Bad Seed Bad Seed / bad sēd/ Noun 1. A person regarded as bad or corrupt by nature and liable to have a harmful influence on other people. “The world became exasperated and wrote them off as bad seeds.”
Sustainable Systems Final Project Order of contents Bad Seed-Lily Saeli Introduction Research paper Abstract Design Spread Executive Summary Bio
Introduction
Responding to the Call Climate Change’s Impact Students in Jenifer Wightman’s “Sustainable Systems” Class Spring 2017, decided to craft solutions to real design calls including: • NYC L-train will be shutdown to repair damage from Superstorm Sandy. In 2012, superstorm Sandy’s storm surge flooded the Canarsie Tunnel under the East River causing irreparable damage. In response, the MTA announced it would shut down the L-train between Manhattan and Brooklyn for 18 months beginning January 2019 to make critical repairs. Two design calls seek alternate transportation solutions for the 200,000 daily L-train commuters. TransAlt design brief, https://www.transalt.org/ltrain-designbrief Van Alen Charette, https://www.vanalen.org/projects/l-train-shutdown-charrette/ • Life Cycle challenges Healthy Materials Lab has partnered with the Making Center at Parsons to sponsor the Role Models Competition, an opportunity for New School students to take a closer look at the materials that make their models and challenge themselves to design with global health in mind. https://healthymaterialslab.org/events/rolemodelscontest Cradle to Cradle Design Challenge enables designers to learn and apply critical strategies for envisioning products for the circular economy. http://www.c2ccertified.org/connect/design-challenge • Human Impacts Institute runs an annual series of events that showcase artists creating climate-inspired performances, installations, and exhibits; deploying the arts and creativity to share knowledge, broaden the climate conversation, educate, and incite action. Creative Climate Awards, http://www.humanimpactsinstitute.org/creative-climate-awards We are from all over the world with different perspectives on what constitutes a resilient future using design to promote quality living given the challenges with increasing consumption by a growing population in the context of a changing climate. Our projects endeavor to make the systems of society more resilient and equitable for future generations. My project explores climate change’s impact people and its environement with a twist. Rather than have the flora be the only organism affected by this phenemoa, humans are as well. I wanted to bring attention to the agricultural effects of climate, especially since our food system is taken for granted. This would allow people to become more aware of this system. In addition, the zine provides social commentary on appearance-based discrimination and the effects of it taken to the extreme. Several images were based off of graphic material, including skin stripepd to reveal the muscle structure, humans affected by pesticides, a Holocaust corpse, and an art style loosly inspired by the Enigma of Amigara Fault.
Climate Change’s Economic and Agricultural Effects Climate change affects much more than temperature and weather change. The number of pests and diseases are increasing due to prolonged hot seasons, wetter winters and reduced soil retention.1 Thus, this puts several plant species at risk, affecting commodities such as mangoes, coffee, and wheat. All of these products make up part of the global economy and will result in market failure if this pattern of climate change continues. Pests Mangoes, a tropical commodity, are threatened by Bactrocera invadens.2 These fruit flies thrive in the hotter climate. With extended growing seasons, and mango trees utilizing the increased CO2 levels, both the pest and the produce survive for longer periods of time. It starts with a female fruit fly finding a host plant and implanting her eggs into the skin of the fruit.3 This is followed by the newly-born larvae tunneling through the fruit.4 This causes the bacteria on the surface of the fruit to enter the fruit, giving the larvae protein to feed on.5 After 11 days, the larvae develop into pupae and then seek out mates to continue the cycle.6 While fruit flies are thought to be relatively harmless, they can easily infest an orchard. In addition to this, Europe will completely reject a consignment of mangoes if an inspector finds a single infested fruit (due to fruit flies’ being labeled as quarantine insects).7 Thus, growers need to take utmost care in European mango sale lest they lose revenue. Perhaps companies may need to be even more cautious, considering the mango fly’s tastes for other fruits: guavas, tropical almonds, avocados, rose apples, tangerines, and oranges.8 It seems that pests have adapted their tastes. Fungi Nine-to-fivers and art students constantly need coffee. It’s one of the most common ways to start the day. However, two of the most popular coffee flavors (Arabica