BIOM Knowledge Access Research Group
Department of Integrative Biology & Management
Embracing Transdisciplinarity & Systems Thinking
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Manufactured Ecosystems - Forecasting Climate Futures
WELCOME! YOU BELONG HERE!
Join us www.manufacturedecosystems.com
Experience our shared future and help retell life stories of a post-climate world. Let’s change the climate crisis narrative.
Our methods follow current decolonized research that highlights how modes of artistic production (including literature, art, and creative media production) drive innovative research. Our team looks to relational, reflexive, and recursive exchanges through meaningful dialogue about creative solutions. Such creative endeavours drive forecasting research by providing environments for contemplative reflection.
Similarly, curated exhibitions can stimulate meaningful dialogue. When creative arts resemble the natural world, these representations of the evocative uncanny can shape our impressions or implicit preferences. Creative explosions that reflect natural patterns facilitate human sensemaking to play with everyday information environments. Creative instincts may also follow other adaptive aesthetics like an appreciation of bodies (for reproduction), high status (for security), and appealing landscapes (for safety).
Creative and imagined climate solutions deserve research attention. Speculative prototypes for prefigurative technologies are often developed in literature and art. STEM and innovation have long drawn from science fiction, like Star Trek's “flip phones” or the Jetson's “maid” as live-in Roomba. Humanity must begin designing adaptation ecosystems where technological proxies function in place of the interconnected web of ecological conditions.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS imagine climate adaptation solutions that mimic our natural ecologies. Often referred to as biomimicry and bio-inspired design, these processes and products of intense innovation and artistic creativity catalyze, reinforce, or replace ecosystems by devising technological proxies and other practical solutions for a coming ecological collapse.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS change climate crisis narratives by welcoming people to share experiences of complete adaptation strategies—this takes form in virtual and live performances and exhibitions that feature real and imagined climate futures–technologies that replace ecosystems for survival in a post-climate world. This research enterprise presents here four straightforward goals: (1) to curate an open-access database of technological proxies; (2) to consider creative arts that imagine technological solutions not-yet-developed; (3) to curate real & virtual experiences for public consumption; & (4) to collect reflections of people’s subsequent experiences. The earth nears its capacity limits; the UN gives humanity twelve years to act.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS readjust everyday conversations about climate futures. By estimating and imagining frontiers for how to work together, we devise climate actions and anticipate nature-inspired technological solutions to change how we talk about the climate.
Join us www.manufacturedecosystems.com
Experience our shared future and help retell life stories of a post-climate world. Let’s change the climate crisis narrative.
Our methods follow current decolonized research that highlights how modes of artistic production (including literature, art, and creative media production) drive innovative research. Our team looks to relational, reflexive, and recursive exchanges through meaningful dialogue about creative solutions. Such creative endeavours drive forecasting research by providing environments for contemplative reflection.
Similarly, curated exhibitions can stimulate meaningful dialogue. When creative arts resemble the natural world, these representations of the evocative uncanny can shape our impressions or implicit preferences. Creative explosions that reflect natural patterns facilitate human sensemaking to play with everyday information environments. Creative instincts may also follow other adaptive aesthetics like an appreciation of bodies (for reproduction), high status (for security), and appealing landscapes (for safety).
Creative and imagined climate solutions deserve research attention. Speculative prototypes for prefigurative technologies are often developed in literature and art. STEM and innovation have long drawn from science fiction, like Star Trek's “flip phones” or the Jetson's “maid” as live-in Roomba. Humanity must begin designing adaptation ecosystems where technological proxies function in place of the interconnected web of ecological conditions.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS imagine climate adaptation solutions that mimic our natural ecologies. Often referred to as biomimicry and bio-inspired design, these processes and products of intense innovation and artistic creativity catalyze, reinforce, or replace ecosystems by devising technological proxies and other practical solutions for a coming ecological collapse.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS change climate crisis narratives by welcoming people to share experiences of complete adaptation strategies—this takes form in virtual and live performances and exhibitions that feature real and imagined climate futures–technologies that replace ecosystems for survival in a post-climate world. This research enterprise presents here four straightforward goals: (1) to curate an open-access database of technological proxies; (2) to consider creative arts that imagine technological solutions not-yet-developed; (3) to curate real & virtual experiences for public consumption; & (4) to collect reflections of people’s subsequent experiences. The earth nears its capacity limits; the UN gives humanity twelve years to act.
MANUFACTURED ECOSYSTEMS readjust everyday conversations about climate futures. By estimating and imagining frontiers for how to work together, we devise climate actions and anticipate nature-inspired technological solutions to change how we talk about the climate.
Biomimicry/Biomimetics - Learning From Nature
Biomimetics refers to a specific case of knowledge translation and transfer; from biology to, usually, engineering. Nature is overflowing with inspiring solutions to the world's most wicked problems. Some times those solutions are more sustainable than what we are currently doing.
The potential for innovation and sustainable development of technology using the principles of biomimetics is well established. We work to understand how knowledge is successfully accessed and how biology is taught to non-specialists.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2211-5463.12963
The potential for innovation and sustainable development of technology using the principles of biomimetics is well established. We work to understand how knowledge is successfully accessed and how biology is taught to non-specialists.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2211-5463.12963
Ecology and Environmental Monitoring - Systems Approaches
Seabirds behavioral ecology can provide meaningful research into both fundamental and applied questions. We study fundamental questions related to mate selection and nest energy dynamics and applied questions related to detecting large ocean regime changes though DNA metabarcoding.
The COVID19 pandemic has supported a shift in research focus to our local neighborhoods, wherever we are around the world! We're currently diving into research on the distribution and quality of Personal Protective Equipment litter in metropolitan areas. Join us as a community scientists to help track PPE in your neighborhood.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/2211-5463.13315
The COVID19 pandemic has supported a shift in research focus to our local neighborhoods, wherever we are around the world! We're currently diving into research on the distribution and quality of Personal Protective Equipment litter in metropolitan areas. Join us as a community scientists to help track PPE in your neighborhood.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/2211-5463.13315
Education - For An Uncertain Future
A renovation of post-secondary education is required to meet the learning needs of our society such that we teach the skills necessary to meet an uncertain future, any future. Our research program is designed to serve at the leading edge of scholarship in experiential and transdisciplinary education. It is driven by the existing evidence base in pedagogical best practice, in partnership with community need.
We conduct both fundament and applied research at many levels of organization (from a single lesson to a complete degree program). Our field site often finds us in the Ideas Congress program. This program establishes a transdisciplinary learning environment for all undergraduate and graduate students at any year level. Using a community-engaged problem based learning approach, students learn the most important skills associated with experiential learning (transferable skills) and practice these in an accessible and inclusive classroom.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/2211-5463.13315
We conduct both fundament and applied research at many levels of organization (from a single lesson to a complete degree program). Our field site often finds us in the Ideas Congress program. This program establishes a transdisciplinary learning environment for all undergraduate and graduate students at any year level. Using a community-engaged problem based learning approach, students learn the most important skills associated with experiential learning (transferable skills) and practice these in an accessible and inclusive classroom.
Check out a recent paper: https://febs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/2211-5463.13315
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Dr Shoshanah Jacobs - Professor Department of Integrative Biology Department of Management (Adj) University of Guelph Guelph, ON, Canada [email protected] Lab group: [email protected] |