Yanjun Yu

Background:

The sixth mass extinction is happening. According to the expert’s prediction, based on the current trajectory of biodiversity decrease and habitat loss, about one-third to one-half of species will be extinct by the end of this century. Especially those pollinators are mostly threatened with extinction.

Trend:

1. The density of honeybee colonies is increasing exponentially and wild bees were gradually replaced by honeybees

People pay attention to honeybees because of honey. However, honeybees are not the best pollinators, nor do they pollinate all plants in nature. The proportion of wild bees at flowers was four times greater than that of honeybees at the beginning of the period, the proportions of both groups becoming roughly similar 50 years later.

2. Humans’ reliance on technology keeps increasing.

Our reliance on technology underestimates the seriousness of this problem. Now in agriculture, people have been investing more in technology to improve crop yields. With the rising cost of bee pollination due to CCD and other causes, the market is moving towards artificial pollination (drone pollination). Can technology really replace the role of species in nature? Trait selection in natural pollination would be lost if drones replace bees as primary pollinators, which will lead to a severe decrease in genetic diversity and disease resistance in offspring, and lower yields

Intention:

Based on mentioned trends, I speculate the future after a century. At that time, humans overly rely on technology for sustaining Eco balance after the sixth mass extinction. When technological products are deeply rooted in our ecological environment and replace most of the natural reactions, people lose the basic joy of life, The joy of eating.

In the future of mass extinction, when the honeybee is the only remaining pollinator, how can we rebuild pollination systems if we want to restore the ecology and back to nature?

Yanjun is a product designer from Fujian China, who completed a BEng at the University of Liverpool. Her academic experience involves industrial design and architecture.

She is fueled by her passion for the exploration of transdisciplinary cooperation in design. She considers herself a ‘forever freshman,’ eager to build on her academic foundations in various aspects of design. She trying to use design as a medium to build or affect relationships between the human and physical world both in the present and future. During the learning stage in RCA, her research focuses on the field of speculative design. she uses her design to criticize reality and explore the future. Her design presents her cognition of the future to people and encourages the audience to reflect on the present.

Storyline – The storyline describes how human society changes in the trajectory of pollinator diversity loss and increase of reliance on technology.

Question – How do we pollinate diverse plants if we only have honey bee, the last natural pollinator?

Bee Modification – Humans artificially create new species to increase the biodiversity in the ecosystem. In the future, they modified honeybee to let them replace those extinct pollinators.

Medium:

Graphic

Size:

820cm*297cm

System Map – The map demonstrates the whole modification process of the honeybee.

1- Bee Farm

2-Gene Editing Factory – At the gm factory, bee eggs from farms are injected with three gm reagents. They hatch into three species of bees with different traits.

Original Honeybee

Genetically Modified Bee for Desert – Characteristics 1. Smaller than the original honey bee 2. Small wings In desert areas, where there are no tall shelters, the bees' small bodies and wings allow them to fly nimbly in the wind 3. Tibia has jagged edges It helps them climb rocks in the desert.

Genetically Modified Bee for Agriculture or Grassland – Characteristics 1. Covered with fur Grassland is full of low-growing flowers, and fur is those insects' best tools for catching pollen.

Genetically Modified Bee for Forest – Characteristics 1. Bigger than the original honey bee It enables them to gather nectar high up in the forest. 2.Powerful wings 3. Less fur Help them cool off in the sweltering forest 4. Legs have spurs Help them cling to branches

3-Bee Modification Factory – In the modified Bee Factory, the mutated bee will be assembled with wearable devices. There are about 200 factories in the UK, each factory produces around 10000 modified bees every day.

Wearable Devices

Glasses – Enable honeybees to see the red flower and enhance their eyesight at night by replacing moths and butterflies. 1.Hoeny Bee only fly at day, they have low eyesight at night. 2. Bees base their colours on ultraviolet light, blue and green. This is the reason why bees can’t see the colour red. They don’t have a photoreceptor for it

Detoxifying Mask – Some plants are toxic for Honey Bees, such as Aesculus californica (Hippocastanaceae) Astragalus spp. (Fabaceae) Cuscuta spp. (Convolvulaceae) Cyrilla racemiflora (Cyrilliceae)

Backpack – It's used to locate bees and monitor the pollination situation With this tracker, the system can easily locate bees for recycling wearable devices and master the information about the environment and plants.

Wearable Devices

4 - Biosecurity

Uk needs at least 250000 bee hives. Each bee hive usually has between 20000 and 80000 bees living together in a colony. There will be about 5 billion honey bees need to be modified. Everyear, 1 billiion Modified bee will be produced by those factories

Medium:

Graphic

Yanjun Yu

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Royal College of Art