Decentering Design: Bees, Biomimicry, and the Sixth Mass Extinction

My dissertation explored the ways in which designers engage (or could engage) with issues related to ecology and sustainability. With a particular focus on bees, I explored the history of robotic animals and biomimicry, as well as other technological approaches that aim to address climate change. Robotic bees provide a specific artifact to think through some of these issues, as well as to speculate about broader challenges of ecological design.

Robotic Bees will never be a sustainable form of Pollination

This work includes chapters on the role of animals in urban space, technology use in agricultural settings, human exploitation of animal labor, design ethics, and extinction in the Anthropocene. I drew on a range of methods in this research, primarily interaction criticism, content analysis, and interviews. Ultimately, robotic bees cannot provide a sustainable means of pollination, and technological efforts would best be spent trying to help the living bee population to survive and thrive.