Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Prosthetics for Planetary Resonance

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies—recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as sentient participants with different levels of consciousness in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Panpsychism, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. Utilizing a strategy of Subtractive Participation, the object eschews traditional data-output in favor of an interface that captures the ultra-litho sound of lithospheric beings and generates a quantum field to facilitate the human body's sensing of lithospheric communication. Through sensing technologies that capture low-frequency environmental sounds, the artifact enables an embodied encounter with the Zero Time of geological matter.

Rather than translating nature into consumable data, the device proposes a state of Passive Resonance between the human body system (sheaths) and the deep-time consciousness of the Earth. Positioned at the intersection of Critical Design and Indigenous ontologies, this work acts as a provocation, asking how technology might evolve from an instrument of extraction into a tool for listening, resonance, and kinship with the planet’s silent citizens.
 

The rendered view of the prosthetic device between lithosphere and humans.

Whole to parts 1

Whole to parts 2

Whole to parts 3

Created texture using Epoxy Clay

Sculpting

Envisioned finishes