The article focuses on the practices relevant for digital mapping based on dynamic data processing and GIS. I argue that participatory mapping can be seen as a form of data driven activism and as such it is first and foremost the example of the collective knowledge. Hence, the primary function of the images (e.g. maps) produced in the process is not so much the representation of the city as rather it is the role they play in the dynamic operations of knowledge production on a grassroots level. Given that the computing technology and data processing saturate the social relations of the contemporary urban environments to the considerable extent, certain shift in the scope of analysis is required: the focus on how the images emerge and how they act in the world seems to be more relevant than the traditional analysis of the city’s visual representation.
This article investigates to what extent the concept of Anthropocene allows for grasping the specificity of particular ecosystems and their complex histories. The point of focus here is the Upper Mississippi River Valley and a set of historical and contemporary discourses coalescing around it. Starting with the early travelogues and incorporating modern mapping attempts, a popular classic monograph by Calvin R. Fremling and the contemporary documenting projects such as Mississippi. An Anthropocene River and The American Bottom, the article traces the discursive discontinuities that may provide the ground for conceiving the alternative histories of the Anthropocene, more inclusive of indigenous knowledge, open to multiple knowledge registers, and transcending beyond the Eurocentric models of rationalism supporting the economy of extraction. To this end, a new understanding of relational ontologies is suggested following the notion of other-than-human persons as proposed by anthropologists interested in revisiting the basic tenets of animism and laying foundations for new animism (while taking various aspects of indigenous knowledge into account). Tapping into the concept of Place-Thought, the essay proposes an effective decolonisation of the discussion on the Anthropocene.
Land art and geographical haiku, or the art of associationsThe author analyses the practices of land art as the examples of transversality and multimodality that reach beyond the logics of representationalism, especially when the artwork is considered as the networked object including documentation, context of its production and the various instances of the auctorial paratexts. Such an investigation raises important questions pertaining to the very act of categorization what constitutes an artwork, but also to the experience of bodily movement through the space, with its nonlinearity, fragmentation and specific instances of embodiment. The main point of interest here are walk-based projects by Hamish Fulton (especially what has been dubbed as geographical haikus) and Richard Long, as well as the exhibition design and various forms of documentation accompanying the artwork.
Composing the World while Listening – Sound as CommunicationIn this article, the notion of acoustic communication is being examined. The author propose the thesis that shift toward meditational qualities of sound environments as well as the main strategies of minimalist aesthetics (with the example of John Cage being the most exemplary) can be seen as the radical reconfiguration of traditional communication theory paradigm, as embodied in the Shannon-Weaver’s model. The mutual links are established between theory of acoustic ecology proposed by R. Murray Schafer, the model of acoustic communication authored by Barry Truax, Hildegard Westerkamp’s practice of soundwalking and the major currents in contemporary philosophy of sound that influenced electroacoustic music in the XX century.
In my article I aim at discovering how the potential of permaculture reaches out beyond the sustainable form of agricultural activity. I pay attention to the set of answers given to the current ecological crises, emphasizing the context-dependent, flexible and non-dogmatic ways of solving problems. Permaculture not only is a kind of practice aimed simultaneously at cultivating the land in a sustainable way and giving priority to creating an abundance of crops, but it also accounts for regenerative forestry, soil-making and agricultural practices maintaining the relationships with the older forms of inquiry, often inspired by indigenous knowledge. Therefore, I propose to outline the permacultural ethics and approach as a “mission without mission” and I set it against the modernist assumptions of what constitutes a socially progressive and environmentally sound activity.
Artykuł jest próbą reinterpretacji obrazowości charakterystycznej dla mediów sieciowych opartych na różnych formach łączności bezprzewodowej. Krążące w tych mediach obrazy są efektem procesów intensywnego przetwarzania danych, a ich ekologia jest odmienna od tradycyjnych form kultury audiowizualnej: sytuują się znacznie bliżej środowiska, w którym są wytwarzane (przykłady pochodzą z praktyk artystycznych tzw. sztuki klimatu, ale mogą również uwzględniać mapowanie partycypacyjne), w szeregu wymian między aktorami ludzkimi i nie-ludzkimi. Sięgając do propozycji teoretycznych Jamesa Gibsona, zwłaszcza do teorii afordancji rozpatrywanej w kontekście jego całościowej propozycji dotyczącej optyki ekologicznej, Nacher proponuje podejście odchodzące od modelu reprezentacjonistycznego. W tym ujęciu opisywane typy obrazowania jawią się nie jako odrębne jednostki reprezentacji, ale forma wymiany energii z otoczeniem.
EN
This article is an attempt to reinterpret the imagery characteristic of network media based on different forms of wireless connectivity. Images circulating in these media are the effect of an intensive processing of data, and their ecology is different from the traditional forms of audiovisual culture: they are situated much closer to the environment within which they are produced (the examples come from artistic practices such as the art of climate, but they can also include participation mapping), as a result of a series of exchanges between human and non-human actors. Drawing on the theoretical propositions of James Gibson, especially to the theory of affordances considered within the context of his overall proposal related to ecological optics, Nacher suggests a departure from the representational model. Within this proposed approach the described types of images appear to be not individual units of representation, but a form of exchange of energy with the surroundings.
This article is an attempt at an analysis of digital archiving as a process of forming a community of practice. Such community has coalesced around the ELMCIP Knowledge Base developed by the University of Bergen. It is seen not only as a shift in academic pedagogies, where boundaries between professors and students become blurred, but also as a strategy of the humanities aimed at reclaiming the knowledge work in the age of a novel, ‘cool’ and ubiquitous innovation. The latter is often presented as a goal in itself contributing to fundamental digital disruption, supposedly reorganising society and culture at large. Moreover, establishing such communities of practice is seen as a crucial factor to safeguard the sustainability of digital archives that extends beyond purely infrastructural and technical circumstances.
The article is aimed at presentation of the case study in video games creation by Indigenous auteur and designer, Elizabeth LaPensée, which at the same time demonstrates how video games can both mediatize the process of re-writing history and decolonize popular imagination. The analysis of LaPensée’s three games: Invaders, Thunderbird Strikes, and When the Rivers Were Trails to some extent follows her own strategies of self-identification as Anishinabee (Ojibwe). Drawing upon reconfiguration of the auteur theory and the framework of ludostylistics by Astrid Ensslin, we also strive to demonstrate how the notion of a singular author is in fact grounded in collective and collaborative qualities of indigenous digital culture, including digital game design.