As the semester draws to a close, I can finally present a final form of my efforts from across the thesis semesters: The Planetary Bureau. All the work from the semester, barring a few explorations can be found on this website. The Planetary Bureau is the result of many mistakes, some surprises, and a lot of thinking. The failures and mistakes are the defining features of the project, and those have been the greatest learnings, even if the final result isn’t up to my expectations.

What started out in 2021 as an exploration of what machines meant to me, and the emotional relationship I have with certain machines turned into a 9-month exercise of trying to escape the human, and the human gaze of the world around me. The underlying intent of thesis was to work on something which would push the viewer to live a more sustainable life. The first approach was to increase the life of machines we use by building an emotional and meaningful relationship with them. My inability to properly flesh this out led me to a dead-end.

The next attempt was to build a speculative design project around a ‘planet-centred machine intelligence’. This was a little more successful as it allowed me build a compelling narrative to get viewers to think through the lens of the planet. At last, things were going well. They were going so well, that the project quickly outgrew it’s title. A new name and a new direction was needed.

The Planetary Bureau.

This suited the project far better and the rebranding helped push the project in a direction which is far more interesting, and more importantly, engaging. It also helped me define a target audience for the first time and an agenda. The Planetary Bureau is an organisation which is looking out for the planet’s best interests, primarily by helping reframe how humans think of the planet. It’s far too easy to think of the planet as a resource that is ours–a human resource. This project aims to dismantle that notion, show just how insignificant we are, and how much we need the planet, more than the plant needs us.

Testing the project has led to mixed results. Sometimes, it seems to do exactly what I want it to do–have the the viewers ask even more questions than the project poses. Other times, viewers walk away confused at best and indifferent at worst. There have also been times when viewers were confused, and didn’t seem to understand the project, but in the process of questioning the project, started asking questions I wanted them to think of. Admittedly, the success rate of the project is fairly low, and it’s not easy to get a read on whether the project does what it’s meant to do.

In retrospect, I wish I had gotten to this point in the middle of the project. I could’ve very well have built The Planetary Bureau at the beginning of 2022 if I’d made the right calls and worked harder. This feels like the very beginning of the project, and I can see a roadmap to building it out to where I would actually want it to be at this point in the semester.

However, I do appreciate all that I’ve learnt from the project, and I can also see a sliver of a potential career path. The Planetary Bureau could well take on a life of its own, far beyond the state it is in at the moment. I’m excited to see how far this can go, given the appropriate investment.

Thesis Paper

Find the thesis paper attached here.