The Garden that Sees, Smells, and Hears (2021 – 2024)

The Garden as a Living Learning Lab, a Living Sensor. The Garden that Sees, Smells, and Hears is a research project that aimed to initiate a living learning laboratory in the garden of St. Joost School of Art and Design in Breda. It used the garden as a model for learning.

In its present state, the garden of St. Joost Breda may appear classically ‘perfect’, its lawn and plants neatly mown and maintained. It stands separate from the academy’s central buildings: the garden functions merely as an aesthetic green surrounding, a place for pastime. In this respect, it is menial to our needs. This perspective, a human one, is arguably the dominant approach through which we relate to this ecosystem—defined as the sum of relationships. Living in the Anthropocene, dominant human (Western) cultures have situated humans at the centre of the ecosystem, or even above it, rather than inextricably entangled within and across it. As an alternative to this domination, Bruno Latour has described in Actor Network Theory how we might think of ourselves as actors among many other actors, enmeshed across scales. How might we develop dynamic, reciprocal relations with the ecosystem of this garden? How is learning an entity or actor in this ecosystem?

New visualizations are needed to change the dominant human perspective and move from an outside view to an inside view. To be, as Latour describes it, ‘earthbound’. Art and design education can provide these new visualizations, supporting future creatives to establish a practice from within. These practices are situated and have an understanding of a more-than-human view, wherein our position as humans cannot be seen as separate from our surroundings, but rather, as entangled and interrelated ’oddkin’ (a term coined by Donna Haraway in Staying with the Trouble [2016]). Through this position, we become family with other actors: the expected or (more often) the unexpected; the familiar and unfamiliar; known and unknown; logical and illogical; convenient and inconvenient.

Our research results are derived from our main case study: the Art and Interaction programme at St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda. 25 students from a range of disciplines participated in an assignment, ‘Agency to the Actors’, creating group projects over a three-month period. Students were asked to map and visualize the garden’s different actors, their relations, and interactions. The students created a performative piece within the garden, exploring the perspectives and agencies of these actors.

This resulted in a pedagogical guide that was based on case studies outlining how a more-than-human view can be implemented in the design education curriculum. The document is intended as a transferable DIY guide and compass aimed to support way-finding, (un)learning, and different ways of relating. It sets out four principles: mapping invisible habitats; zooming in and out of nonhuman worlds; interaction as a flux between actors; and augmented senses for noticing nonhumans.

The Garden that Sees, Smells and Hears

Educational impact

The project has influenced art and design education by integrating experiential learning about ecosystems into the curriculum. By immersing students in the ecological aspects of the garden, the project fostered a comprehensive understanding of the interconnected roles between human and non-human actors. This encouraged students to consider sustainability and ecological awareness as central elements in their future professional practices, reshaping how emerging artists and designers relate to the natural world.

March 2021 – june 2024

Principle investigator
Annemarie Piscaer

Professor
Elvin Karana

Funding
Avans University of Applied Sciences

Collaborators
St. Joost School of Art & Design

Institute
Avans University of Applied Sciences