Musings from my Masters work 2022
Master’s exhibition. https://ths.li/SUzR9j
Some journal entries 2022: https://www.neithmoore.com/lithic-fragments.html
Dissertation 2022 LINK to submitted PDF
From my Master’s exhibition.
Figure 74: Moore, 2022. Lithic Fragments installation. Fired clay, straw, soil, mycelia, weeds. Dimensions variable.
In my virtual tour, as an info hotspot, I wrote...
Reflections on questions
While I was working in the shed during the duration of the process exhibition, the Lithic Fragment Cairn installation was alive. It rustled... it moved! I was rather alarmed in a macabre sort of way as my husband's ashes were in this cairn. I even put on thick gloves to move fragments to investigate the rustling. The installation was alive which was wonderful for me. Frogs, oyster mushrooms, scurrying beetles... Haraway would love this!
Automatically, in PLR, I asked questions...
How could a viewer be more engaged using visible, audible and olfactory sensory fluctuations?
Dynamic fluctuations in sight? ? Dim wandering lights? Dynamic fluctuations in sound? Groaning; rustling? Dynamic fluctuations in movement? Bumping; tilting? Dynamic fluctuations in smell? Earthy; mushroomy?
Note:
This would allow for random fluctuations to be programmed into the artwork/installation. This would be instead of my control being primary as I pursue my post-human objective of decentering the human. It could also allow me to situate myself in a transdisciplinary liminal space involving electronics, robotics, chemistry, biology, ecology, videography and art. STEAM! My passion...
However, as soon as animations occur in 3D physical space, then they are tapping into the discipline of 'Robotics', as opposed to 2D animations like video and stop frame animations.
I do worry, though, that this approach could start to resemble a Halloween party - look at Kristeva's concept of Abjection for some hints?
A performative ‘Dance of Agency’ - posthuman performativity
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8 Feb 2023
Ideas for practical - Animating the inanimate
The emphasis of posthuman design on the animate and inanimate has potential.
I encountered this in my reading last year but decided not to pursue it as I already had too much going on for a Masters.
Re-read Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto as a start…
MARTIN HEIDEGGER ON TECHNOLOGY, ECOLOGY, AND THE ARTS Anthony Lack, 2014.
Cayley, David. Ideas on the Nature of Science. Kindle library.
Bolter, Posthumanism article.
Henk Borgdorff, Peter Peters, and Trevor Pinch. Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies. Kindle library.
Video Stanford Seminar - Posthuman-Centered Design.
Posthuman studio website.
Posthumanism and design pdf.
Posthumanart.com website.
Vones, K uses circuitry in jewellery design. Crafted evolution. Also on Kindle
She also designs using Arduino circuits. Follow up…
Designboom for light installations.
Vones designs using Arduino as a prototyping tool.
Electronic component
As a broad concept, I’d like to have motion sensors which respond with sounds and light, and also - possibly - infrared sensors with similar (or different?) responses.
I’ll need to design the circuits so that it is a timed response. Preferably to dim slowly and then reset. I think I’ll work on an Arduino breadboard in order to design features and then test this.
I think it's an excellent idea to prototype on an Arduino simulator first. I did most of my ICT work with the gr 8s and 9s on Tinkercad, so that'll be fine for me.
Housing for the electronic components.
A clay infrastructure might provide the housing for the electronic components. It may also include fibre weaving, rusted metal etc. See what the work wants!
I’ll start off with raku clay as it is the most forgiving and requires the least amount of human control. I must remember not to stress my back with modules that are too heavy! Beware!!!
I’ll use some basic coiling methods but work intuitively and robustly. No drawing or planning! Let it just develop.
I’ll need to take modules down to my old studio to fire as my old kiln is there. I wish I didn’t sell it!
Caged lights
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Vice.com Marbles from Studio Roosegaarde 2012 
Some suppliers for microcontrollers
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Bolt webinar on PLR... 1st March 2023
Bolt’s mapping the performativity/the “movement”
‘Mapping the Movement’... cartographic movement
What is revealed through the work?
How has it shifted your practice?
How does it transform material practice in the field?
How has it shifted discourse in the field? (design/art/architectural history/theory criticism?
How has it shifted discourse in the field in other disciplines?
physics/chemistry/psychology/electronics)?
How does it affect its audience?
How has it changed our understandings about the world in which we live?
How do we know this?
Writhe 2015 https://www.laurawoodward.com.au/writhe-2015
Post-human considerations. Water pumped through the installation. Is it interactive?
