Leaky Cups: Tinkering with Hydrofeminist Temporalities for HCI
Cayla Key, Cally Gatehouse, Stevie Koepp, Nick Taylor
Abstract
This paper offers new perspectives for More-Than-Human (MTH) design and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) by rethinking technoscientific logics of temporality. To do this, we draw on alternative logics such as Hydrofeminism, interlocutor and autobiographical accounts, and Leaky Cups—a set of willfully dysfunctional data-enabled artefacts that leak in response to local water data. In doing so, it repositions more-than-human agency not as a passive conduit merely mediating human experiences but as a force capable of creating change and ethics through non-progressivist care labor. By engaging with these ideas, this work critiques and disrupts normative assumptions about progress, openness, fluidity, and objectivity in MTH research and design, and presents productive tensions that challenge dominant temporal frameworks.