Processpatching: defining new methods in aRt&D

In the context of a rapidly changing domain of contemporary electronic art practice- where the speed of technological innovation and the topicality of art 'process as research' methods are both under constant revision- the process of collaboration between art, computer science and engineering is an important addition to existing 'R&D'. Scholarly as well as practical exploration of artistic methods, viewed in relation to the field of new technology, can be seen to enable and foster innovation in both the conceptualisation and practice of the electronic arts. At the same time, citing new media art in the context of technological innovation brings a mix of scientific and engineering issues to the fore and thereby demands an extended functionality that may lead to R&D, as technology attempts to take account of aesthetic and social considerations in its re-development. This new field of new media or electronic art R&D is different from research and development aimed at practical applications of new technologies as we see them in everyday life. A next step for Research and Development in Art (aRt&D) is a formalisation of the associated work methods, as an essential ingredient for interdisciplinary collaboration. This study investigates how electronic art patches together processes and methods from the arts, engineering and computer science environments. It provides a framework describing the electronic art methods to improve collaboration by informing others about one's artistic research and development approach. This investigation is positioned in the electronic art laboratory where new alliances with other disciplines are established. It provides information about the practical and theoretical aspects of the research and development processes of artists. The investigation addresses fundamental questions about the 'research and development methods' (discussed and defined at length in these pages), of artists who are involved in interdisciplinary collaborations amongst and between the fields of Art, Computer Science, and Engineering. The breadth of the fields studied necessarily forced a tight focus on specific issues in the literature, addressed herein through a series of focused case studies which demonstrate the points of synergy and divergence between the fields of artistic research and development, in a wider art&D' context. The artistic methods proposed in this research include references from a broad set of fields (e. g. Technology, Media Arts, Theatre and Performance, Systems Theories, the Humanities, and Design Practice) relevant to and intrinsically intertwined with this project and its placement in an interdisciplinary knowledge domain. The aRt&D Matrix provides a complete overview of the observed research and development methods in electronic arts, including references to related disciplines and methods from other fields. The new Matrix developed and offered in this thesis also provides an instrument for analysing the interdisciplinary collaboration process that exclusively reflects the information we need for the overview of the team constellation. The tool is used to inform the collaborators about the backgrounds of the other participants and thus about the expected methods and approaches. It provides a map of the bodies of knowledge and expertise represented in any given cross-disciplinary team, and thus aims to lay the groundwork for a future aRt&D framework of use to future scholars and practitioners alike

Immersive Participation:Futuring, Training Simulation and Dance and Virtual Reality

Dance knowledge can inform the development of scenario design in immersive digital simulation environments by strengthening a participant’s capacity to learn through the body. This study engages with processes of participatory practice that question how the transmission and transfer of dance knowledge/embodied knowledge in immersive digital environments is activated and applied in new contexts. These questions are relevant in both arts and industry and have the potential to add value and knowledge through crossdisciplinary collaboration and exchange. This thesis consists of three different research projects all focused on observation, participation, and interviews with experts on embodiment in digital simulation. The projects were chosen to provide a range of perspectives across dance, industry and futures studies. Theories of embodied cognition, in particular the notions of the extended body, distributed cognition, enactment and mindfulness, offer critical lenses through which to explore the relationship of embodied integration and participation within immersive digital environments. These areas of inquiry lead to the consideration of how language from the field of computer science can assist in describing somatic experience in digital worlds through a discussion of the emerging concepts of mindfulness, wayfinding, guided movement and digital kinship. These terms serve as an example of how the mutability of language became part of the process as terms applied in disparate disciplines were understood within varying contexts. The analytic tools focus on applying a posthuman view, speculation through a futures ethnography, and a cognitive ethnographical approach to my research project. These approaches allowed me to examine an ecology of practices in order to identify methods and processes that can facilitate the transmission and transfer of embodied knowledge within a community of practice. The ecological components include dance, healthcare, transport, education and human/computer interaction. These fields drove the data collection from a range of sources including academic papers, texts, specialists’ reports, scientific papers, interviews and conversations with experts and artists.The aim of my research is to contribute both a theoretical and a speculative understanding of processes, as well as tools applicable in the transmission of embodied knowledge in virtual dance and arts environments as well as digital simulation across industry. Processes were understood theoretically through established studies in embodied cognition applied to workbased training, reinterpreted through my own movement study. Futures methodologies paved the way for speculative processes and analysis. Tools to choreograph scenario design in immersive digital environments were identified through the recognition of cross purpose language such as mindfulness, wayfinding, guided movement and digital kinship. Put together, the major contribution of this research is a greater understanding of the value of dance knowledge applied to simulation developed through theoretical and transformational processes and creative tools

Poetics of performative space

My project concerns subjectivation, performativity and embodiment, as inflected by notions of process and field. These questions were inspired by recent work in the margins of experimental performance, sound arts, computational media, and philosophy of process. They are informed by, and critically respond to Leibniz's continuous substance, Whitehead's “unbifurcated” process ontology, and Petitotis approach to morphogenesis. Beginning with a concern with the materiality of writing, the project explores the ethico-aesthetics of touch and movement, and poetic architecture or installation events as sites for speculative action. The kind of events I describe, are collective, co-present, embodied, and a-linguistic. The potential for physical contact is a condition for the collective embodied experiences needed to conduct experimental phenomenology. Our events are designed for four or more participants, three to destabilize dyadic pairing, and lower the threshold to improvising being in that space, and a fourth for potential sociality. Having dissolved line between actor and spectator, we may adopt the disposition of an agent of change, or equally a witness of the event. Relinquishing also a categoreal fixation on objects in favor of continua, we inhabit ambient environments thick with media and matter that evolve in concert with movement or gesture

DRAFT Towards a Poetics of Performative Space for Poetics Today

Wittgenstein's skepticism about the expressive scope of propositional language, Derrida's critique of logocentrism, generalized via semiotics to all forms of representation, and Judith Butler's analysis of the performativity of gender motivate the turn to performance as an alternative to representation. In this essay I discuss a series of art installation cum performance events called TGardens. These tangible environments' computationally augmented media respond to the improvised gesture and activity of their inhabitants. They were designed as phenomenological experiments about interaction and response, agency, and intention. I describe the architecture of these performative spaces in enough detail in order to be able to address certain phenomenological questions about agency and the continuum of intentional and accidental gesture in the dynamical substrate of calligraphic media without grammatical superstructure. In particular, the return to the performative and the embodied offers an opportunity to reopen questions about the phenomenology of performance and about the phenomenology and poetics of performative spaces that respond to the activity of their inhabitants. These questions concern the thresholds of agency, gesture and intention without reference to a grammatical or rule-based superstructure. Such question