In Theory, There\u27s Hope: Queer Co-(m)motions of Science and Subjectivity

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, which, therefore, needs to be interrupted at its foundational roots. Thirdly, the scaffolding that supports this subjectivity draws on Newtonian science and neo-Darwinian narratives deemed to be natural law and, therefore, ontological, immutable reality. Contrary to modernist thinking, I premise that these two strains, subjectivity and science, are neither autonomous nor ontological, but that they are materially and contingently integral. Finally, this thesis presumes that different and life-affirming trajectories are, in fact, desired. An integral framing of science and subjectivity provides a productive method of feminist science studies analysis and theorization. Observing the capitalist Western social imaginary through this lens reveals its philosophical and scientific infrastructures to be outdated and crumbling. Observing how emerging scientific narratives in quantum physics and systems-biology intersect with marginalized theories in process-philosophy and subjectivity reveals a life-affirming imaginary of difference, one that arrests nihilism and sets ethical trajectories in motion. Certain, though not all, percepts of feminist new materialism engage twentieth and twenty-first century sciences successfully to show that ethicality matters. Though many questions remain, this points auspiciously towards the possibility for a transformed politics of justice

CTRL SHIFT

CTRL SHIFT makes a case for design under contemporary computation. The abstractions of reading, writing, metaphors, mythology, code, cryptography, interfaces, and other such symbolic languages are leveraged as tools for understanding. Alternative modes of knowledge become access points through which users can subvert the control structures of software. By challenging the singular expertise of programmers, the work presented within advocates for the examination of internalized beliefs, the redistribution of networked power, and the collective sabotage of computational authority

Ambivalent animal

The Ambivalent Animal project explores the interactions of animals, culture and technology. The project employs both artistic practice and critical theory, each in ways that inspire the other. My creative practice centers around two projects that focus on domestic pets. These projects highlight the animal's uncertain status as they explore the overlapping ontologies of animal, human and machine. They provide concrete artifacts that engage with theoretical issues of anthropocentrism, animality and alterity. My theoretical work navigates between the fields of animal studies, art and design, media and culture studies, and philosophy. My dissertation explores animality through four real and imagined animal roles: cyborg, clone, chimera and shapeshifter. Each animal role is considered in relation to three dialectics: irreducibility and procedurality, autonomy and integration, aura and abjection. These dialectics do not seek full synthesis but instead embrace the oscillations of irresolvable debates and desires. The dialectics bring into focus issues of epistemology, ontology, corporeality and subjectivity. When the four animal roles engage the three dialectics, connected yet varied themes emerge. The cyborgian animal is simultaneously liberated and regulated, assisted and restricted, integrated and isolated. The cloned animal is an emblem of renewal and loss; she is both idealized code and material flesh and finds herself caught in the battles of nature and nurture. The chimera is both rebel and conformist; his unusual juxtapositions pioneer radical corporeal transgressions but also conform to the mechanisms of global capital. And the shapeshifter explores the thrill and anxiety of an altered phenomenology; she gains new perceptions though unstable subjectivity. These roles reveal corporeal adjustments and unfamiliar subjectivities that inspire the creative practice. Both my writing and making employ an ambivalent aesthetic--an aesthetic approach that evokes two or more incompatible sensibilities. The animal's uncertain status contributes to this aesthetic: some animals enjoy remarkable care and attention, while others are routinely exploited, abused and discarded. Ambivalence acknowledges the complexity of lived experience, philosophical and political debate, and academic inquiry. My approach recognizes the light and dark of these complex ambivalences--it privileges paradox and embraces the confusion and wonder of creative research. Rather than erase, conceal or resolve ambiguity, an ambivalent aesthetic foregrounds the limits of language and representation and highlights contradiction and irresolution.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Bolter, Jay; Committee Member: DiSalvo, Carl; Committee Member: Do, Ellen; Committee Member: Prophet, Jane; Committee Member: Thacker, Eugen

European Avant-Garde: Art, Borders and Culture in Relationship to Mainstream Cinema and New Media

