Organic and Social Histories: Collaborative Systems, Structures and Metaphors

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Art-Sciing: Slippery Terminologies and Language Performances in Art and Science Collaborations

Presentation Title:
  • Organic and Social Histories: Collaborative Systems, Structures and Metaphors

Presenter(s):


Abstract:

  • Sociologists such as Bruno Latour, John Hassard, John Law, and Judith Butler and performance theorists such as Susan Bennett, argue that we perform our identities. Social networks take up meaning through the role of the “actor”. There is an aesthetics to the performance of Internet discourse that can be deciphered and analyzed through visualization. Once visualized, performance can be used as a tool to enhance dialogue. The participatory nature of the Internet allows the very tools of analysis to become tools of creation. The research will investigate whether social cohesion between disciplines is built in part through aesthetic experience. Given that art and science have developed aesthetics, as suggested by Robert Flake and James McAllister, how are these reflected in the discourse itself?

     

    Synchronous and asynchronous dialogues function as performances. CodeZebra includes the creation of a “chat” software tool that creates a cognitive and aesthetic map of identities as these develop within the chat world. The software attempts, in iconic and ironic form, to express the qualities of the chat itself and the “feelings” of participants in that discourse. My interests include the design or testing of a number of material cultural expressions that both produce and result from this software as a comparative method. Culturally based performance fields and their associated methodologies (i.e. choreography, dramatic improvisation, fabric and fashion display) can be mobilized to facilitate the exchange and transformation of different forms and sites of knowledge.

     

    Full text (PDF) p. 133

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