RSD 15 - Data in relation
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
Traces
Residua
Mapping disinterest through fungal colonisation
Alessio Caccamo, Claudia Rio
Sapienza Università di Roma, Design, Comunicazione Visiva e Multimediale
KEYWORD
#planned obsolescence #visualization
#colonization #research through design
Residua proposes decomposition as an epistemological tool, collapsing the distance between evidence and representation. Instead of illustrating abandonment, the publication physically enacts it: designed to decay through fungal colonisation, the book becomes an organism that produces knowledge through its own deterioration. Mould acts as a biological index of collective disinterest, revealing what society neglects to maintain, preserve, or invest in. Its material decay becomes an active archive of systemic abandonment and the choices that produce it.
CREATIVE PROCESS
Residua developed through a parallel dialogue between theoretical research and biological experimentation. Fungal growth, thermal paper degradation, and material testing informed the creation of a book designed as an organism that does not resist its own decay. Positioned between academic research and artistic practice, the project combines controlled experimentation and open ecological processes to make material decomposition an integral part of its critical framework.
IMPLICATIONS & NEXT STEPS
Residua proposes a design position in which matter itself becomes a critical tool. By embodying systemic disinterest through decomposition, the project moves beyond representing obsolescence to making it materially visible. Its residue becomes an active archive of what remains after usefulness is extracted, exposing the structures of forgetting and offering a framework for future research into biological decay, institutional archives, and accelerated obsolescence.
References
Rosa, H. (2013). Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures. New York: Random House.
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.