rotator

2021

This project came to life as part of my Transdisciplinary Design MFA work and would not have been possible without the help and guidance from the Radha Mistry and Elliott P. Montgomery.

Through nutrient regulation, capturing, and (re)distribution rotator, a speculative design project, examines and explores food systems, circular economy models, and service design futures. The Return On Nutrition (R.O.N.) system is a helix design model that provides people with nutrition-packed consumables made from Solein59 and, in exchange, the users donate plant-ready night soil fertilizer pellets to R.O.N. systems to rebuild topsoil stocks.  

By the year 02096, thanks to the Earth Restoration Movement (ERM), our home planet saw its final flush. Shutting down the precarious and environmentally caustic plumbing systems that churned ever-increasing amounts of sewage through corroded and broken pipes to colonize coastlines with untreated waste led to a series of self-contained commode inventions. Ultimately the R.O.N. system became the earth closet of choice for urban dwellers in the U.S. and many other countries.  

The R.O.N. system is a holistic nutrition intake + output design that manages nutrition flow as it moves through humans and into refined ready-to-plant night soil pellets. Once at the night soil reception plant, the pellets are weighed, screened, and incorporated into a batch with other pellets to balance the nutritional composition. The screening helps to ensure that the pellet meets the R.O.N. quality control regulations and analyzes the soil for microbiome irregularities. If irregularities are found in the pellets, diet supplements are integrated into the users’ food. Healthy soil and users are critical to the R.O.N. systems' success. 

Videography by Dustin Flannery-McCoy and Jack Burns

Direction, Editing, Art-Direction, Props, Costumes, and Visual Narrative by Jack Burns

Re-Re

The reciprocal receptacle, colloquially known as the re-re, is the vessel used by R.O.N. servicers to deliver nutrient intake to residents, and, in turn, the residents place their pretested night soil pellets in the re-re for pickup.

Plate

Entirely edible and designed to encourage a waste-free eating experience, the pinched back plate can easily be held with one hand. Then, when the resident is finished with their nutrient intake, they can consume the chip-like plate as an in-between meal snack.

Napkin

Similar to the plate, the napkins are designed to prevent food waste and are designed to be an edible snack-like food after the meal is completed.

Food

Accompanied by several mouth-watering sauces, the nutrient intake is a protein-rich culinary miracle containing all the vitamins, minerals, and calories a body needs. The solein59 flake is tailored to deliver a nourishing meal that works with the residents' unique microbiome to create the most fertile castings possible.

R.O.N. 02243AA

The latest high-tech earth closet, the R.O.N. 02243AA, is a revolutionary machine that purifies, enrichens, and compresses castings into easy-to-transport pelites. With governmental rebates and subsidies, the easy-to-use R.O.N. 02243AA maintained by R.O.N. Industries pays for itself in as little as a half-year.

Night Soil

R.O.N. Industries prides itself on its ability to harvest the highest grade, ready-to-plant night soils produced today. Compressed and nested in the transport container for freshness preservation, the pellets are ready for immediate soil integration.

R.O.N. Value Indicator Strips

The R.O.N. Value Indicator Strips work as a way to measure quality and confirm that the night soil is contaminate-free before it leaves the resident. Depending on where the soil lies on the value spectrum, the resident may receive additional supplements in their next re-re to encourage more fertile soil production.

Topsoil Depletion

Located on the surface of the lithosphere's outermost layer, topsoil is where over 95% of humanity's food grows, and the dirt is disappearing at an alarming rate. Over half of the world's topsoil has eroded away within the past 150 years, and if we keep on going at our current pace of soil degradation, the earth will be stripped of topsoil by 2077, according to senior UN officials. Generating a mere three centimeters of topsoil takes a thousand years through natural earthly processes. (1) (2) (3)

Earth Closet

An earth closet, invented in the 1800s, uses earth material and ash to cover a user’s excrement. This process reduces the smell and encourages a rapid decomposition of fecal matter. Often installed in a retrofitted closet, the earth closet was a precursor to the invention of indoor plumbing when water closets were more widely used in the home. Contemporary versions of earth closets called compost toilets are still used in many places where indoor plumbing is inaccessible. (1) (2) (3)

Night Soil

Often referred to as nightsoil, the end product from earth closets, cesspools, and outhouses were collected at night and sold to fertilizer manufacturers. Mixed with additional earth material and carbon-rich matter, nightsoil could be crafted into a field-ready fertilizer called poudrette. Poudrette was hailed for its ability to enrich nutrient-deficient soils and increase yields by up to a third. (3) (1) (2)

PeeCyclers

Many people use human urine as a plant fertilizer due to its high nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content and virtually nonexistent pathogen levels. Although peecycling has been a global fertilizing practice since the 1800s, this movement began gaining contemporary traction in the U.S. in 2011 with the founding of the Rich Earth Institute and has gained momentum since the Ukrainian War restricted access to Russian fertilizers. (1) (2) (3)

Solein

rotator speculates that iterations and evolutions of the present-day Solein process and product will be the bridge that carries humanity through the ERM while nutrient-rich soil is replenished through the RON system.

The contemporary Solein production process combines electricity-produced hydrogen, carbon dioxide, water, vitamins, and minerals and then feeds this mixture to microbial biomasses that become an edible 70% protein material. (1)

Bread Crumbs

2022

Setting the table for rotator, the prequel prototype, Bread Crumbs, is a speculative call back to a time of excess from a place of living with less, as seen through a lens of food access and consumption. The caller in the video oscillates between an abundant present that viewers see and shifts to the speaker's present as they describe their here and what might have ushered them towards living with less through a poem. Throughout the video, the incessant drumming of capitalism can be heard as the bleep-beep of scanned products and advertisements over the loudspeaker. The future described in the voice-over by Dash may be yet to come to some, but as the frequently quoted William Gibson suggests, others may already live with this reality.

Bread Crumbs explores food, hunger, and eating, necessities that demand constant invention and attention, as a means of transcending clock time and creating rhythms and disruptions throughout our days. Like Proust's madeleines, food can be a capsule that transports us through time, space, and emotion. It can attach to memory, manifest, and build into additional facets of our histories and influence our futures. What's more, By focusing on the hand-crafted nature of homemade food, in this case, the American hamburger, Bread Crumbs illuminates a highly intimate ritual of preparing food that people will put into their bodies that is oftentimes taken for granted or done in a perfunctory manner for the sake of sustenance and convenience.

Poem by Dash and Jack Burns

Videography by Dustin Flannery-McCoy and Jack Burns

Direction, Editing, Art-Direction, and Visual Narrative by Jack Burns