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ecology

This tag is associated with 4 posts

FCJ-206 From Braitenberg’s Vehicles to Jansen’s Beach Animals: Towards an Ecological Approach to the Design of Non-Organic Intelligence

By ⋅ January 22, 2017 ⋅ Post a comment

Maaike BleekerUtrecht University [Abstract] For more than twenty years now, Dutch artist and engineer Theo Jansen has been invested in the development of new, non-organic species that he refers to as Strandbeesten, which in English translates to “beach animals”. His beach animals are creatures constructed from plastic conduit normally used to house electric cables, ropes, plastic bottles and pieces of sailcloth. He describes them as ‘skeletons that are able to walk on the wind’. They are called ‘animals’, yet they are completely inorganic. They use the wind to propel themselves and require no other fuel or food. Over time, Jansen has managed to develop creatures that are increasingly capable of ‘surviving’ on their own. His ideal plan is to put the beach animals out in herds on the beaches and have them live their own ‘life’. [1] The intricate complexity and transparency of the beach animals, and the precision of…

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FCJ-152 Entertaining the environment: a conversation

By ⋅ December 6, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

Andrew Goodman. Monash University, Melbourne. Erin Manning. Concordia University, Montréal. Andrew: Erin, before we discuss the implications of ‘Entertaining the environment’ [1] with an artwork or event, I thought we could perhaps start with a brief outline of how you arrived at the concept? Erin: I think the concept has been lurking in the sidelines of my practice for some time. It began to take form around questions of interactivity, particularly around technologically innovative art projects that themselves question how art tackles notions of participation. Two issues seemed most salient for me in this turn toward the technological: 1. How do we not become too entranced by the technology itself, bending to its needs—how, as artists, do we not fall prey to feeling as though it is technology that provides the experience. Or, put differently, how do we not fall prey to the idea that it is technology that supplies…

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Issue 21: Exploring affect in interaction design, interaction-based art and digital art

By ⋅ December 5, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

The notion of affect does take many forms, and you’re right to begin by emphasizing that. To get anywhere with the concept, you have to retain the manyness of its forms. It’s not something that can be reduced to one thing. Mainly, because it’s not a thing. It’s an event, or a dimension of every event. What interests me in the concept is that if you approach it respecting its variety, you are presented with a field of questioning, a problematic field, where the customary divisions that questions about subjectivity, becoming, or the political are usually couched in do not apply. (Massumi, Of Microperception and Micropolitics, 2009, p. 1) The aim of this special issue of the Fibreculture Journal is to address some of the contemporary challenges involved in working with affect across disciplines and practices that centre on the use of interactive- or digital technologies. The issue has a…

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FCJ-121 Transversalising the Ecological Turn: Four Components of Felix Guattari’s Ecosophical Perspective

By ⋅ October 9, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

John Tinnell. Department of English, University of Florida. [Abstract] Over the past decade, the humanities disciplines have played host to an explosion of ecologically themed transformations, which continue to open up new (sub)fields of research and teaching. The development of the ecological turn in English studies (conceived broadly to house the study of literature, composition, film, and new media) resonates with the general evolution of the eco-humanities; indeed, English departments have led this movement in many respects. A survey of English’s recent appropriations of ecological ideas (and their failings) establishes a point of departure for rethinking the eco-humanities. Ecocriticism, with its reputable journals and popular conferences, has no doubt become the most institutionalised of English’s eco-fields, while more pointed approaches continue to gather loosely around terms such as green cultural studies, ecofeminism, ecocomposition, and ecomedia studies.[1] At the turn of this century, much of the early work in ecocriticism was…

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