Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter
Xin Wei Sha
Abstract
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. ... More
Movement, and in particular, gesture are arguably essential aspects of engendering human experience. But rather than taking “the body” or “cognition” for granted as conceptual starting points, we attend to the substrate matter in which gesture takes shape and place. An experimental approach to such questions motivates the exploration of responsive, and in particular, computational media created for sustaining experientially rich, improvisational activity. This book explores rehearsed as well as unrehearsed activity in distributed, continuous fields of responsive media—topological matter. This philosophical and interdisciplinary investigation reworks our understanding of embodiment and the formation of subjective experience. The investigation also puts in play notions such as interaction, responsive media and performativity, contributing to contemporary exchanges between art and philosophy. This draws on emerging techniques in computational video, realtime gestural sound, sensors, and active textiles, as well as experimental techniques in performance, movement, and visual arts. It also offers insights and inspirations for designers, media artists, musicians, movement artists, architects, researchers in multimedia, interaction design, interactive and responsive environments, architecture, science and technology studies, philosophy and cultural studies.
Keywords:
Media arts and technology,
Philosophy and art,
Ethico-aesthetics,
Process philosophy,
Philosophy of technology,
Media studies,
Science and technology studies,
Performance studies,
Responsive environments
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2014 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780262019514 |
| Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: September 2014 |
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262019514.001.0001 |
