Sustaining The Sustainable PDF
Sustaining The Sustainable PDF
Sustaining The Sustainable PDF
INTRODUCTION:
guided my work over the past 16 years. I call this ‘Ecosophical praxis’. To illustrate how
this infuses and directs my research methodologies, I draw upon a case study called
showings in late 2008. This allows me to tease out the complex interrelationships
between research and practice within my work, and describe how they comment upon
and model these eco-cultural theories. I conclude with my intentions and hopes for the
self-reflexively questions how we might re-focus future practices upon ‘sustaining the
sustainable’.
Over the past sixteen years of active practice I have produced and collaborated upon
projects that are presented internationally under the banner of ‘media arts’. (For full
project details, images and videos see www.embodiedmedia.com). Many of these works
experiment with a range of non-traditional human computer interfaces that implicate the
participants’ bodies within their emergent forms. The majority of these works are
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interactive experiences that become realised through individual and group interactions of
participating audiences. Rather than creating ‘detached objects’ for critical scrutiny these
interactive artworks privilege process over product by fostering interactions both between
participants and the work’s technologies AND between participants via these
technologies.
My media artworks are grounded in the assumption that our collective ability to
work emerges from thinking and writing grounded upon a philosophical basis within
‘Ecosophy’. ‘Ecosophy’ is derived from the Greek words Oikos (meaning wisdom) and
Sophia (meaning house or dwelling). This suggests a need to act with care and respect for
everything else that is also dependent upon that which is shared in common. This idea is
Transactions (Armstrong, O'Neill, and Webster 2005) in the 2008 Olympics Cultural
differences we rely on each other culturally, physically and spiritually. Every act
dual-site virtual world, which you, the other person and a family of virtual
creatures inhabit. It is your choice how you interact, but whatever you choose to
do, others will always suffer or prosper. In turn their experience will always
(i.e. you or I) might embody over time. Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (Naess 1995)
describes how he employed theories of Deep Ecology to form his own Ecosophy,
something he calls 'Ecosophy–T'. For Naess 'Ecosophy-T' was not some comprehensive
or all knowing knowledge, but rather a self-realisation born both out of his development
of, and identification with, the philosophy he is credited with birthing, 'Deep Ecology', as
well as his evolving engagements with the world. Seen from this perspective, solutions to
ourselves in relation to the world and each other. These new understandings must form
the subjective basis upon which realistic, practical scientific, political and major
In an essay about the work Intimate Transactions (Fry 2008) Tony Fry wrote of its
Ecosophical basis,
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threaten, but these problems are inherent in the world that contributes to forming
the way we are. Ecosophy names a way to break into, and maybe out of, this
vicious circle. As Felix Guattari (Guattari 1995) put it – ‘The ecological crisis can
be traced to a more general crisis of the social, political and existential.’ He then
went on to point out that dealing with this crisis ‘involves a type of revolution of
directed towards praxis to frame and develop works. For example, one of these
‘Ecosophical questions’ asked whether ‘energy transfers’ inherent within the work might
be made ‘consistent with scientific ecological principles’ that considers ‘energy transfers
and exchanges within the work’ as ‘woven into systems of flow’, traveling from ‘sources
At this stage these questions simply remain objects of challenge and of potential
utility for my praxis and by extension others. This approach therefore forms one part of
my ‘Ecosophy’ that is underpinned by a desire to discover and become the ‘new socio-
All of my works begin with the assumption that we exist within a series of four
interconnected ecologies. The first three are: the biophysical ecology of the natural world,
the ecology of all that is artificial and that which we create, and the social ecologies that
ensure we cannot exist without others. The fourth ecology is what Tony Fry (Fry 2003)
calls the ‘ecology of the image’ and it strongly mediates the other three. He describes
how we dwell, see and act via the way images in this ecology (literary and pictorial)
mediate all other ecologies (i.e. we ‘see’ nothing without this pre-layering). Everything in
this ecology of the image (like all other ecologies) is relational because no domain of the
historic and contemporary literary and visual sources, and so the re-thinking and re-
working of what those ‘images’ are and how they are created becomes the central project
of Ecosophical practice.
This in turn calls for the development of new forms of hybridised practice that
engender the experience of our being relationally connected. Just as knowing emerges
from doing, then so the experiencing of ecosophical works foments the possibility that
participants will move beyond simple subjective responses (i.e. did I like it, how did it all
work?) towards embodied forms of learning (i.e. what have I just been experiencing and
what have I therefore learnt as reflection becomes transformed into conscious knowledge
Achieving this nascent possibility is the deepest goal for my entire practice. This means
that I must continually challenge my own subject position as ‘artist’ and a collaborator in
order that I can myself become part of a ‘change community’ via the small but vital
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contribution that my works can lend to this cultural project. Tony Fry calls this modality
2006: 23) writes that such practices offer ‘the possibility of recognising in other traditions
important that I am not simply contributing to the unsustainable productivist cycle that
Fry suggests is even written into the mainstream discourses of ‘sustainability’ (Fry 2003).
