“You Are Here: A System Thinking Approach for Navigating an Uncertain Future” presented by Styan
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An understanding of the complex-system nature of the world—system thinking—can enable us to discuss, accept, mitigate and perhaps influence the emergent and uncertain behaviour of the earth’s social, biological and physical systems. The extremes of these behaviours emerge as contemporary ecological and social challenges. Taking system theorist Donella Meadows’ guidance to “listen to what the system tells us” as a starting point a digital media artwork You Are Here is developed. As an interactive 3D geospatial data visu-alisation platform, the viewer is immersed in curated content sourced collaboratively from any scientific, cultural or arts geospatial-based research and potentially from alternative knowledge systems. Suggesting the complex and dynamic relationship between the earth’s systems the work encourages the viewer to ‘listen’—to become attentive and responsive—to how these systems interact and form system-based cognitive associations for navigating the inherently uncertain systems basis of the world. The first connection of the viewer with this content is made through visualisations based on lived experience and in the initial work this is the scientifically modelled journey through the atmosphere of individual breaths.
