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Hdc vive or oculus – commercial products – immersed in a virtual worlds – scanner/pc to power
AR – layer Mobile phone ar experiences Holo – lens Visual and sound Interaction makes it more immersive Smartphone technology – AR photosphere Client project – pitch – Dan Livingstone VR suite AR phone experiences How does distance affect our concept of the anthropocene, (with reference to the Anthrobscene, Plantationocene and Capitalocene) if we understand ‘nature’ as a hyperobject?
Donna Haraway: "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin" I think the issues about naming relevant to the Anthropocene, Plantationocene or Capitalocene have to do with scale, rate/speed, synchronicity, and complexity..... ...generated the name Plantationocene for the devastating transformation of diverse kinds of human-tended farms, pastures and forest into extractive and enclosed plantations, relying on slave labour and other forms of exploited, alienated and usually spatially transported labour. It's more than Climate Change; it's also extraordinary burdens of toxic chemistry, mining, depletion of lakes and rivers under and above ground, ecosystem simplification, vast genocides of people and other critters, etc, etc, in systemically linked patterns that threaten major system collapse after major system collapse after major system collapse. recursion can be a real drag... I along with others think the Anthropocene is more a boundary event than an epoch, like the K-Pg boundary between the Cretaceous and the Paleogene. The Anthropocene marks severe discontinuities; what comes after will not be like what came before. I think our job is to make the Anthropocene as short/thin as possible and to cultivate with each other in every way imaginable epochs to come that can replenish refuge. [the Anthropocene (and Plantationocene) should be considered a boundary event like the K-Pg boundary, not an epoch.. the suffix "-cene" proliferates! I risk this overabundance because I am in thrall of the root meanings of -cene/kainos, namely, the temporality of the thick, fibrous and lumpy "now", which is ancient and not...(contemporaneity?)] Jason Moore and Alf Hornborg proposed the term Capitalocene (Capitalocene: Oakland CA: PM Press 2016) Title
Bearing the Sublime - What purpose can the sublime serve in the age of the Anthropocene? Questions
Context My artistic practice explores and performs a physical and theoretical investigation of landscapes that could initially be read as beautiful, unadulterated or natural. Looking more closely reveals uncanny traces of industry, agriculture, colonisation, the haunting marks of mankind; scars of the ‘anthropocene’. Bearing the sublime means enduring its historical baggage and then moving it towards a contemporary, perhaps arguably more purposeful reframing. Synopsis of research This research will examine the contested liminal spaces between proximity and distance, observation and inhabitation. It will explore places redolent of the dichotomies of the indigenous and ‘local’, global and national. There will be two strands to my research methodology - explorations of place and digital recording of performances or activations of sites which to me asct as totems or signifiers of the sublime anthropocene. I will explore these contested spaces, working with digital tools. This gives critical distance to perceptually process the experience at a somaesthetic level, and generates simulacra of the sublime for a spectator. I want to explore the extent to which digital tools act as filters for these aesthetic experiences. In the second strand of my practice, I will translate these experiences into immersive and interactive installations that may include virtual or augmented reality. Through experimentation with this technology I will examine the manipulation of ‘volume loss’ (the intensity of experience diminished through distance) through digital sound, scale and mode of digital visual representation in relation to the body. I will create spaces to explore, activate and research embodied immersion and degrees of mimetic engulfment. Both of these strands will focus not on a politely distanced spectatorship of the sublime, but on my blinded, immersed experience of the world as hyperobject, informed by a critique of anthropocentrism. My research will locate my practice within several strands of the sublime, which is both a layered and complex theory and shorthand for a type of experience that escapes conventional analysis. Kant’s model placed the sublime spectator at a safe distance, able to perceive the awe and terror from a remove. I would argue that this serves to distance our awareness of environmental change and entropy, the hallmarks of the anthropocene, but do we need this critical distance to avoid the blinding effects/affects of the sublime? The research also explores physical explorations of spaces redolent of Burke’s sublime ‘terror’, bypassing distance and mimicking acute stress responses of an anthropocene reading of the world as ‘hyperobject’, evoking the claustrophobic horror of being inside it. I suggest that digital media acts as a ‘Claude glass’: a metaphor for the distance between body and place, a cipher for the sublime. In performance or activation, I will use an immersive approach to activate the contested space between the incomprehensibly distant and the threatening intimacy of landscape. In installation or immersion for an audience, I will explore these distances through manipulation of the aforementioned ‘volume loss’. Methodology