Pollinator Concentrator

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BioSTEAM Design Tool

The BioSTEAM Design Tool provides the step-by-step process to engage you the student, with the Pollinator Concentrator, a site-specific interspecies installation at the Rio Fernando Park created by BioSTEAM Lab artist, Ana MacArthur. The central theme is biodiversity loss and pollinator decline. Imagine an invention or solution that is inspired by your research about how things work in nature through art, science, technology and culture. Click on each stage below to get started.

    • Explore how the artist applied nature-inspired design to this installation. What is nature-inspired design? What is biomimicry? How do they inform creative design? Meet the experts fron diverse disciplines that are committed to protecting biodiversity in their own way. Learn why conserving biodiversity is pivotal to the health of our planet and our communities.
    • Research how interdisciplinary science and new technologies are helping us understand nature in a new way. Investigate how cutting edge technologies are being used to protect or destroy nature. What is the science behind how pollinators navigate and pollinate? How can this knowledge help you design and to build with nature?
    • Experiment with BioSTEAM activities that will open your mind to new ways of thinking and designing inspired by how things work in science and nature. Here you will have find hands-on activities  to try out.
    • Connect with nature. Visit the installation and Rio Fernando park, physically or virtually to experience it for yourself. Participate in our curated citizen science projects and study your pollinators up close in their natural habitat and to inform your idea.
    • Design a pollinator-inspired BIO-MACHINE to share with friends and family to raise awareness to the importance of protecting biodiversity and pollinators. Submit your design to the BioSTEAM Design Challenge.

 

Explore Research Experiment Connect Design

Experiment with new ways of seeing nature

A major theme in Ana MacArthur’s work is biomimicry and nature-inspired design. Biomimicry is an innovative approach to design that emulates natural systems and strategies to create sustainable solutions to the world’s challenges. Can understanding how nature works inspire new ideas?  How do insects see and how can we apply this to our design?

The greatest challenge in science today is finding ways to “see” and understand the invisible connections between life on the nanoscale that we can only see through the application of science and technology, and life on the macro scale which is the biological world we see and feel around us. It is an exciting time to be explorers of this unchartered territory. What can we learn from instruments used to “see” invisible fields or waves? What can we learn from living organisms that see things differently from us? How can these ideas inform your design process or the materials you work with?

      • Search the Bio STEAM wiki with the keyword EXPERIMENT for hands-on activities and new ways of thinking and designing.
      • Start sketching and documenting ideas for your design.

STEMarts Wiki


The BioSTEAM-Wiki is where you will find links to articles, images, video, and tutorials that we have collected from the web around the broad topic of Biodiversity and Human Impact. You can navigate the BioSTEAM Wiki by entering keywords into the search field below or clicking through the word cloud. Word clouds visualize the amount of information available on a topic - the bigger the word in the cloud, the more links to explore. The BioSTEAM-Wiki is just a starting point. We encourage you to do your own research to see what you find.

Remember this resource is an open-source forum that shares links and ideas that others have created or shared – always check your sources and give credit where credit is due. The open-source movement generously shares its knowledge and relies on user feedback – so if there’s something really good or doesn’t work let others know.

QUICK START: Type in the key word of the stage you are working on: Connect, Explore, Research, Create or Radiate. This will give you resources that you need for that stage of the design process.


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Space Messengers is made possible in part by the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund for U.S. Alumni; an opportunity sponsored by the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by Partners of the Americas. This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts

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