This research analyses the impact of transformation and hybridization processes at the intersection of art, science and technology. These forms of transformation and hybridization are the result of contemporary interactions between classic and digital media. It discusses the concept of 'remediation' presented by Bolter and proposes the concept of 'digital ekphrasis,' which is based on Manovich' s analyses of the interactions between classic and digital media. This is a model which, borrowed from semiotic structures, encompasses the technical as well as aesthetic and philosophical transformations of contemporary media. The thesis rejects Baudrillard's and Virilio's proposed concepts of 'digital black hole' as the only possible form of evolution of contemporary digital media. It proposes a different concept for the evolutionary model of contemporary hybridization processes based on contemporary forms of hybridizations that are rooted in aesthetic, philosophical and technological developments. This concept is argued as emancipated from the 'religious' idea of a 'divine originated' perfect image that Baudrillard and Virilio consider to be deteriorated from contemporary hybridization experimentation. The thesis proposes, through historical examples in the fine arts, the importance of transmedia migrations and experimentations as the framework for a philosophical, aesthetic and technological evolutionary concept of humanity freed from the restrictions of religious imperatives

ASTRAL PROJECTION: THEORIES OF METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHIES OF SCIENCE, AND THE ART O F SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION

This thesis provides an intellectual context for my work in computational scientific visualization for large-scale public outreach in venues such as digitaldome planetarium shows and high-definition public television documentaries. In my associated practicum, a DVD that provides video excerpts, 1 focus especially on work I have created with my Advanced Visualization Laboratory team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Champaign, Illinois) from 2002-2007. 1 make three main contributions to knowledge within the field of computational scientific visualization. Firstly, I share the unique process 1 have pioneered for collaboratively producing and exhibiting this data-driven art when aimed at popular science education. The message of the art complements its means of production: Renaissance Team collaborations enact a cooperative paradigm of evolutionary sympathetic adaptation and co-creation. Secondly, 1 open up a positive, new space within computational scientific visualization's practice for artistic expression—especially in providing a theory of digi-epistemology that accounts for how this is possible given the limitations imposed by the demands of mapping numerical data and the computational models derived from them onto visual forms. I am concerned not only with liberating artists to enrich audience's aesthetic experiences of scientific visualization, to contribute their own vision, but also with conceiving of audiences as co-creators of the aesthetic significance of the work, to re-envision and re-circulate what they encounter there. Even more commonly than in the age of traditional media, on-line social computing and digital tools have empowered the public to capture and repurpose visual metaphors, circulating them within new contexts and telling new stories with them. Thirdly, I demonstrate the creative power of visaphors (see footnote, p. 1) to provide novel embodied experiences through my practicum as well as my thesis discussion. Specifically, I describe how the visaphors my Renaissance Teams and I create enrich the Environmentalist Story of Science, essentially promoting a counter-narrative to the Enlightenment Story of Science through articulating how humanity participates in an evolving universal consciousness through our embodied interaction and cooperative interdependence within nested, self-producing (autopoetic) systems, from the micro- to the macroscopic. This contemporary account of the natural world, its inter-related systems, and their dynamics may be understood as expressing a creative and generative energy—a kind of consciousness-that transcends the human yet also encompasses it

