Meeting with Kristina Libby – Discussing Technobiophilia

I had an incredibly interesting and creative conversation yesterday with Kristina Libby. Kristina took part in my first-panel discussion and we have kept in touch ever since. She is an expert in biophilic design having run projects looking at biophilia in the workplace and utilising biophilia concepts in creating a covid floral memorial. Kristina is also involved in technology in her work and she raised some very innovative points around utilising technology and nature together in the first panel discussion. Therefore, I was very keen to talk with her about how she feels technophilia could be applied in hospitality settings.

The key points of the discussion are below, or you can listen to the discussion by clicking the above video.

The Discussion

• Considering an individual’s impact on the environment
  • Developing responsive spaces to demonstarte the message of individual’s impacts on the planet, similar to those utilised in ad campaigns
    • Can demonstrate climate change data eg: wildfire data
    • A part of biophilia that is missing – intellectual engagemnt with the environment
  • Utilse data emitted from phones to determine individual’s impacts?
  • How to make climate actions beautiful so that people feel the topics of sustianable actions are more approachable and allows them to realise their own power.
  • ICCP report – 10 years to impact climate change
    • All industries have some sort of responsibility
    • How do you emotionally encourage people ot act? – educating, entertaining and reconnecting people to the world

• Technical spaces responsive to your immediate actions eg: flower grows as you move your hand
  • As people move they could develop a seemingly blank space into a more biophilic one – active participatory role in the environment
  • Utilsie Microsoft Kinect software – utilised in responsive art pieces – look to see if there are any collaborators interested to work on this – Kristina has a contact she is going to reach out to and ask if he would be interested in getting involved in developing something like this
    • Be careful of too much light in these spaces for projections as then projectors need to be of a very high calibre
  • Living walls that change and grow as you are in front of it?
  • Climate data projected in black and white in a space that is otherwise biophilic – the projection responds to the room in unexpected ways.

• Utilise tech to demonstarte the importance of small actions in aiding nature and the climate crisis
  • Recycling container – when you throw something into it a virtual leaf grows in the projection onto the bin and adds to the tree/ forest – you can see your small addition to the bigger picture resultant from your sustainable efforts
  • Contextually responsive spaces can help to combat ‘ad blindness’ and will engage more people through its unusual form
  • Interative art pieces are typically modern and contemporary (espeically in New York) and so bringing a type of natural form and wonder into this arena could be really interesting

• Parts of biophilia seem almost backward wanting things to turn away from tech, but there are ways that tech can be utilsied to move the efforts to connect people with nature forward

• At the moment there is a void between ideas that are all biophilic or all modern, tech could help bridge the gap
  • Herb farm – every inch it grows the screen changes? or as people reach to touch the plants something chnages in the projections
  • Showcasing the benefits of interacting with physcial forms of plants eg: lavender has this positive impact on you/ farming lavander has these imapcts – when you hover your phone over a plant it showcases facts about the plant?
  • Vitrually growing a plant on a wall projection form the start of your meal/ when you arrive until the end – when you re enter a space and scan your phone the projection comes back up of your exact plant and begins to grow again – returning to the spaces continues your presonal expericene and connection to nature.

• How do you create a space to be more than a space? what can the space teach us?

• Chefs are often egar to educate through their food, but the restaurnt setting itself can also be a space to educate and connect people to the offering to translate their ethos
  • QR codes to order – create an AR experience for when people order, information about the food comes up as does a fitting experience of nature for the spaceeg: animals and trees or butterfiles across the screen
  • Communicate the ordering data back to people in the venue eg: X amount of people ordered the salmon today, salmon farming has this impact on nature.

• Gamification to communicate natural experiences
  • AR/VR isnt full adpoted by people yet, so we can’t expect them to utilise it in a space of their own accord – we have to integrate it into an expericne that they are already familiar with if we want them to use it eg: menu ordeirng utilsing phones creates AR experience or instagramming food in places with specialised AR filter?
  • Gratitude for sustianbility posistive actions eg: utilsing a reusabel water bottle to fill up from a fountain could add a natural elemnt to a bigger piece of virtual projection artwork eg: grows a flower on the tree

Reflection

I am very keen to explore the ideas I discussed with Kristina further, as I believe they could result in some incredibly engaging, novel and original adaptations of nature into hospitality businesses. One of the ideas I am keen to research further first is the idea of utilising Microsoft Kinect to track movements of people interacting with projected images and then the images respond to their movement. If this is possible to do in the time frame, I feel it could reveal some very strong data around improvements to connection to nature in hospitality settings. The technology could be applied whereby natural elements grew from performing certain actions, or information about nature or ways in which the business are acting sustainably were projected on a wall as you walked past it. There are many applications if the technology can be harnessed to cater for hospitality spaces in the time.

I am also very keen to explore the AR ideas of making natural elements pop out as you get the menu up when ordering through a QR code. Seen as mobile devices are being readily used to order now after covid restrictions, it makes sense to incorporate nature into the ordering process and it could provide facts about the food or natural elements involved in the food-making process, as well as showing virtual nature around the venue.