Diffractive Interfaces: Facilitating Agential Cuts in Forest Data Across More-than-human Scales
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: As cities worldwide adopt data-driven approaches to optimize urban forests, computational tools like agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly popular to simulate forest growth and inform planting decisions. However, ABMs often focus on individual metrics, neglecting forests as interdependent ecosystems. Rooted in anthropocentric ideals, these models risk reducing forests to infrastructures for human benefit, undermining their long-term resilience. This pictorial challenges these limitations by exploring how interface design can transcend reductive, agent-centric representations to foster relational understandings of forest ecosystems as more-than-human bodies. Drawing on feminist theorist Karen Barad's concepts of “diffraction” and “agential cuts,” we craft a repertoire of diffractive interfaces that engage with forest simulation data, revealing how more-than-human bodies can be encountered across diverse temporal, spatial, and agential scales. Through this design exploration, we operationalize more-than- human perspectives in data practices, deepening our understanding of the performative dimensions of interfaces and advancing nuanced, practical approaches to more-than-human design.
Authors: Elisa Giaccardi, Seowoo Nam, Iohanna Nicenboim
Institutions: Politecnico di Milano, Delft University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4412035842