Such praxis is always a work in progress, particularly when it operates within the rapidly
changing world of art and technology that rarely pays attention to its unsustaining basis.
All technological practice is grossly wasteful in terms of the rapid obsolescence and the
hidden costs of its production. Of course this is not a problem only germane to this
discipline, but more generally endemic within today’s ‘design for landfill’ mentality. If I
were to refuse to struggle with these questions then I would become a part of the problem
The ability of new media forms to foster interactive, media rich experiences
allows them to be employed, in concert with Ecosophical principles, to create works that
are dialogic and conversational. In these cases engagement with them has the possibility
to be eventful and transformative in the same way that conversations can lead to
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Holdridge 2006: 24) writes that conversations ‘are endless in that whilst they may break
off they are never completed and in that sense they can never stand as a final statement’.
He goes onto to say of dialogic works that ‘far from being an inadequacy, the
PRAXIS-LED RESEARCH
I have adopted the term ‘praxis-led’ to describe my approach to art making that melds
understood in the context that ecosophies remain personal and social philosophical
positions based upon a series of metaphysical beliefs that ultimately are not possible to
methodologies concurs with the Aristotelian conception of praxis, which concerns the
thoughts and actions that comprise our ethical and political life and ultimately focuses
upon furthering human well-being, and by extension, nonhuman well-being. Each new
project is conceived under the general aegis of my Ecosophy and is part of a broader
continual looping between practice and writing such that ‘writing would belong to such
(Macleod and Holdridge 2006: 4). The praxis-led methodologies that I use need to be
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pointers.
So to what degree does this theory flow into praxis? At the time of writing (mid 2008) I
am in the early stages of developing of a new interactive artwork work called KnowMore
Queensland, Brisbane, Australia - opening in late 2008. I will use this work to discuss a
praxis-led way of working and therefore how I make that open for scrutiny. My
approaches on large-scale project such as this can be broken down into a series of general
steps.
Firstly I begin with a series of theoretical starting points, often encompassed in one or
more discussion papers. This locates field of enquiry and conceptual terrain and is used to
clarify assumptions about ‘the world’. The subject matter accords with some aspect of
Commons) considers the urgent need for us to celebrate what we have in common
- the needs of all that sustains us at the most fundamental level. This requires us
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each to envision new ways that connect our everyday life choices with a duty of
Having settled upon this broad idea I then begin to think through a more detailed
treatment. At this early stage I often work alone or in small groups in advance of securing
funding for a full creative team. For Knowmore I began to develop a rich dialogue with
fellow artist-researcher Chris Barker. This led us to synthesise two differing but
Knowmore centres on the core assumption that ecological connections between things
are present at all times, but they are not always apparent or evident to us. The work
speaks to this idea through requiring participants to engage with the work through
omnipresent, but at most times invisible. The work therefore asks - what do we ‘need
to know’ before being able to embody and live with better regard to this critical inter-
embodied, kinetic, audio-visual and collaborative ‘play’ that links participants and
applications. The initial host venue - the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) - were
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focussed upon how their collection, as a knowledge store, might best facilitate the public
on what we each might ‘know’ about a personal Ecosophy, but rather how that might
manifest in how we each separately and conjointly act upon that knowledge. I therefore
wrote,
Libraries allow us to ‘know more’ in many ways. They seek to foster community
connection and social development. The new library, as epitomized by SLQ, is our
place not only for us to ‘know more’ but also an environment within which we can go
on to ‘learn’ more. In that spirit this artwork draws attention to where a contemporary
library’s ‘collection’ might be evolving and therefore what kind of resource for us all
From this point onwards collaborations and discussion with hired artists began in earnest.
In many of my projects collaborators work outside of the academy and may or may not
have had recent contact with practice-led research methodologies. I typically prefer to
work with full-time professional artists for the relevance, experience and commitment
that they share with placing the final works within the international art-exhibition context
in which I operate.
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would deeply undermine the ecological, sustaining intent of the work. I therefore seek to
create a supportive, respectful place to work that finds a common ground between the
achieve – despite the pressure cooker that is an artistic expectation. In these ways I intend
that each artist remains committed to the project and also challenged and satisfied that
their own practice is being advanced. This moves away from the notion of my contracting
long-term collaboration.
