# BioGov - Silo Based

> An opening rather than a conclusion

## Guiding Questions

- How can we consciously develop symbiotic interfaces with the more-than-human beings?
- How can human technology (both modern and ancient) provide translational interfaces for interspecific interactions?
- How do resources flow and "decisions are taken" in living ecosystems? e.g. a forest, a lake, a honeycomb, etc...
- How do peoples already consider "nature's words" in their decision making processes? e.g. gatheres, native peoples
- How could the above phenomena inform:
- governance protocols?
- token design?

## Introduction

The more-than-human complexes that make up life have valuable contributions to various governance dynamics, especially when it comes to the human and artificial territorialities of countries, cities, neighborhoods, towns, etc., whose political and economic membranes generally lack and/or ignore the feedback loops from planetary biomes.

That is, other living beings, as well as our host environment, have much to say about the choices we collectively make - especially those that affect other beings in a common space. And not just as simple providers of cold data (e.g. indexes of biodiversity, air, water, and soil quality, etc.), but as sentient and conscious members of their communities. The big challenge is that, with modernity, we have lost the habit of naturally perceiving, interacting with, and internalizing their voices.

In this sense, this project represents **a great inquiry towards ways of communicating with the more-than-human pluriverse**, in order to **propose interfaces that enable Sensory-Intuitive Interactions and interspecific Deliberative Processes**.

Such an inquiry can be approached through various paths: from the traditional customs of native peoples, to modern scientific methods. And the same goes for the possible interfaces: sometimes mediated by technological artifacts (analog and digital), sometimes manifested through observing, feeling and transcending on a metaphysical level.

With all of this, the scope of this investigation must be broad enough to accommodate this diversity of approaches. And the structure that seemed most appropriate is the following:

## Inquiry's Backbone

We believe that one of the most effective ways to co-create and disseminate the concepts and practices fundamental to BioGovernance is via working with the collective imaginary. More specifically through the:

1. Co-writing of a [speculative fabulation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFGXTQnJETg) that interweaves both already real and potential steps toward present-futures in which conventional modes of governance incorporate humans and non-humans in symbio-democratic processes.
- Such a history [has already begun to be written (in Portuguese)](https://hackmd.io/4OGYX4STQLabN8Oy5kzLLQ) based on a retrospective of the Rights of Nature movement.
- The intention is to format and distribute it as an interactive fiction, like the short story ["Mushy Foray"](https://danolivaz.itch.io/mushy-foray), written by the proponent of this investigation and selected to compose the installation ["Inhabiting the ruins: inventions and fabrications of worlds to come"](http://habitarasruinas.org/baie/).
- Regarding examples of possible sensorial-intuitive interactions between human and non-human beings, the proponent's experimentation history indicates a fruitful direction: [DIY bio-data devices]((https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/698455089/5be36d6091)) capable of creating subjective interaction channels between human and non-human beings (especially plants and fungi), from the multimedia processing of these beings' electrical micro-fluctuations.

2. Development of a game that, continuing the plot of the speculative fabulation, stimulates different people to: 1. test forms of sensory-intuitive interactions and deliberative processes with the more-than-human universe, and 2. feed back the results (subjective and objective) of these experiences into the narrative itself, so that it functions as a living record, or a space-time coordinate in the interweaving of the investigative paths towards BioGovernance.
- This is a very complex step, because it has several elements that need to be carefully designed and tested, from the dynamics of the game itself, to the technical aspects for sharing/incorporating players' experiences.
- A natural way to prototype the feedback dynamics goes through the development of proto-artifacts that have the technical/artistic goal of enabling sensory-intuitive interactions and deliberative processes between human and non-human beings. Being digital (like bio-data readers), analog or mixed (like the strategies used in Alternative Reality Games - ARGs), these would compose an Ecology of Bio-Governance Artifacts that would mediate the game interfaces.
- The prototyping of such artifacts have been proposed to [an art residency](https://silo.org.br/convocatoria-para-projetos-lab-de-governan%C3%A7a/) happening in Resende-RJ (Brazil), in July of 2022.

3. Speculation and prototyping of possible dynamics/protocols of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) that bridge the experiences and insights coming from the co-creation of this narrative/game and the emerging worlds of web3 and Metaverse technologies. Ideally, giving life to a more-than-human DAO, that is, a "bioDAO".
- This step concerns the roots of this research, which got its current shape from interactions around MetaGov itself.
- Moreover, all the initiators of this research participated in the gestation of [taoDAO](tao-dao.hotglue.me/), an experiment about the cultural appropriation of web technologies3 in the context of multimedia content production. Thus, any result (material or symbolic) coming from this research will certainly feed at least this decentralized autonomous organization.
- And finally, given the possible impact of such technologies on a large scale, it is understood that it is extremely necessary to sow the pluriversity of ideas and cosmosenses in their creators, especially while they are in early stages of development.

# Neologisms & Challenges

* By **Sensory-Intuitive Interaction"** is meant an interaction that, through its communicative means, provides a level of dialogue such that there exists an intuitive recognition (at least on the human part) of the sensibility and consciousness of its interlocutors.
* By "**Interspecific Deliberative Process**" is meant some dynamic in which there is an attempt (successful or not) at decision making between a human being and a non-human being.
* By **"present-futures"** we mean a non-linear time, when the future is already blueprinted in a fabric woven in the present.
* By "**symbio-democracy**" we mean a political doing in which sovereignty is exercised by a life of intimate connection between organisms of different species (MARGULIS, 1990, p. 95) relating symbiotically among themselves and with the environment they share. Thus respecting the needs and relationships of biotic and abiotic environments regardless of their human-defined category.
* By "**bioDAO**" we mean the extension of the structure of decentralization and organization protocols used by human DAOs to more-than-human entities - a concept still under construction since this is perhaps the apex of this research.

The effort to synthesize the proposed investigation in human terms goes through the need to stretch our perceptions in an attempt to contemplate in modern human contours something that is far beyond it. Obviously, the abyss between the establishment of a dialogic channel between species (especially when subjective) and a decision-making process, which usually involves interests, concessions, agreements, etc. and presupposes a common language, is huge.

In this sense, the establishment of this language, or even of some other access portal for these forms of communication that we do not know, is possibly the greatest challenge we will face... Because what would be a "decision making" taking into account the different times and pulses of each kingdom (fauna, flora, funghi and minaral), right?

However, we believe that such a phenomenon is not only possible, but necessary for the moment in which we live. And working with speculative fabulations opens up hopeful possibilities in this direction.

- As [Zoy Anastassakis](https://uerj.academia.edu/Anastassakis) puts it in [independent studies program in humusities](https://www.facebook.com/humusidades/): "With Donna Haraway, Didier Debaise, Isabelle Stengers and Stuart McLean, **speculative fables** can be defined as the production of anthropological fictions vivid and intense enough to make room for the imagination of transformative futures that are capable of intervening in a transformative way in reality. Speculative fabulations can be cultivated through correspondence experimentation and participant observation, where those who observe act responsibly and engagingly."