Where Do I End and You Begin? Establishing looped moving image installation as a distinct mode of artists' moving image practice.
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sci
Abstract
Research Question: Does looped moving image installation have specific potential, as an embodied mode of philosophical enquiry, to stage a poetic decentring of cognition and bring new relational frameworks into being?
1. What are the distinctive qualities of looped moving image installation that demand it be seen as a specific sub-genre?
2. How can theories of distributed cognition and artists' moving image practice be developed diffractively, to create a new artistic form, looped moving image installation; an embodied mode of philosophical enquiry?
3. What new insights can be gained from bringing theories of entanglement such as agential realism and mixed reality performance into conversation with looped moving image installation practice, that expose new relational frameworks and de-centre cognition, in the experience of installation art?
This practice based enquiry examines, for the first time, the loop as a distinct phenomenon within moving image installation, a currently under-theorized form of artists' moving image practice (Hatton). The study will expand upon this practice, through the process of making, within the framework of entanglement theories emerging from new materialism and posthumanism.
Moving image installation occupies a hybrid space, spanning virtual (screen) and real (gallery). It has an intrinsically 'doubling', 'recessed' and 'enmeshed' nature (Elwes). Viewing moving image work demands visual absorption, a mental stepping into virtual space (Walsh), and multi-channel installation, which requires the physical negotiation of objects in shared space, adds bodily and social awareness to this complex layering of experience (Bishop).
Furthermore, when moving image content is looped (specifically with no pre-prescribed end or beginning), audience entry/exit points become a crucial component of the artwork's form. Where multiple loops of different durations exist, the number of possible iterations increases exponentially. Looped moving image installation generates a subjective temporal encounter, within a shared multi-layered spatial reality.
The study will address the spatio-temporal complexity of looped moving image installation and explore its ability to disrupt entrenched conceptions of ontological separateness, provoking vital cultural and attitudinal shifts that can pave the way for a greater sense of mutual responsibility.
Emerging from practice-based experiments diffracted through theories of distributed cognition, (Anderson et al.,); mixed reality performance (Benford and Giannachi); and agential realism (Barad), the research will open up new synergies between art, cognitive science and metaphysics.
Taking its overall critical stance from Karen Barad's philosophy of agential realism, and her concept of 'intra-action', the study will create new work that asks how looped moving image installation's layering of spatio-temporal experience and subjective encounters might resonate with the reimagining of relational-boundaries agential realism proposes. An aesthetic of inter-relatedness, multiple-subjectivities and liminality will be emphasized rather than objective representation or linear narratives.
Agential realism emerges from post-human, post-structuralist and new materialist thinking, arguing that the universe is constituted not of stable and well-defined objects but of continually reconfiguring phenomena defining each other through material-discursive 'intra-actions'.
The study will create new looped moving image installations that act as tangible sites of understanding, shedding new light on how our interdependent realities are mutually co-enacted.
1. What are the distinctive qualities of looped moving image installation that demand it be seen as a specific sub-genre?
2. How can theories of distributed cognition and artists' moving image practice be developed diffractively, to create a new artistic form, looped moving image installation; an embodied mode of philosophical enquiry?
3. What new insights can be gained from bringing theories of entanglement such as agential realism and mixed reality performance into conversation with looped moving image installation practice, that expose new relational frameworks and de-centre cognition, in the experience of installation art?
This practice based enquiry examines, for the first time, the loop as a distinct phenomenon within moving image installation, a currently under-theorized form of artists' moving image practice (Hatton). The study will expand upon this practice, through the process of making, within the framework of entanglement theories emerging from new materialism and posthumanism.
Moving image installation occupies a hybrid space, spanning virtual (screen) and real (gallery). It has an intrinsically 'doubling', 'recessed' and 'enmeshed' nature (Elwes). Viewing moving image work demands visual absorption, a mental stepping into virtual space (Walsh), and multi-channel installation, which requires the physical negotiation of objects in shared space, adds bodily and social awareness to this complex layering of experience (Bishop).
Furthermore, when moving image content is looped (specifically with no pre-prescribed end or beginning), audience entry/exit points become a crucial component of the artwork's form. Where multiple loops of different durations exist, the number of possible iterations increases exponentially. Looped moving image installation generates a subjective temporal encounter, within a shared multi-layered spatial reality.
The study will address the spatio-temporal complexity of looped moving image installation and explore its ability to disrupt entrenched conceptions of ontological separateness, provoking vital cultural and attitudinal shifts that can pave the way for a greater sense of mutual responsibility.
Emerging from practice-based experiments diffracted through theories of distributed cognition, (Anderson et al.,); mixed reality performance (Benford and Giannachi); and agential realism (Barad), the research will open up new synergies between art, cognitive science and metaphysics.
Taking its overall critical stance from Karen Barad's philosophy of agential realism, and her concept of 'intra-action', the study will create new work that asks how looped moving image installation's layering of spatio-temporal experience and subjective encounters might resonate with the reimagining of relational-boundaries agential realism proposes. An aesthetic of inter-relatedness, multiple-subjectivities and liminality will be emphasized rather than objective representation or linear narratives.
Agential realism emerges from post-human, post-structuralist and new materialist thinking, arguing that the universe is constituted not of stable and well-defined objects but of continually reconfiguring phenomena defining each other through material-discursive 'intra-actions'.
The study will create new looped moving image installations that act as tangible sites of understanding, shedding new light on how our interdependent realities are mutually co-enacted.
People |
ORCID iD |
| Beverley Hood (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Victoria Evans (Student) |