I am starting to understand that the scope of my final project, if it is to be an all-rounded, complete piece of work, will probably end up merging a lot of my initially-separate ideas together.
I’m here to make something good.
The Int. futures readings about mushrooms, as well as the KIPP lecture on data, reminded me that any creative artefact that the final project will take the form of will still have to be rooted in a strong, well-researched academic theoretical basis.
Below the forest floor, fungal bodies extend themselves in nets and skeins, binding roots and mineral soils, long before producing mushrooms. (Tsing, 2015)
The mushrooms in a forest only pop up above-ground thanks the the underlying network of “data” webbing through the soil. That’s where the idea for a tall stem and a shiny dotted cap that people can pick up and devour, comes from.
And that webbing is only possible thanks to the framework provided by the forest – that there is a soil to begin with, a well-balanced cocktail of species: from bacteria and worms to bids and bears, from mosses and grasses to shrubs and trees. Without all that, the mycelium would just be floating around, mere spores of potential in the air.
And here I was: debating for months whether to develop a rational work of some kind of “framework for narrating ecosystem restoration” or a “toolkit for storytellers to create empowering stories about nature”; or whether to take the crazy creative fun direction and doing a “story-based ecosystem restoration board game” or “interactive story-book for children about connecting with nature”.
Essentially, choosing between the boring mycelium and the tasty mushroom.
But, hell, this isn’t a 10-credit essay, is it? We’re talking about a final project – something that I actually really want to contribute to the world. I’m not here to do something that will rot in a university database (waiting to be excavated by a distant-future digi-archaeologists). I wanna have something that I will take away and use “for good” – with the university’s stamp of approval.
And that means that I have to weave the mycelium – so that I know my work is based on evidence and “right” – and the mushroom(s) – so that someone can taste it, eat it, be fed by it.
What will be my celium?
The mushroom became common around Nara and Kyoto, where people had deforested the mountains for wood to build temples and to fuel iron forges. Indeed, human disturbance allowed Tricholoma matsutake to emerge in Japan. This is because its most common host is red pine (Pinus densiflora), which germinates in the sunlight and mineral soils left by human deforestation. When forests in Japan are allowed to grow back, without human disturbance, broadleaf trees shade out pines, preventing their further germination. (Tsing, 2015)
Ecosystem restoration is a new thing. Connecting with nature is a new thing.
These concepts, these challenges, arose only because we have been doing such a bad job living on this planet as of late, in the past few decades especially.
They have not yet had the time to establish themselves in stories, and in academia. Some scientists in different disciplines are starting to describe this “hole in the academic market”: Climate fiction as a genre does not lead to positive outcomes, predominantly, because it is extremely pessimistic. Ecosystem restoration, as a much needed way of environmental action, is lacking strategies to effectively engage people in it. A vision of a positive climate future which we can work towards is missing.
And so, the conditions have been met, that our situation sparks the growth of its own Tricholoma matsutake. We need to learn to tell stories that engage people in ecosystem restoration, in order to gain to the now-unavoidable climate crisis and to protect that biological richness on our planet which we still have.
So far, to my knowing, no one has done it though. There are attempts. But without knowledge as to how to do it well, these usually don’t go a long way. These attempts make money, for sure, and are successful (Avatar, anyone?), but do they lead to action and empowerment? No, not yet.
If I want to help steward a movement that makes empowering ecosystem-centric stories possible, equipping storytellers – myself included – with the right evidence-based narrative tools, then I need to create that toolkit, that framework, first.
Perhaps it can take a form of a PDF manual. It can take a form of a guiding twine-like algorithm for storytellers to interact with. It can take a form of a best-and-worst-practice comparison, or a series of video essays, or a online course resource… – that, I will have to think about more.
Room for shrooms!
Once that is done, the foundation of my project is laid, which in itself should already be an artifact that can be deployed and used by others. Perhaps in liaison with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration people, some of whom I know from previous work, such a deployment could be quite within the realm of doable.
But, I came here to tell stories too, to create as a storyteller, not just for storytellers.
So, to test out my toolkit-framework, the second (and third and fourth and…) part of my project should be to allow some mushrooms to grow out of the mycelium which I laid under the degraded forest. Stories or story-based artefacts should effectively pop out of my foundation, extending its DNA into finished produ– sorry, artefacts!
And that’s where I can again revive my ideas for an interactive children’s book. Or a Minecraft Education world for older kids, or a board game for even older teens and families. Or, perhaps, a twine / short story aimed at adults.
One of those, some of those, all of those? Dunno: something to be guided better at supervising consultations.
But at least one usable artefact should come out of it – I need to illustrate how my framework-toolkit can be used. And I want to have fun and create something that will directly impact people.
The time has come for new ways of telling true stories beyond civilizational first principles. Without Man and Nature, all creatures can come back to life, and men and women can express themselves without the strictures of a parochially imagined rationality. (Tsing, 2015)
TL;DR
I realised that in order to create my “fun” artefacts – stories/games/… – I need to also create a guiding academic resource for them. Basically, research before creation. While that was probably obvious (we’re still at university), it also crystallised in my mind more that the academic basis of my creative work should become “open-source” – accessible to other storytellers, in the form of a framework or a toolkit, therefore earning its place as one of the deliverables of my project. In the end, this first half of my work will be just as important as the second half, which will consist of one or more creative works. We’ll see…
