Applied Cosmotechnics I: Cosmochemistry
Our first full class of ‘world building’!! At the start of class we were introduced to an exercise Dr. Ansari has devised on building cosmologies and creating myths from scratch. This idea at first seemed fun and exciting (which it was!!), but towards the end of class, the world my team and I dreamt up seemed unhinged, unfinished and full of loop holes.
In the beginning, we were handed over broad frameworks to help get us started. We had the opportunity to choose who, what and how certain beings could exist in our world. We had the choice of creating certain hierarchies, or we could create a non-hierarchtical world. I quickly realized that because of our differences (different backgrounds, different interests, different ways of imagining, etc), that our various approaches to this were going to be different. I think that’s mainly because we have also been doing a lot of personal identity work and research this semester. It also felt too controlling to me at some points. I felt like I was in too much control with these “beings’” lives and not controlling enough at the same time (becasue we weren’t thinking about any possible consequences yet).
Initial notes on final project (Brainstorming):
Sammer Akkach talking about the ideas in ‘Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam’
- human presence vs the divine presence
Some things/ideas I keep coming back to:
- what would it be like to fully understand something or “play” with something without ‘eyes’ or surveillance
- what would it be like to have a place to go and garden, raising your seeds/plants into everything you want them to be; you get to nurture however you want to without the plant ‘biting back’
- really being pulled towards inanimate objects right now; no expectations on how you interact with them; you get to pick it up and put it down whenever/however you see fit
After having the one-on-one with Ansari, I’ve been looking at Sudarshan Khanna’s work on traditional toy design in India.
Love his approach on Nature Inspired Toys!!!
^^“The process that you took a principle, then you give it a theme, then you change the materials in order to have the capabilities to make it yourself”