Bodily knowledge and tacit understanding lie at the heart of my methodology. A triangulation of physical mastery or testing, perceptual processing and sensorial engulfment together lead to bodily knowledge of place. Coupled with this is my research into the haunting layers of place: a palimpsest of stories, memories, histories, land use and communities associated with the selected sites. I am keen to raise awareness of the subjectivity with which we view place and remaining alert to the idea of place as a repository of slow violence. Significance of research The central aim of this project is to explore new interpretations of ‘distance’ in a contemporary reading of the sublime. The anthropocene era and sublime both date from the beginnings of the industrial revolution when man’s distance from landscape – land sculpted for minerals or deemed barren in capitalist terms – led to a heightened awareness of the eco-aesthetics of environment. The research project will make explicit the intertwined critical continuum of opposition and reflection, simultaneity and juxtaposition between the sublime and the anthropocene, whereby at times they appear as synonyms. I draw upon current discourse on the anthropocene, that humanity has been forced to a self-critical reflection on its place in the natural order. A neglected tool for understanding this is the sublime (Williston 2016). Using digital tools to trace the ghostly layers of the sublime and the foundations of the anthropocene crisis is apt, given their significant role in capitalist development; the ‘anthrobscene’ or ‘capitaloscene’ (Parikka, Haraway 2015). The research takes up this challenge through practice, a ‘hyperobjective’ engagement with ‘nature’, aiming to provide insights into the various distances within the sublime anthropocene. Perhaps by positive use of the sublime as a way of accessing ‘peak experiences’, one can invoke a greater attunement to common humanity. SUBLIME:
Joyfully and playfully negotiating terrible themes. Activating sites corresponding to themes of the sublime anthropocene with a view to raising consciousness of hyperobjective experiences of climate change. Positive use of the sublime as a way of accessing ‘peak experiences’, leading to greater attunement to common humanity. DIGITAL: Use of technology to create immersive, bodily experience of the sublime. Use of digital tools as a way of negotiating distance, foreground and background - degrees of a sublime experience. Use of digital tools sits uneasily in the frame of slow violence, media archaeology and the hyperobjectivity of rare earth materials. PLACE: Bodily exploration invites haunting layers of place - histories, land use, communities, memories Time Awareness of subjectivities - people for whom this place is home. Place as a repository of violence Intuitive knowledge Mixed reality – blend of physical and augmented
Holo lens Microsoft Crude camera phone technology prototypes for now Audio – binaural special experience https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ricoh+360+camera&oq=ricoh+3&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.12404j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 gizmodo – VR devices coming out a-frame aftereffects adobe premier with plug-ins chris milke Bristol Sheffield hallam FACT liverpool VR events Computing VR in Plymouth Babbage – game computing – Paul Watson holo lens tech hub community Co-working space Meet-up.com – events in area  Blood and Soil – Addressing Arthur
Blood and soil – plains of Phillippi, helmets and javelins unearthed Bloody footprints in the snow Agricultural industry A test-tube of red body paint and one of white – soil pigments – Darwin’s taxonomy: animal, vegetable, mineral? The local and the indigenous Remember the people for whom this place is home Time – deep – slow violence of the contemporary – acceleration Halos of radio signal, satellite trash, transmitting or receiving. Transposing one location onto another Layers, palimpsest of stories, histories, perspectives, subjectivities Nazi slogans Nationalism stop nationalism now please What is the inverse of nationalism/colonialism? Invitation, hospitality, reciprocity, not imposing – not doing things to/at or for a community but with – open borders, non-selective invitation Addressing the universe If you could say something to the universe – what would it be? I offer to the universe… mapping the field: what are the burning questions/concerns/desires/joys?
celebrating the local is problematic - Nazi slogan Blood and Soil (ref Georgics) global/Indigenous - invasive species, symbolism of nationalism and isolationism myth of past as a pristine state borders - respecters of or not? (plants/animals) Hottentot fig for example Place is transitory - entanglement - how do we unpack that? displaced - what is displaced layering of one experience of place over another disrupting/disorientation as a positive thing places that you're removed from become fantastical - hiraeth psychogeographic - does place become reified? places change, through gentrification/war etc remembered place - altered place mythogeographic - subjectivity of self and place push and pull of looking for the nostalgic in a place adventure of being open to a place collective responsibility as artists and citizens - particular urgency in current time - is the art superfluous? how much are we allowed to tell other people's stories? who is the author - do I need permission? precarity - continuous becomingness where is the body? |
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