Creating Materials for the Symbiocene: A Proposed Nomenclature

Abstract

From the introduction:

“For the largest part of our species existence, humans have negotiated relationships with our sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus on ...Today we participate almost exclusively with other humans and our own human-made technologies ... (Yet) we still need that which is other than ourselves and our own creations. We need to know the textures, the rhythms, the tastes of the bodily world and to distinguish between such tastes and those of our own invention.”
-David Abram, “The Spell of the Sensuous” (2017)