Turner Boxes and Bees: From Ambivalence to Diffraction

This paper is a Research through Design (RtD) investigation that deeply reflects on our ambivalence with three design choices we made while designing in a multispecies context. The ongoing RtD project, called Turner Boxes, aims to design a technological network to interact with wild bees in an urban environment. The design choices negotiate challenges we encountered, including the potential effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) on bee ecologies; sucrose feeding as an established human-bee interaction; and the question of human intervention when designing in relation to other species. We analyze our negotiations of these challenges along with the practices of beekeepers and ecologists who were part of our investigation, to realize that ambivalence is a characteristic and a resource in multispecies designing. We extend this analysis through feminist epistemologies to articulate a position of diffraction, a standpoint from which to design in multispecies worlds in which interdependencies and differences are critical.