Project: Cluster of Excellence application "Cognition and Behaviour in the Anthropocene"

How do individuals adjust in times of drastic change?

Humanity is causing and experiencing the most serious changes to our Earth system. Scientists at the University of Göttingen and other partner institutions want to answer the question of how individuals deal with change in a Cluster of Excellence.

We supported the interdisciplinary, international research team with the development and design of diagrams and illustrations for their work.

Research focus
Cognitive science and behavioural research

Client
University of Göttingen

Responsibilities
Advice on and development and creation of diagrams, pictograms and illustrations – details at bottom of page

Duration
4 months, 2023

Overview

The Anthropocene: Disruptive change

Humanity is witnessing the most rapidly developing change on our planet. This is taking place on many levels: Environment, technology, society. Everything is changing faster than ever before. A dynamic that is referred to as the “Great Acceleration” and for which we humans are primarily responsible. Since industrialisation, our influence on the Earth system has increased to such an extent that the current geological age is named after humans: Anthropocene, the age of humans.

At the end of May 2023, the University of Göttingen submitted a cluster initiative as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments, in which scientists from the DPZ (German Primate Centre) play a leading role. It is called “Cognition and Behaviour in the Anthropocene” and deals with the question of how individuals respond to changes, risks and uncertainties. The transdisciplinary team from behavioural research, cognitive science, neuroscience, physics and computer science aims to understand the dynamics and consequences of cognitive and behavioural adaptation in a rapidly changing environment. The aim is to develop a model of individual adaptability. The close integration of laboratory and field research and a comparative perspective of primates and humans will help the scientists in this endeavour.

In addition to the DPZ and the University of Göttingen, researchers from the University Medical Centre Göttingen (UMG) and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation are also involved in the planned cluster. With the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, an institution outside the Göttingen campus has also been recruited to the initiative.

Our task was to develop and design diagrams, pictograms and illustrations that illustrate certain research scenarios in behavioural research. – Due to the ongoing application process, we cannot show all the work here.

Wie reagiert mein Gegenüber auf mein Handeln?

Über diese beidseitig bedienbaren Touchscreens können unterschiedliche Verhaltensexperimente durchgeführt werden.

Ein Rhesusaffe im sogenannten „Exploration Room“

Hier kann untersucht werden, wie Handlungen geplant und durchgeführt werden, während das Tier einen Raum erkundet.

Solutions

Iterating together to the best result

The complexity of a cluster initiative and the enormous number of scientists involved are major challenges when working together on such a project. Added to this are rigorous submission deadlines. We were therefore very pleased with the foresighted and early planning of the “Cognition and Behaviour in the Anthropocene” cluster initiative team. We were contacted long before the deadline so that we were able to familiarise ourselves with the topic and get to know the new client before the actual work began.

From the very beginning, the collaboration with the research team was characterised by great trust and enjoyment of the creative, iterative work process. We experienced an unconditional willingness to accept only one thing: the best result. And we are happy to be partners in this.

For the task of visualising the different, partly modular research spaces in which primates, humans and computer avatars interact in various scenarios, we chose the perspective method of isometric projection. With its help, three-dimensional objects can be projected onto a two-dimensional surface. All three main axes (x, y, z) are displayed at a constant angle of 120 degrees to each other. This produces a distortion-free (non-realistic) representation that can be used to illustrate 3D worlds simply and easily. This made it possible to reduce the complex experiments to the essential components in order to maintain clarity and focus. The resulting illustrations appear factual, functional and contemporary.

Illustrative wishes? ✍️ 🧬

Get in touch if your research would also like to be illustrated.

Christoph Nick from Zum Staunen* has succeeded in realising complex issues clearly and precisely.

Anthropocene, Great Acceleration

As background to this topic, the bpb provides here the translation of the article “The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration” (and here the original) from the scientific journal “The Anthropocene Review”, which is highly recommended reading. Here is a quote from it:

The post-1950 acceleration was noted in the IGBP synthesis book as:
One feature stands out as remarkable. The second half of the twentieth century is unique in the entire history of human existence on Earth. Many human activities reached take-off points sometime in the twentieth century and have accelerated sharply towards the end of the century. The last 50 years have without doubt seen the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind.
Source: Steffen et al, 2004:131