Crip Reflections on Designing with Plants
Breakdowns and failures in more-than-human interactions
In this autoethnographic project, I document stories from designing, exhibiting, and maintaining Sensing Bodies, an interactive bioart installation that integrates plants, sensors, and LED data displays. Specifically, I reflect on the many “polished” exhibits of this installation through stories of breakdowns and failures. These breakdowns include acts of maintenance, care and repair, buggy biodata readings, and collective resistance to purification and control. These reflections show how plants, technologies, and a chronically ill body became entangled with each other conceptually and materially, surfacing new sites for more-than-human relationalities. Through this project, I unpack how disability perspectives can expand more-than-human design practices in HCI.
Publications:
Sylvia Janicki, Nassim Parvin, Noura Howell. 2024. Crip Reflections on Designing with Plants: Intersecting Disability Theory, Chronic Illness, and More-Than-Human Design. In Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24), July 01–05, 2024, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661509 *Best Paper Award
Conference Talks:
Sylvia Janicki. 2023. Interactive Bioart as a Site for Postcolonial Inquiry. Presented at the 4S annual conference. Honolulu, Hawaii. Nov 8 – 12, 2023.
SYLVIA H JANICKI 