Crafting Ecosystems consists in one video installation, a serigraphy, an interactive experimental app and infographics | Designed and written by: Chiara Scarpitti, Enza Migliore and Francesco Dell'Aglio.

During the Covid-19 emergency of 2020, the Information system, governed by data- flows, generations, and representations, proved to be one of the most overwhelming and uncontrolled phenomena. In this scenario, the essay presents a critical analysis, highlighting urgencies and opportunities for the design discipline to define its substantial and meaningful role in the Information Age. The research encourages the design culture to go beyond the dichotomy between materiality and virtuality by depicting reference's paths and practices, trying "to craft" new hybrid ecosystems. To inspire new design challenges, the experimental project Crafting Ecosystems is a proposal of a new design-led scenario for the Information. The project is based on a double-time perspective, made evident during the lockdown: the speed of the media information coming from the continuous digital flows; and the slowness of the natural ecosystems with its calm and inexorable evolutionary times. With the aim to relate man and nature through digital technologies, combining these two-time levels, it is an invitation to observe reality in an integrated way and realize how emergencies inevitably depend on the interconnected balance between all living beings, humans, animals, plants. Crafting Ecosystems is aimed to hybridize virtuality and materiality, infosphere and natural ecosystems, algorithms and critical thinking, information, and empathy. It claims that data-focused design should actively participate in the definition of an advanced Information Age. It opposes digital information's intellectual laziness, employing awareness, nature, crafting, humanity, and transdisciplinarity. The goal is to offer a different kind of public Information based on empathy and awareness, focused on the restoration of a balance between natural and artificial, translated into tangible actions, replies to emergency circumstances. The final designed project is an interactive invitation to observe reality in an integrated way and realize how data and emergencies inevitably depend on the interconnected balance between all living beings. 

Full Paper and Project presented at Design Cultures CUMULUSROME 06.2021 "New Normal Session" (curated by L. Imbesi, L. Di Lucchio - Università La Sapienza Rome)