More-than-human humanities research group!

Category: Networks Page 1 of 4

“Whose Reality? Sensation, Representation, and Poetics of ‘extended’ environments via Artistic Research”: a Summative Report

From June 1 – June 2, 2023, practitioners in environmental science, digital environmental humanities, and artistic research met for the workshop, “Whose Reality? Sensation, Representation, and Poetics of ‘extended’ environments via Artistic Research” at Kungliga Konsthögskolan in Stockholm (KKH), Sweden.  Organized by Jesse Peterson (LiU) and Benjamin Gerdes (KKH), we spent the two days discussing and reflecting upon the intersections between our respective efforts occurring through research subjects (e.g., sense, cognition, and human relations to environment and technology), methods (e.g., field work, data collection and mediation), and technologies, with special attention upon digitisation advancements in video and sound that produce “extended” realities. Such extended reality (XR) technologies—such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), 360° video and sound—are becoming more and more commonplace in artistic and scholarly methods, either as tools for data collection or as vehicles for digitized representations. Thus, discussions around the conceptualization and implementation of these tools across disciplines invites critical reflections and discussion. Within this, one particular point of emphasis concerned the possibility of developing a mutually beneficial dialogue between researchers interested in communicating about extended fieldwork and/or large data set acquisition with extra-academic audiences, on the one hand, and artistic researchers’ considerations of formal mediation and audience encounter on the other.

Spurring these discussions, we created and were led through an algorithmic composition process for immersive music at KKH’s listening room, a specially engineered space designed to dampen noise and laced with cutting edge audio equipment. We explored the sounds of the human circulatory and digestive systems and discussed the discourse around arctic “silence” as commodity, resource, and auditory politics. We also were introduced to multiple ways environmental science works to produce numbers and how these numbers come to mean in wider society, the difficulties in translating research data into artistic data, and the ways by which the environment as media aids us in understanding environmental aesthetic forms and political values. To wrap up day one, we discussed the overlaps between disciplines and how thinking through XR mediums may help to forge and develop into alternative aims that transcend scientific and artistic production.

On the second day of this workshop, we explored how virtual spaces require “dirt” for their representation of reality to become convincing and how power and narrative take shape in the relation between program and user through a VR underwater excursion as part of the annual student exhibition at KKH. Through films dealing with Svalbard—the experience of this place in bodily and formalistic ways—we discussed how imaginaries become embedded in audiovisual materials and how technologies shape the sorts of worlds they come to represent. Also, we looked at the use of plants in the offices of digital platform companies, meteorological data and its ability to represent place, and VR performances to highlight how theory, methodology, and art can challenge future visions. 

Beyond the presentations and discussions, we also engaged with XR through a guided tour of the Laurie Anderson exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and an ethnographic VR session that explored the uptake and implementation of VR for and by public audiences. We wish to thank the guides who led us in these excursions into these different realities.

As a result of this workshop, we agreed to develop these conversations through a series of informal discussions to take place in the future. If you are interested in participating, please join us by sending your information to jpeterson@ucc.ie or benjamin.gerdes@kkh.se

Acknowledgement: This workshop is the second of three workshops supported through the networking project “Extending Realities: Pioneering Visual, Acoustic and Sensory Technologies in Transdisciplinary Research” and funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS), which aims to build networks among scholars in the Nordic countries.

Webinar: Deep in The Eye and The Belly

Dear ocean lovers, here is a tip on an online event (in English) with the Göteborg museum of natural history – register for 8 June 18.00 hrs CEST. I believe the film sounds so promising, so perhaps you dont want to miss out on this?

About Deep in The Eye and The Belly
…In the present day, a story is unearthed of a whale body that became a world of dinner parties, clandestine sex and mayoral speeches. In a possible future, a group of those-who-were-left-behind (or, those-who-chose-to-stay) have made a home inside the body of a whale. They find themselves contemplating this new world and speculating on the state of things outside – a world ravaged by a climate crisis which they survived by turning to the ocean. At a crossing between the present day and this potential future, a lone figure sings a lament for the body of the world’s last whale… Join us, on World Ocean Day, for a talk with artist Sam Williams and marine biologist Kennet Lundin, where we explore the deep seas through art and biology.

About the participants
Sam Williams is an artist with a multidisciplinary practice, working across moving-image, collage, choreography and text. Sam is based in London where he is a resident at Somerset House Studios. He has exhibited and screened work at institutions including Arnolfini, Baltic39, Siobhan Davies Dance, Somerset House, Tate Britain, Studio Voltaire and South Kiosk (UK), She Will (Norway); Kino Arsenal, Akademie der Kunst, Tanzhalle Wisenberg and B3 Biennale (Germany).

His ongoing research focuses on multispecies entanglements, ecological systems, bodies-as-worlds and folk mythologies and how they can inspire ideas for present and future ways of non-human-centric living.

