unswnetlit

self-realisation, born both out of his development of and identification with the philosophical ideals of deep ecology and his evolving engagements with the world

deep ecology’ Arne Naess

my ecosophical praxis is deeply engaged with the possibilities and qualities of conversational communication that either already do, or could feasibly exist, between forms of systemically located life, matter and technologically created forms.

I aim to create discursive, artistic experiences inspired and focused by the possibility of metaphysical shifts in our understandings of place and role within dynamic, interlocking systems

rewards participants with a willingness to collaborate, based upon an understanding of their own place and role within a series of complex, shifting relationships

I resolved that my contribution should be to deploy the interactive, connective, popular aspects of networked new media arts to create contexts for conversation around these pressing ecological issues. This would be best achieved through a located, engaged praxis that avoided didacticism

pursue processes of ecosophical questioning around form, approach, modality and content

We resolved that physical movement would be central to the experience and that its effects would ripple through to affect all computational and experiential aspects. The two physical interfaces and their supporting environments should also have a strong physical presence, while not strongly detracting from the experience of the participants once engaged with the work.

personal, performative experience in which both participants become woven within its systemic operations and immersed within multiple processes of dialogue, exchange and transfer

focus upon the connection-making and communicative features that these tools offered

the power of choreography within the design of interactive systems, interfaces and virtual characterization

‘Me’, ‘Us’ and ‘Other’:

that bit the participant identifies as themself

for most people on the planet…is other people like me!

s that stuff which is not like me, that stuff that is really other to me that I have no connection to

containment/compactness

as personal/close/spatially familiar, moving towards distant/unfamiliar and spatially abstracted

he work used a single participant’s bodily expression as the means for invoking and exploring mediatised relationships that were at times comforting and personal, but that could quickly shift to moments of great intensity and agitation.

A key issue was the lack of agency experienced by some participants who were unable to easily locate themselves within the experience and thus comprehend how their bodily actions related to changes within the work’s image, text and sound. The consensus was that a direct, controllable representation of their presence within the work would make navigating the experience much easier.

multi-player game engine, which typically used avatars to represent the participants’ positions and activities, working in dialogue with other characters.

underlying relational model for the work that would inherently encompass core aspects of ecologies, such as evolution, emergence and the exchange and transfer of objects/forms between two or more parties.

sense of presence between participants that we were seeking as being ‘about ways that affective (qualitative, emergent) dimensions arise, move through and translate across different media, moments and spaces’

Conceptually it would reinterpret the ‘Me/Us/Others’ idea whilst continuing to operate around ideas of energetic transfer and the performative role of the body.

The work would attempt to also encourage a sense of increasing intimacy between participants and be welcoming and accessible to participants of different ages, cultures and body shapes.

Through the identificatory aspect of rhetoric, the "consubstantiality" of social actors is established; in short, they are formed into groups with common characteristics

Thus, "rhetoric means to be conscious both of being compelled to act and of the lack of norms in a finite situation

in-between" where instituting praxis is understood as the expression of a way of life that forms itself

an active process of the formation of expression

what becomes interesting is precisely the plurality of forms which the active process of expression can take

concerned with expressive culture or "language as practical consciousness

This metaphorical status of language requires that language is not understood merely in the sense of speaking activity but rather that such speaking activity, insofar as it forms and conveys meaning, be taken as exemplary for all social action.

this metaphorical extension of language to social action in general suggests that the primary function of language is not to describe social action scientifically but rather to constitute social action as meaningful. In other words, it should be understood as primarily constitutive rather than representational.

Rather, the medium of communication is understood to be a formation of meaning. Interest thus turns toward the particular characteristics of various formations of meaning, which can be called discursive formations

indefinite plurality of related expressions

These language uses do not describe an event outside of language, but perform the event through an utterance or expression. This active conception of language has been called text (Ricoeur), speech-act (Austin), and theme (Volosinov)

expression is understood

as an action in its own right

pre-discursive assumption that language acquires its meaning by describing an extra-linguistic reality upon which its truth and significance would be founded

every utterance occurs within an organized but not closed system of related terms from which it takes its meaning

his system has been called a structure (Lévi-Strauss), a system of differences (Saussure), a language game (Wittgenstein), and so forth

placing of the utterance within the context of an (at least partially organized) system of meaningful components

Essentialism is a critical term referring to the pre-discursive notion that an expression has an internal meaning that could be determined without reference to the actual discursive formation in which it occurs