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- Volume 5, Issue 1, 2016
Design Ecologies - Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 2016
Volume 5, Issue 1-2, 2016
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A great and downward hunt: How to design inorganic trauma
By Ben WoodardAbstractWhile many of the physical sciences have historically and conceptually informed philosophy, geology is one field that has not received adequate philosophical attention. In what follows, I attempt to demonstrate how the relation between the geological and the philosophical is over-coded in numerous historical and fictional contexts in the form of geotrauma, the violence of the earth or the inorganic on the organic, and the violence of the inorganic on itself. Historico-mythical tales of the violence of mining and surveying often centre on the geological landscape as offering a form of violence, or as invading the consciousnesses of those around it with a form of ancient violence. In this regard, the earth’s geological forces can be treated as murderous agents, where investigating the crime simply seems to redouble the violence. The article examines how this strange and violent reflectivity deploys itself in an exaggerated way in weird and gothic fiction. Looking at the works of Fritz Leiber, H. P. Lovecraft and Charles Brockden Brown, this article attempts to argue how the fictionalization of geotrauma is a dramatization of the already existent co-implication of geology and philosophy in the form of a co-murdering and the traumatic nature of the expansive concept.
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The hum of the Earth: From geomythology to epistemological leaps via art (draft for a future art practise)
By Anna MikkolaAbstractThe Hum is a phenomenon that only very few people experience, but for those this invasive low frequency humming, rumbling or droning noise is highly intrusive. The cause for the phenomenon has been widely speculated over four decades, and it looks like there are many valid reasons for it. In 2015 scientific researchers found out that one instance of the Hum originates from the movement and pressure of giant, slow-moving waves. The Hum acts as an example in this article to discuss art’s potential to deal with the human relation to what is alien to human perception – namely, natural phenomena. To deal with the alien, humans construct geomyths, which are as important in binding the human with nature as science – perhaps even more. I will bring in Steve Goodman’s work on vibrational force to bring depth into the Hum as a phenomenon. By looking more closely into Iain Hamilton Grant’s work on Schelling and Ray Brassier’s work on Sellars I will investigate what kind of methods art might learn from geomythology and epistemology for coexisting with that which is alien to human perception.
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The textile interior: Imagining a transformative architecture
Authors: Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen and Karin BechAbstractThe article explores the heritage of textiles in architecture as a medium for a transformative architecture. It explores the means by which textiles act and suggests textiles as a main bearer of spatial imagination and meaning. Here, alternative architectural concepts of transportability, storytelling, propaganda, exoticism and the scenographic are situated and explored, presenting a framework in which transformation and richness are central themes. By presenting a series of studies – The Curtain Projects – the article aims to uphold this broader imagination of how textiles can take a real part in how we think, live and build architecture today.
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4 years old forever
More LessAbstractAn inquisitive sense of play begins to foster a curiosity that can grow and extend itself throughout a lifetime. This article looks at how drawing three-dimensionally with reflected light allows an opportunity for drawing to be constructed at the same speed as imagination occurs within one’s mind. The opportunity of the drawing method leads to a range of interpretive potentials developed through two design research projects including a chandelier projection device and the architecture of a kindergarten. The research allows for the contribution of various instantaneous imaginations to contaminate the drawing process without the necessity of completely making sense at the time of the idea’s conception. In order to foster such a delight for inventive play through drawing out one’s imagination, the construction of a dysfunctional logic is developed as a sort of rule set to allow the growth of confidence within uncertain methods that hold an intuitive trust. Spatial invention through drawing leads to a range of physical models and constructions that seek to enjoy the translation of what is perceived within the reflected light drawings into physical realities. The intention of the research is to embrace this role of curious play and encourage its potential for a more engaged existence. This is undertaken by actively partaking in the process of design through making while simultaneously encouraging misbehaviour and the pleasure of uncertain discovery. The work trusts that the projects may develop as a number of diverse yet collaborative pieces that feel no responsibility to appear as a cohesive whole. An attitude of inventiveness sets up a curiosity to learn to see more in the world than what is obviously presented. Once we have begun to find such a world, how can we start to play with it?
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Exta (haruspex remix)
Authors: Dane Sutherland and Lucy A. SamesAbstractExta is a curatorial project consisting of a ‘primer’ exhibition of artists’ film and sculpture, two forthcoming exhibitions, and a film currently in production. The project traces the speculative activities of haruspicy, the divination of future events from the reading of entrails gathered from a sacrificed entity. Here, we expand on this mystic act as a ‘somatechnic’ ritual: how the artworks and our curatorial narrative work towards an imagined future populace divined from the entrails of a dead body-politic. With reference to Jon Abbink’s studies of contemporary haruspicy and some of its precedents in ancient practices, we situate Exta as a publicdivinatory reading that conjures a vision of an alien, future populace. We compare this to popular methods of articulating and narrativising post-human futures, by describing a mode of speculation inscribed with the occult potencies of haruspicy and, referring to Reza Negarestani, how it operates as a vector of decay in its monstrous corruption of such idealised narratives.
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Architectural Forensics in Anonymous Monsters
By Shaun MurrayAbstractArchitecture is a crime if it does not involve environmental DNA and digital forensics to aid in the design of the building. Architectural Forensics in Anonymous Monsters is a chthonic zenoarchaeology that constructs new models of thinking through construction and physical construction with the earth. The anonymous monster could be the alternative contracting/constructing models and ideas that architects consider valuable and inherently fundamental for architecture – the scaffolding of thought and the scaffolding of buildings. This scaffolding could become the anonymous support structure that enables but also underpins the monster under construction. This article is a design project developed to a highly tuned theoretical standpoint on how technology alters consciousness for the individual and for society. With coined phrases such as ‘reflexive architecture’ to explore the collapse of the biological and information divides whilst has re-applied the term syncretism to explain our experience of multiple realities at once. Technology is a tool and a means for individuals to explore pre-conceptions of themselves, to enter separate realities and bring back information. A computer can therefore be likened to undertaking a similar role to that of a shaman in accessing different levels of consciousness. Building as a constructed reality.
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