To establish this appropriate process I spend time over numerous early meetings
contextualising the work and the process to confirm that the team’s commitment to
have learnt to place deep trust in these collaborative, creative, processes. What drives this
research process is more than what Brad Haseman (Haseman 2006) calls ‘an enthusiasm
of practice’, although the need for enthusiasm to push the project through difficult times
‘improvement of practice’, in the sense that its processes are increasingly aligned to the
The next step is to discover an interactive structure around which to best progress the
work. Unlike some other artforms that can be tackled at the outset through open
which experimentation can subsequently occur. The overall form of Knowmore emerged
slowly in a series of iterations. As we began to understand the fit between the project’s
Ecosophical roots and interactive experience, artistic collaborator, Chris Barker (Barker
upon which certain types of interaction or characteristics are mapped. These are
the physical constraints, it is this high, it is this dark, it is this long, etc. These
mappings then, become the syntax upon which an argument is constructed. A bit
like making a philosophical machine – an object, which becomes the scaffold for
building a sculpture, which can ‘look into’ itself and change form. We can take
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then, the essential characteristics of the form (big, skinny, rotating, projected, etc)
eg: particle mass, viewing position, illusion, etc) and we can ‘think into these
This allowed us to con-jointly establish a base interactive strategy for the work,
The work’s form and primary interface is a circular, 1.5m-diameter tabletop set at
an average person’s hip height. This ‘table’ spins on a smooth, central bearing,
falls directly onto it, re-configuring it in real time in response to sensed rotational
speed and modalities, creating an uncanny blend of physical object and virtual
media. This revolving table sits within a curtained space, both to protect it against
singly or in groups and their changing presence around the table, as well as how
they touch it is registered by sensors. A 5:1 sound system also envelops this
circular space with each speaker focussing upon one of five active table zones. A
This description outlines a broad structure rather than the specifics of what
exactly will be seen, heard or embodied, as these are future decisions that will only
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emerge from the practice-led process that at the time of writing had only just begun. In
these ways we will privilege practice and problem-led approaches as co-dependent and
equally important. This also acknowledges that the deeply multidimensional, reciprocal
and iterative journeys of making work involves a broad swathe of forces that include
intuition, budget, brief, career stage and sustain-ability of materials, processes and
showing contexts. However ultimately the final outcome will emerge from
Only now, with all this groundwork in place do we ‘push off from the side’ and
begin to develop a practical model of departure. As the work unfolds we engage in deep
reflection in action (why this way, why not that way, what are the performative and
and reflection. This eventually leads us to the development of a series of proof of concept
sketches involving public or semi-public showings, allowing us to further think into and
reflect towards subsequent developments. From then on in we commit to our first major
feedback, structured interviews and live documentation integrated into these outcomes.
This is achieved by a series of invited showings where audiences attend on the proviso
that they will discuss their experience with us both after their session and several days
later. In recent years as bigger galleries and festivals have showed my works the base of
the audiences has moved well beyond just those in already in tune with my work. Based
upon the transcription and analysis of these interviews and discussions I then engage in
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reflective, analytical writing drawing upon themes cemented by quotations. This process
involves developing aims for the subsequent stages of the work and then re-examining
how these outcomes relates back to the grounding theories and decisions as to whether
the new relationship is still consistent with the aims originally set for the work. This also
leads us to decide how the next phases of the project will be pursued based upon an
identification of the cultural impacts. Later stages of the research process involve full
documentation compilations prepared for online and offline dissemination and archiving
purposes.
CONCLUSIONS
Whilst praxis led, Ecosophical works suggest the ‘problem of ecology’ and they also
the power of physically active experience. This avoids simplistic over reliance on the
promotion of fear and guilt, particularly for audiences who may well be already inured to
It would be easy, and wrong, to suggest that participating within these works
experiences in the early 90s of reading Suzi Gablik’s book of interviews, ‘Conversations
at the End of Time’ (Gablik 1995) in which she spoke with numerous artworkers and
philosophers about how they were personally dealing with the ecological crisis. The
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realisations that I gained from that book were just the right ideas for me at that time -
spurring me to then develop the Ecosophical project that I have pursued now for many
work in the context of all other experience, that as both an artist and a social activist
This approach, I hope, lessens the risk that the real problem of ecology will remain
REFERENCES
Armstrong, Keith. 2003. Towards an Ecosophical Praxis of New Media Space Design.
Ph.D., Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology,
Brisbane.
Armstrong, Keith, Chris Barker, Darren Pack, and Luke Lickfold. 2008. Knowmore
(House of Commons). Brisbane, Australia.
Armstrong, Keith, Lisa O'Neill, and Guy Webster. 2005. Intimate Transactions.
Brisbane, Australia: Transmute Collective.
Barker, Chris. 2008. Knowmore Project Briefing Notes. 11th March 2008.
Fry, Tony. 2003. 'The Voice of Sustainment: An Introduction'. Design Philosophy
Papers: Issue 1.
Fry, Tony. 2008. 'Intimate Transactions: Close Encounters of Another Kind'. Geo
Website,
http://www.geoproject.org.au/geo/_dbase_upl/IT%20Critical%20Writing.pdf.
Gablik, Suzi. 1995. Conversations Before the End of Time. New York: Thames and
Hudson.
Guattari, Felix. 1995. 'The Ecosophic Object'. In Chaosmosis: An Ethic-Aesthetic
Paradigm. Sydney, Australia: Power Publications.
Haseman, Bradley. 2006. 'A Manifesto for Performative Research'. Media International
Australia (Incorporating Culture and Policy) (Practice-led Research): 98-106.
Macleod, Katy, and Lin Holdridge. 2006. Thinking Through Art : Reflections On Art as
Research, Innovations in Art and Design. London ; New York: Routledge.
Naess, Arne. 1995. 'The Deep Ecology "Eight Points" Revisited'. In Deep Ecology for the
21st Century, edited by G. Sessions. Boston, USA: Shambhala.