Co-Flux is a hands-on pop-up workshop where participants draw whale songs, turn their drawings into circuits, and their circuits into sound. Inspired by the fractal patterns found in whale vocalizations and living systems, this multisensory experience invites curious designers of all ages to explore communication beyond human language — through touch, sound, and form.

Co-Flux approaches the Seattle Design Festival themes of IN[FLUX], IN[HABIT], IN[FORM], and IN[TENSION] not as separate categories, but as simultaneous conditions shaping life within dynamic ecosystems. Positioning nature as a collaborative actor—an evolving force rather than a passive resource —the workshop explores how design can function as a mediator between humans and the more-than-human world.

Drawing inspiration from whale vocalizations and the fractal patterns present throughout living systems, Co-Flux invites participants to investigate communication beyond human language through auditory, visual, and haptic experiences. Self-similarity and recursion appear across geometric forms — waves, coastlines, roots, and shells — and in sound, through the fractal acoustic structures of geophony and biophony, carrying patterns of repetition and variation that shape how living systems grow, communicate, and adapt. Whale songs provide a powerful entry point for young, curious designers, revealing complex acoustic structures that challenge human-centered understandings of communication, intelligence, and belonging.

Through interactive materials, participants will draw conductive circuits with graphite, transform these drawings into sound, and explore how sound changes through interaction. By hearing, touching, and tracing patterns inspired by whale songs, participants engage in acts of design across species. Rather than offering fixed answers, Co-Flux creates a space for curiosity, experimentation, and multisensory engagement with interconnected living systems and ongoing transformation.