It's Elemental: Why More-Than-Human Perspectives are Integral to The Green Transition

Kat Pegler was Artist-In-Residence for Hydrogen Research at Brunel University, here she shares her insights as an outsider looking in, and why the imagination is so important in innovation.

Hydrogen. The foundation of water, creator of life on Earth and beyond. Found far, far away in stars and deep within the sun. It is the lightest, simplest element, and the most abundant element in the universe. An interconnector. A natural collaborator; it is rarely found alone.

Today, hydrogen is all the rage in the clean energy sector, with its potential for decarbonisation and a step towards a future that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels.

But as we experiment with another natural resource, where does this element stand in how we value it? With all its power, what could we learn from stopping usual practice to think about the perspective of hydrogen itself, and what we could learn its way of being?

Reframing through Experience

Whilst artist-in-residence for Hydrogen Research at Brunel university, I met people working across the broad spectrum of hydrogen. From developing hydrogen combustion engines, to its use with AI and electrolysis.

But specialist knowledge is a lot to get your head around, and the deeply complex terminology and high level data created an invisible barrier. Despite being handed the keys, I couldn’t just enter new paradigms of knowledge. And, if it was a barrier for me, even with the gift of glimpsing in on innovation as it happened, then it was likely a barrier for the rest of society being able to truly understand how the future is being shaped at this critical time.

This barrier was daunting at first, but then I let my neurodivergence free. I allowed a zone-out that grew into a series flow-state daydreams where the imagination sparked. A creative portal that led to a new way of connecting with hydrogen that went deeper than the words I could not understand ever could. I realised like hydrogen, flowing was the answer. By flowing, I could connect with hydrogen beyond siloes; across different brains sectors and species, within human and more-than-human environments to understand this element in a new, interdisciplinary way.

And so, though I had unknowingly interacted with hydrogen for my entire life, it was now that I finally sat, and listened, and thought, and noticed hydrogen for the first time. This element that interconnected everything, the entirety of life on Earth and beyond. I started to see the world through a hydrogen lens. Noticing how hydrogen connected the macro and the micro; from the green of the toxic algae caused by human pollution that decimated the nearby Little Britain Lake with the rising waters of the Marshall Islands. Everything was connected.

Here I landed on the idea that Hydrogen is a perspective, not just a resource.

Then I started to look inwards, to use my own flow-state through music. Through playing the piano, I found connection beyond words, improvising around hydrogen and the wider world, losing sense of time, space and human constructs. I became elemental in a sense. Then, coming out of these states, I started to understand the power of hydrogen and its deep value beyond just a commodity.

The Green Transition, avoiding Industrialisation 2.0

Hydrogen is more than just a resource, in the same way that every natural element we utilise is more. Because it is us and it is more-than-us. It will exist beyond us and before us and flows between everything that exists around us.

And so while we think we are shaping it through our own developments, it is also shaping us.

So with a green transition of practice, there too needs to be a transition of mindset, a critical shift that reframes our relationship with nature to include it as a stakeholder. Embedding this into design methodology within innovation is essential. From this we can grow more inclusive conversations, de-silo knowledge, listen to voices that can’t speak human or that perhaps speak in alternative ways.

This way of thinking is not new, it has long existed within many Indigenous communities across the world and is deeply embedded within ritual and ancestral knowledge here in the UK. Yet, these ways of being have been steadily silenced by the processes of aggressive consumption. In turn this has silenced a collective ability to notice, and to listen to the world around us. Perhaps revisiting these knowledge systems, with respect and acknowledgement, is a way for us to move forwards.

A Hydrogen Lens in Innovation -

Bringing elemental thinking into innovation design, through exploring ideas such as hydrogen’s characteristics could have value in creating more inclusive, interconnected, and collaborative approaches that importantly decentralises human thinking.

Here are four guiding characteristics that Hydrogen offers for the ethics of innovation:

• Hydrogen as a Natural Collaborator- Just because nature isn’t speaking in human language, doesn’t mean we have the right not to listen. We must create inclusive cross-disciplinary spaces that de-silo knowledge and encourage divergent thinking. Because the critical point for inclusion is the process of innovation, not just afterwards where we are all simply receivers. Only then can we shape a future that responds to societal needs (society as human and more-than-human), is ethical and accessible.

• Hydrogen as an Interconnector - Specialist processes should consider the wider picture. For example, when using water for electrolysis, what is the implication on water scarcity where the water is being taken?

• Hydrogen as Existing Beyond Human Life- Hydrogen exists before us and after us. In recognising this, how can we innovate with more sustainable thinking that goes beyond short-term gains but truly considers the future in its design.

• Hydrogen as Decentralised - making knowledge accessible is crucial at a time of ecological crisis when we need urgent change in practice. Decentralising knowledge systems is important to help alight new ideas, identify shared challenges and enable wider understanding for the public.

• Hydrogen as a Flow-er - What can we learn from our own flow-states and how can we embed this as a method into design? Is somatic knowledge just as important as scientific or data-led?

This residency grew a new immersive sensory space for collaboration which is now part of VOICE EU that creates intention to collectively imagine, explore, deep listen and enter flow. Find out more at www.katalice.com