Project Overview


 

Ripples: Voices of the Lagoon



“A perfect balance for all entities is impossible, to what extent are human beings willing to cede their privileges?”Duration
15 Weeks, Autumn 2024

Course
Final Design Studio II
# Speculative Interactive Installation
# More-Than-Human Design
# Sustainable HCI
# Tangible Interaction Design
# Multispecies Governance



Ripples: Voices of the Lagoon is an interactive installation that reimagines environmental governance in the context of the Venice Lagoon. In response to the MOSE flood barrier system—which, while preventing floods, has disrupted sediment flow and endangered local ecosystems—Ripples explores the consequences of anthropocentric infrastructure and ecological imbalance.

Through the redistribution of symbolic resources (pebbles), participants engage with lagoon entities such as tides, salt marshes, and seahorses. Each decision affects the system's balance, made perceptible through audio-visual feedback and weight interaction. By amplifying the voices of non-human entities, Ripples invites reflection on ecological privilege, resource scarcity, and the potential for more adaptive, inclusive forms of coexistence.


Research Question



“A perfect balance for all entities is impossible,
to what extent are human beings willing to cede their privileges?”
     

     
Context   




The Venice Lagoon is a dynamic ecosystem shaped by tides, sediment flow, salt marshes, and diverse aquatic life. 

In response to increasing floods, the MOSE flood barrier system was constructed to protect human settlements. While effective in blocking high tides, MOSE has unintentionally disrupted the lagoon’s natural hydrodynamics, reducing sediment circulation and threatening the survival of salt marshes and species like seahorses that rely on them.

The MOSE system—an ambitious infrastructure of mobile barriers designed to prevent high tides from flooding Venice—exemplifies an anthropocentric approach to environmental control. It prioritizes human safety and urban preservation, often at the expense of ecological balance. Non-human entities within the lagoon—tides, marshes, marine species—lack representation in environmental decision-making, rendering their needs invisible within dominant governance models.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/saving-venice-from-flooding-may-destroy-the-ecosystem-that-sustains-it




The Five Entities


Through research and ecological mapping of the Venice Lagoon, we identified five key entities that represent diverse ecological roles, vulnerabilities, and forms of agency. Each of them speaks for a different layer of the lagoon’s living system—hydrodynamic, biological, cultural, or infrastructural.


TidesSalt MarshesSpartinaSeahorsesHumans




Reimagining Governance: 
MOSE in Human-Centered vs. More-than-Human Frameworks

In response to the limitations of human-centered decision-making, 
Ripples explores the possibility of a multi-species governance model—a system in which both human and non-human entities are considered stakeholders in the ecological future of the lagoon.


                        Human-Centered Governance               More-than-Human Governance


Audience Role Shift: Redistributing Power

We use pebbles—natural, weighted, and divisible—as symbolic carriers of agency, power, and resources within this more-than-human governance system.

By inviting the audience to redistribute these pebbles among the five entities of the lagoon, the installation simulates an act of ecological decision-making: a negotiation of privilege, attention, and balance across species.

Each choice made by the participant is translated into visual and auditory feedback—
the more an entity receives, the clearer its voice and brighter its form;
the less it is given, the more it fades into distortion and noise.

In this process, the audience must confront a fundamental question:

- When all lives are allowed to speak, what does fairness mean?
- And as humans, how much are we truly willing to give up?


Interactive Narrative





Each totem is equipped with a load cell sensor, connected to an Arduino-based system that registers the weight and translates it into real-time feedback.
 The more pebbles an entity receives, the more clearly it is seen and heard:
sound becomes sharper, visuals more vivid.
 But with only a limited number of pebbles available, each placement becomes a choice—revealing trade-offs, biases, and ecological tensions.

Through this interaction, participants step into the role of a mediator—not to fix the system, but to feel its imbalance, to listen, and to reflect on what it means to share agency in a world beyond humans.


Gallery





Video

                 


Recognition

Team Member

Interdependence x Milano Design Week, Milan, Italy
Exhibition with Dotdotdot, Milan, Italy
Politecnico di Milano Open Day,  Milan, Italy
DIS 2025 Demo, Madeira, Portugal
Borsato Andrea
Cosentino Sarah
Mou Zixin
Song Zhuoyue
Zhu Giulia Jiangxian

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