Description

Modern society is filled with fast-paced digital technologies. Our emphasis on efficiency has limited us to seeing time as a resource to be managed and optimised, and the technologies have been built on such a view. Researchers claim that this narrow perspective of time has made us blind to broader interpretations of time and has separated us from nature. The project challenges such a dominant narrative on time.

ARC — Algal Relay Computer is a simple form of computer that incorporates the growth of microalgae (Spirulina platensis) in its calculation process. A simple calculation takes a long time because the circuit needs to wait for the algae culture to grow to a certain density. The contrast of the instant technology symbolised by the computer and the slowness reflecting the temporality of microalgae serves as a design provocation to spark discussions about how we can interpret nonhuman temporalities and how designers can incorporate them into design practices.

*Design research project at Industrial Design master’s program at Eindhoven University of Technology (Supervisor: Bahareh Barati)

Press

Featured article on Kudos

Design United e-magazine

Exhibition

Dutch Design Week 2023 (TU Eindhoven Drivers of Change)

Publication

Yuta Ikeya and Bahareh Barati. 2023. Designing an Algal Relay Computer: A Critical Orientation in Exploring More-than-Human Temporality. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–6. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585874