multispecies Understanding. In ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3623509.3633386

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