Wild cards: surveying extreme change

A intensificação da complexidade socioeconómica, amplificada pela globalização, limita a previsibilidade das acções dos agentes económicos, aumentando a incerteza quanto ao futuro. Ao longo dos anos destaca-se a contribuição da análise prospectiva para um processo sistemático de antecipação do que o futuro pode reservar. O exame das forças que impelem a evolução da economia, da tecnologia e de outras dimensões da sociedade permitido pela prospectiva, bem como a construção de uma melhor percepção quanto a oportunidades e ameaças na área da política pública e da gestão empresarial, garantem a esta disciplina uma notoriedade num contexto actual marcado por volatilidade, ambiguidade e incerteza. No seio desta temática mantém-se ainda em desenvolvimento a categoria de mudança extrema e súbita. Os conceitos que visam abordar eventos de baixa probabilidade e alto impacto, de natureza “disruptiva” e com o potencial de redefinir as “regras do jogo”, são ainda recentes e passíveis de aprofundamento. Por exemplo, noções como “wild cards” carecem ainda de definição precisa e perímetro consensual. O presente estudo debruça-se sobre este objecto de estudo, os eventos-ruptura habitualmente descritos como “wild cards”. A abordagem é de “segunda ordem”, isto é, esta dissertação visa o estudo da teorização do conceito de “wild card”. Para esse fim, foi escolhida uma metodologia integrada combinando elementos quantitativos (através de uma análise bibliométrica) e qualitativos (com levantamento de opinião de especialistas inquéritos a especialistas nacionais e internacionais). Na base deste trabalho de revisão de literatura e de contacto com analistas esta dissertação procura construir uma síntese crítica e criativa do estado da arte e especificar um conjunto de características relevantes para a consideração e adaptação face a “wild cards”.Socio-economic complexity, quickened by technical change, amplified by globalisation, limits the prediction powers of agents’ actions and increases the need to deal with uncertainty about the future. For many years foresight has been positioned has having a central relevance in the present context of turmoil and insecurity, especially when disruptions and trend-breaking events are of the essence. Within the subject-area of foresight, however, the concept of extreme sudden change remains still quite unclear. Wild cards, or “high impact”/“low-probability” events, with the potential to redefine the “rules of the game” are a concept worth revisiting given its novelty in the literature and analytical importance in contemporary volatile environments. This thesis focuses on the role and evolution of the concept of wild card in foresight literature. Our main objective is to provide an account of the state of the art of wild card research. To this end, the methodological approach deployed uses both quantitative data (bibliometric analysis of research papers) and qualitative information (constructivist method based on interviews with experts) as a way of achieving robust insight on what wild cards are as a concept and how they are evolving in the real world. This two-pronged approach allowed for the validation of the findings of the systematic survey of the literature through the lens of the international researchers and practitioners that we were able to enquire. This methodology is unlike any other we have been able to detect in the extant literature, and may confer this effort a degree of novelty. As far as substantive contributions are concerned, this thesis sought to better distil a definition of the concept of wild card within a foresight’s framework, study its interrelations with other phenomena of change, and also look into the anticipation and adaptation possibilities when dealing with wild cards

Artefacts, Technicity and Humanisation industrial design and the problem of anoetic technologies

This thesis concerns the intellectual heritage and autonomy of West European and American industrial design as a discourse community at a moment when biotechnological developments are challenging the certainty of what it means to be human. Proceeding from the assumption that industrial design is an autonomous intellectual engagement played out through the interpretation of technology as an artefact, the thesis identifies how this is a critical moment for industrial designers, who appear to be unable to respond to a problem of the apparent disconnection and the progressive displacement of the human in reference to technology. The thesis identifies the cause of this as the understanding of the artefact, which has conventionally been placed at the centre of its analysis. The way that this has been constructed has not only impacted on design solutions but has led to a particular understanding of technology. It is this understanding of the artefact that has ceased to be sustainable and has precipitated the crisis. The thesis argues that, by revisiting the artefact as a mutable consequence of culture, it is possible to relieve the problem by opening up the scope for finding new methodological approaches. These can be used to develop design strategies that are sufficiently subtle and coherent in their terms to engage with the open complexity of future discussions of the distributed and enacted human

The Machine–Organism Distinction

The idea that analysis of organisms can proceed by distinguishing organisms from machines is common to many areas of philosophy. This thesis argues that our search for a philosophy of organisms should not proceed by defining or relying on a Machine–Organism Distinction (MOD). We are often able to take biological theories that are thought to characterize organ- isms, such as theories of organismal autonomy and stability, and apply them to machines. I argue that we should not provide an analysis of organisms according to an MOD because there is no distinction available that holds up to scrutiny and evidence. There have been several major attempts to provide an MOD. I divide these in consecutive chapters according to the property of organisms offered as an MOD: teleology (Nicholson 2013), autonomy (Mossio and Moreno 2015), stochasticity (Skillings 2015; Godfrey-Smith 2016) and pro- cessual stability (Dupré and Nicholson 2018). I address these major attempts to provide an MOD by showing how each fails to provide an analysis of organisms that distinguishes them from machines. To do this, I examine a diversity of machines and organisms that serve as naturalistic counterexamples. Discoveries in molecular biology and ecology, as well as developments in robotics and biotechnology, show the failure of MODs in contemporary philosophy and biology. Moreover, not only does the MOD consistently fail, but philosophical arguments that rely upon MODs consistently misrepresent organisms themselves. I conclude with the idea that we should consider machines not as external to, or distinguished from, organisms, but as proper objects of biological science.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Cambridge Commonwealth and European Trust