Ph.d.
(2022)
author(s): Honey B. Beckerlee
published in: Research Catalogue
Honey Biba Beckerlees practice based PhD Digital Matters situates itself in the paradox between, on the one hand, the culturally wide spread assumption that cyberspace is bodyless and the internet is immaterial, while on the other hand the overconsumption of energy and the extraction, distribution and transformation of massive land masses in the consumption of raw materials in digital technologies, which end up as great amounts of toxic electronic waste and recently has given us an outlook to the depletion of several chemical elements.
The project seeks to find new understandings of - and ways of relating to the digital, by drawing on post-human and more-than-human perspectives on the technology. Inspired by feminist versions of quantum mechanics and (new) materialism, that question classic distinctions between mind/body, immaterial/physical and ultimately what can be considered living and not living, this practice-based research project seeks to make art works that take the body and the plastic resources back into the center of an understanding of the technology.
Through a method of intra-action inspired by Karen Barad, the project aims to make artistic experiments that facilitate new materials, forms of expression and processes with digital raw materials. From a notion of distributed agency the project asks: What new ways of cognitive comprehension lies in taking into consideration the entanglements between people and technology by tracing how chemical elements travel from nature into computers and humans? How is our understanding of an extremely temporary technology if we consider it in a perspective of deep time through the journey of minerals over thousands of years? Can one develop a new sensibility towards digital technology through art, that takes finitude into consideration?
Scoring political movement and its exhaustion
(2022)
author(s): olia sosnovskaya
published in: Research Catalogue
The paper studies revolutionary event and its temporality through the concept of a movement score.
I'll make a sweater out of this, I swear
(2022)
author(s): Hubert Thériault
published in: Research Catalogue
This exhibition is a collection of the past work leading to Hubert's latest movement research: “I’ll make a sweater out of this, I swear”. His researches are centered around entanglement and the diffraction of Quebec’s colonial history as well as the navigation in familial lineage. This exhibition shows the process of unbecoming and of mixing and knitting oneself with others’ tread.
White/acoustic infrastructure: a crucial tool for the transition to an environmentally sustainable future in urban areas: The case of Paris La Defense, a modern district in dissonance
(2022)
author(s): Sara El Samman
published in: Research Catalogue
The national lockdown due to COVID-19 abruptly cut down on human activity in cities, and enabled urban dwellers to notice nature’s comeback through birdsong: It has shown that today’s urban environment is in acoustic imbalance.
My research aims to provide an overview on how soundscapes fit into the landscape design process, and to explore the notion of white/sonic infrastructure in order to give a tangible tool for landscape architects to read landscapes with their ears and design acoustically sensible places for all living beings. Sound informs the design process not simply by reducing unwanted noise but by encouraging a sound-considered city design approach. This adopted strategy would entail the extraction and reinterpretation of sonic cues as blueprints for the reshaping of the space and the transformation of the soundscape experience for users and nature alike.
The paper applies all of its findings on Paris La Defense, the biggest business district in Europe, who’s current morphology, within the ring of noise that is the “Boulevard circulaire”, dissociates it from its territory creating acoustic and physical discontinuities.
A study of the flows that animate the site along with its morphology helped me extract the multiple sonotopes (sonic biotopes) that shape the acoustic space of the district. Sound maps were created and a white infrastructure strategy was furthermore developed.
The article develops an elaborate method that could help translate a soundscape vision into concrete landscape design actions and proposes an approach to sonic continuities on large and local scales.
White infrastructure affords the additional dimension necessary to conceive the landscape and to create space for the non-human, for the human, and for the dialogue between them. The notion of eco-acoustic design contributes to shaping a non-anthropocentric city that is considerate of all living things and therefore is crucial to designing ecological urban ecosystems.
Prototyping Situations: Interdisciplinary Free Improvisation in Technology Development and Latour’s Mode of the Technical
(2022)
author(s): Dominik Schlienger
published in: Research Catalogue
Interdisciplinary improvisation provides an innovative tool for technology development, based on the principle of prototyping the situation of a problem and letting the solution develop from within that situation. This stands in a contrast to the conventional paradigm by which technological prototypes are presented as solutions which then are tested as to their suitability, in hindsight. A participatory design practice which resulted in the development of spatial interactive technology for sonic arts provides a case study for this method. In focusing on the situation, rather than a (proposed) solution, technology is contingent on practice. This resounds with the description of the technical mode of existence the French philosopher Bruno Latour gives in An Enquiry into the Modes of Existence: According to Latour, the technical does not show itself directly as an object and is not directly experienceable. On that premise, the implications for technology development are intriguing: The fact that the technical is mostly only noticed when it is not working, needs to be considered in development methodology – evaluation has to become the main phase of development.
Lange-Weile
(2022)
author(s): Katja Hock
published in: Research Catalogue
Published as part of: Katja Hock, ‘Lange-Weile’ in ‘Practices of Phenomenological & Artistic Research’, (eds.) Alex Arteaga, Emma Cocker, Erika Goble, Juha Himanka, Phenomenology & Practice, [Vol. 17, No.1, 2022], ISSN 1913-4711. See full issue here: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/pandpr/index.php/pandpr/index