Future Scenario: A World Devoid of Bees, Four Millennia into the Future, 2022

Type: Self-initiated experimental project 
My Role: Letting my imagination go wild
Methods: Usability Testing, Prototyping, Ethnographic Study, Subject-Matter-Expert Interview

The Scenario

Colony Collapse Disorder is a serious threat to bee colonies and is happening at a alarming rate. What does a world devoid of bees look like?

PART 1
Signal Scanning

I looked at climate news to see what the noise and the buzz around bees and climate change were. Turns out the signals aren’t very quiet; they’re quite literally clues for what is to come.

Bee colonies collapse due to these three culprits(1):
Pests and pathogens,
Exposure to agrochemicals and
Habitat loss and degradation.

“Humans depend on plants and plants depend on pollinators. A balance must be maintained in order to sustain life on earth and protect human survival and health”

PART 2
Scenario’s

I took all my understanding of what was happening in terms of why bee colonies were declining and how they affect human life and our ecosystem and then flipped the question to see how our planet will adapt to this. I used the futures wheel slightly different to how it’s normally used and created a wheel to understand how plants will be forced to adapt to ensure pollination, in the absence of bee pollinators and other agents.

I approached this with a sense of optimism, trying to stay on the very thin line of making sure bees aren’t being portrayed as something we have at our disposal and can survive without.

PART 3
Scenario Plotting

I came up with a few starter ideas to envision how plants without bees and other forms of pollinators would survive.  

This is a refined idea cloud of some of the ideas that made the cut. 

PART 4
Designing a Plant Specie Community

Introducing to you a knew flora-fauna hybrid plant, animal specie colony

SCENARIO 1- Pollen grains incubate on stationary plants like caterpillars and then fly away like a butterfly on maturity

Foilo kukoon is a hybrid specie with animal-like characteristics. The pollen in this species is called a “Pollenpillar” and is a mobile creature that grows and incubates on the plant and then develops into a creature with the capability to take flight, on maturity. 

SCENARIO 4- Pollination happens below ground instead of above ground

Phyla subrutus is a smart and adaptive specie that has allowed for the root system to be the primary carrier of pollen with large root systems that grow miles to a length. The pollen is transferred to other plants via the root tips.

In some cases the roots themselves produce the pollen, instead of the flower.

SCENARIO 5- Flowers become ginormous to increase visibility

Giga aflora has adapted to produce flowers that are massive, many feet in diameter so as to be visible to the few pollination agents around as well as to help drone pollinators detect them. The stalk of the flowers are hyper-flexible and wave to the wind, further increasing visibility.

SCENARIO 2- Pollen production increases massively to overcompensate for low pollination rates.

Polus Maximus is a master plant specie and functions as a pollen producer that produces and houses pollens from all kinds of plants that grow in a particular region. It’s held together by the magnetic force they exert on one another and as they mature they lose this magnetic field momentarily and are dispersed to the environment with the force of the wind or drop to the soil beneath.

SCENARIO 3- Plants develop a means to become mobile

Malcum mobia has tentacle-like legs that allow them to plant themselves onto a forest floor but also move around gradually during its lifetime so as to disperse its pollen. The large tentacles, plant the pollen into the soil as they move around.

SCENARIO 6- In response to the harsh climate, flowers bloom downwards instead of upwards in order to protect themselves.

Asuna aflora is a conscious flower that remembers its ancestors and doesn’t bloom to the sun but blooms downwards with deep sadness and flush the pollen down, almost like the flower is crying. Seen here is just the flower adaptation of Asuna aflora

PART 5
The Immersive
Experience using AR

The irony I wanted to bring to this project was to see how futuristic plants would look like in the natural surroundings we see today.

I wanted to see how I can push the boundaries to how we story-tell with a medium like Augmented Reality that lets you interact with the idea in a more tangible way.  

This is an immersive experience where one is able to place these futuristic plant artifacts in their natural environment and look at how seemingly alien and out of place some of these plants might look.