coffee and Robusta) are being infected by Hemileia vastatrix and H. coffeicola, causing them to develop lesions which make the leaves fall off prematurely (this is known as coffee rust).9 These fungi thrive during the wet season, and due to climate change, it will rain more often.10 A single lesion will produce four to six crops of spores, releasing about 300,000 urediniospores over a period of 3 to 5 months, and these spores are able to survive for six weeks after the epidemic, ready to infect Mark Ballingall, Andy Evans, and Diona Burnett, “Climate Change and Crops Pets, Weeds and Disease: A Concern for Today and Tomorrow?” October 2013, businesswales.gov.wales, accessed April 7, 2017, https://businesswales.gov.wales/farmingconnect/sites/farming/files/climate_change_crop_pests_weads_and_disease. pdf. 2 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Controlling the mango fruit fly, Benin,” 2007, Teca.fao.org, accessed April 15, 2017, http://teca.fao.org/sites/default/files/technology_files/How%20to%20control%20the%20mango%20fruit%20fly.pdf. 3 South Pacific Commision, “Mango Fruit Fly,” Spc.int, Accessed April 12, 2017, http://www.spc.int/pacifly/pest_adv_leaflets/pal-34-mango-fly-en.pdf.v 4 “Controlling the mango fruit fly, Benin.” 5 “Mango Fruit Fly.” 6 Ibid. 7 “Controlling the mango fruit fly, Benin.” 8 “Mango Fruit Fly.” 9 American Phytopathological Society, “Coffee rust,” Updated 2011, accessed April 12, 2017, http://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/intropp/lessons/fungi/basidiomycetes/pages/coffeerust.aspx. 10 Ibid. 1
Appendix B
Bibliography
Bad Seed A sci-fi possibility by Lily Saeli
ABSTRACT Climate change’s effects are not limited to humans. They are affecting our food system. To bring light to this issue, I decided to have plant pests and diseases threaten humans. A bad seed is known as a person who is corrupt by nature, and has a negative influence on others. In this zine, there is a stigma against those mutated in this alternative future. Those who sow the seeds and bring this social discrimination to question are ostracized for their appearance, rather than their thinking. Thus, this reflects similar divides in our country today. This zine is not just a science fiction, it a metaphor for environmental and social injustices that are found in daily life, and the media. And although there are bad seeds, that does not mean the fruit will be sour.
Executive Summary Climate change is not only affecting the temperature and the weather. As an externality of the hotter climate, crop pests and diseases are on the rise. This includes potato leafhoppers and nematodes (roundworms), yellow starthistle, and sudden oak death. Our food system is at risk. All of these factors may destroy crops entirely--removing them from the market, limiting our diets, and resulting in millions of lost revenue in the food industry from the farmer to the corporations. To bring light to this issue, I propose creating a zine comic concerned with the following: • A small group of humans have • been living off the farmer’s land, being sprayed with his pesticides and threatened by the increasing climate. • Humans, rather than plants, are being affected by diseases and pests to create emotional agency • Coping mechanisms by the farmer character upon discovering these humans will include: pesticide use, and denial • Genetic mutations due to pesticide use will also be covered to demonstrate the harmful effects on the environment. • Speculation of the future in a negative manner to enhance the theme, to make people more emotionally involved due to a frustrating ending My project will make an appeal to Human Impact Institute’s Climate Change Awards. The concept of my project deals directly with said issue, and will be tailored to teenagers and up due to the complex nature of the content, its social issues. This zine about role reversal. Humans, instead of plants, will be suffering from diseases and pests. This anthropomorphization will allow readers to conceptualize what’s happening to our environment. The rising temperatures are bringing strange weather. Flowers are blooming earlier while bees are hatching too slow. The ecosystem is lagging. If the base of the food chain is contaminated and rendered toxic or hazardous, then the ecosystem will fall apart. The food chain is one of the most important systems in survival. Even though we don’t think of it often (especially since we’re the dominant species here), the extinction of one leads to extinction of all. And the scariest part is, sometimes fiction becomes reality.
Bio
Lily Saeli [lil-ee] [seyl-ee]
Noun
1. A Communication Design major studying at Parsons New School of Design. She is an avid coffee drinker, and writer that favors adventures on her weekdays, and sample sales on weekends. Lily is also sci-fi geek, with favorites such as Black Mirror, Gattaca, Doctor Who, Psycho Pass, and Rick and Morty.
Illustrations and poetry? That’s a Lily Saeli thing.