“Cognitive Assemblages in Ecological / Digital Art” presented by Rettberg

This essay considers cognitive assemblages, as represented in several recent works of digital and ecological art, which themselves reflect upon contemporary environmental crises. The investigation is framed by the work of theorists N. Katherine Hayles and Timothy Morton in considering ideas of assemblages of cognition distributed between humans, non-human lifeforms, and machines, and the hyperobjects thematized by the works. The essay explores how these concepts can be read through installation artworks by artists including Phillipe Parreno, Kobie Nel, and Pierre Huyghe. How are digital artworks helping us to think through ecologies of distributed cognition during the contemporary period of planetary crisis in which they operate?