Kennet Lundin is a marine biologist, author and researcher. He is based at the Gothenburg Natural History Museum in Sweden where he manages the marine collection, is involved in working with the museum’s exhibition and outreach. He has authored many scientific articles, several popular scientific books on marine animals, and recently also a book on how to cook and eat them.

Practical info
Register your participation by sending an email to gnm100@vgregion.se. One week before the event you will be sent a link and a password to the film. Watch it when you want to, and then join us for the talk. There will be time for questions and discussions.

HAUNTED WATERS

Call for particapation

Our friends in the Design + Posthumanism Network has asked us to share this, so of course we do.

Haunted Waters: We are collecting stories, histories and material evidence from all over the world about bodies of water that are “haunted” by chemical contamination. We are now in search of people who have relationships and stories about contaminated water. We are collecting stories and also bottles with water from the contaminated sites. The bottles and the stories will be part of an archive both online and in an exhibition starting in December in Brussels.

Would you like to help us and/or have any ideas of people to invite?

ABOUT HAUNTED WATERS:

“We are collecting stories, histories and material evidence from all over the world about bodies of water that are “haunted” by chemical contamination. Contaminants are substances that due to different factors have ended up in our waters. Just like ghosts, they are invisible to the naked eye, relate to local historic events and are trapped in places where they aren’t meant to be. To learn how to live with these ghosts, first, we need to get to know them and their stories.

We are attempting to make the invisible contaminants visible, and we need your help. You are invited to join forces and become a ghost hunter! Your contribution will help us visualise the invisible ghostly contaminants that will be used in an art exhibition in Brussels in 2024.

Here is a link to a website to take part in the project: https://nonhuman-nonsense.com/hauntedwaters

We are Nonhuman Nonsense, a research-driven art and design studio, based in Berlin, https://nonhuman-nonsense.com/

Haunted Waters is a project by Nonhuman Nonsense & Caterina Cacciatori (EU JRC water quality lab), part of the art & science project NaturArchy at JRC Ispra, European Commission: https://resonances.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ghosts-anthropocene

Get in touch!

Warmly,

Linnea & Filips 

Nonhuman Nonsense

nonhuman-nonsense.com
@nonhuman_nonsense

‘One by walking’ gives a public digital walking seminar

Our friends at One by Walking—an international research network coordinated by Camilla Brudin Borg (University of Gothenburg), John Martin (University of Plymouth), Roger Norum (University of Oulu), Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch (Åbo Akademi), and Hanna Åberg (University of Bologna)—are hosting a free digital walking seminar:

“Envisioning Proximity Tourism with New Materialism”
16 Mars 1-2 pm. CET (zoom: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/9175897520)

How to stay proximate with other earthly creatures?

During the talk, we share our thoughts from a joint journey that has focused on exploring possibilities of proximity tourism, proximate methodologies, and conceptualisations that enable us to stay proximate with other earthly creatures. Our journey has been driven by curiosity on how staying proximate may provide theoretical and epistemological openings to attend to the current planetary tensions and to diversify the ways we enact research – and tourism. By drawing on feminist new materialism, we weave together stories and narratives that can enhance care within multispecies communities.

Outi Rantala, Professor, Responsible Arctic Tourism, University of Lapland and Adjunct professor, Environmental Humanities, University of Turku. Her ongoing research project Envisioning proximity tourism with new materialism (www.ilarctic.com) involves collaboration of tourism researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and ecologists. Together the group has been developing more-than-human methodologies. 

Emily Höckert, Postdoctoral researcher at the Intra-living in the Anthropocene-project, University of Lapland, Finland. Her current research is driven by a curiosity of how tourism can simultaneously mitigate the environmental crisis and adapt to the unpredictable changes ahead. 

The seminar is free and open for everyone to join.

Please, spread the information!

Are You the new Professor (chair) of Gender Studies at Utrecht University?

VACANCY – JOB ALERT!

Chair (Full Professor) in Gender Studies (1.0 FTE) Utrecht University, the Netherlands

The Faculty of Humanities is looking for a new chair in Gender Studies with a strong, recognised international reputation, whose outstanding qualifications in research and teaching are reflected in an interdisciplinary vision of the field. The chair can articulate an inspired ambition for the development of research, teaching, and public engagement from a humanities perspective of feminist critical theory in relation to questions of diversity and inclusion for contemporary societal and institutional transformations.

The chair is expected to play a leading role in the further development of Gender Studies education and research in the context of Utrecht University’s interdisciplinary strategic themes (Institutions for Open Societies, Dynamics of Youth, and Pathways to Sustainability). In particular, the chair is willing to play a leading role in Institutions for Open Societies’ Diversity & Inclusion and Inequality platforms. As such, the new chair in Gender Studies contributes to the realisation of the strategic plans at the level of the department, the faculty, and Utrecht University, with respect to teaching, research, as well as public engagement and societal impact.

Read more about the qualifications and the full advertisment here.

DEADLINE 5 September, 2022.

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