Laura Woodward. HOW DO WE HOLD THESE THINGS TOGETHER? 2022
Water, grass, stainless steel, nylon hose, pumps, sound equipment, wire rope, fasteners. Dimensions variable
https://www.laurawoodward.com.au/
Laura Woodward
"HOW DO WE HOLD THESE THINGS TOGETHER? 2022 Water, grass, stainless steel, nylon hose, pumps, sound equipment, wire rope, fasteners. Dimensions variable
HOW DO WE HOLD THESE THINGS TOGETHER? considers the process of new death technologies, such as water cremation, and what kinds of ceremonies, rituals or spaces might develop around these emerging body disposal methods. I was thinking about how we engage with life when we know that death is coming – thus the title. This was particularly pertinent for me as I was pregnant whilst developing the work and was increasingly aware of the liminal space between life and death during the act of childbirth.
HOW DO WE HOLD THESE THINGS TOGETHER? imagines a space for mourning, in which the deceased’s remains might form a sonic landscape for a period of time whilst loved ones take the time to say goodbye. I have attended both burial services and cremation services and noticed how different they are: in burial services, there is a durational aspect for mourners as the body is lowered and dirt covers the coffin. In the cremation services that I have seen, however, the body simply moves out of view without a durational equivalent to the lowering of the body into the ground.
In HOW DO WE HOLD THESE THINGS TOGETHER?, I imagined how a durational equivalent might manifest for loved ones if a body was disposed of with water cremation – which, like traditional cremation, occurs out of sight. Each of the three vessels in “How do we hold these things together?” drips water onto a convex metal drum, amplifying the sound of the water falling. The varying tones of the three units create a meditative and rhythmic soundscape within the space. This sombre tone is however tempered by the lush grass; fed by the water as it falls from the drums, its intense green a nod to the interconnections between death and life."
Get busy with some reading!
Haraway, D. 2016. Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press. Kindle ed.
Haraway, D. 2003. Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Haraway, D. 1992. “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a post-Humanist Landscape.” In Feminists Theorize the Political, edited by Butler, J and Smith, J. Routledge. See below…
Butler, J. and Scott, J. 1992. Feminists Theorize the Political. 1st edn. Taylor and Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1615032/feminists-theorize-the-political-pdf (Accessed: 13 March 2023).
Haraway, D. 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto . PDF See below…
Haraway, D. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. 1st edn. Taylor and Francis. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1609659/simians-cyborgs-and-women-the-reinvention-of-nature-pdf (Accessed: 13 March 2023).
Barrett - Kristeva Reframed in my Perlego library
https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/919714/0
Some thoughts on Kristeva...
● In Kristevan thought, creative production is not an application of theory, but allows practice to enter into a dialogue with theory and to question theory. Really a type of PLR?
● ‘amatory discourse’, ...a discourse that connects embodied experience, affects and emotions in ways that expand the capacity of language to articulate meanings that lie beneath established codes and the customary use of language. This implies the use of pre-lingual semiotic elements that underlie the later symbolic elements.
Kristeva’s account of ...
1. the dual nature of language (semiotic & symbolic),
2. the relationship between body and mind,
3. reason and emotion, and
4. between biological and social processes
Seems to make us aware of all these dualisms. Bit dated, but interesting.
So art could be a pre-lingual method of resolving dualisms to a both/and instead of an either/or paradigm.
Human Valency is an inferred criterion from (instinctively generated) emotions; it is the property specifying whether feelings/affects are positive, negative or neutral.
Chora can be thought of as pre-language semiotic modalities that persist as asymbolic connections with the world.
Genotext is semiotic and embodied. i.e. chora. Causes affect. Consists of parts of language like rhythm, alliteration, pitch… Pre-linguistic.
Phenotext is symbolic and cultural. Symbolic law. Signifying code. Cultural constraints and grammatical rules.
On Abjection...Ch4... some quotes
Relate all this to my 3 years at Wits Medical School!!!
... abjection gives rise to negative affect fear, loathing and disgust and how this is played out in the viewing experience.
... a symptom of trauma...
... codifications of abjection determine femininity and the maternal in patriarchal society. E.g. taboos around menstruation, birth etc.
... a process that can collapse meaning, but which is nevertheless fundamental to the constitution of identity and renewal of meaning. Religion and ritual play an important role in the mediation of abjection and the overcoming of unnameable or primal fear. In secular society, art remains one of the few means of mediating abjection.
As a spatial concept, abjection refers to processes demarcating the boundaries between the child and the mothers body and between the subject and objects.
...The fearsome beginnings of otherness. The corpse is the most abject. Faeces, urine, vomit, pus and blood in an open wound are abjected or expelled from the body to protect it from contagion and death.
...in religious rites and rituals abjection is codified as a means of separating the sacred and the profane. A means of separating the sacred and the profane and defining the limits of the individual within social/symbolic order.
... Abjection assumes different codings from culture to culture.
... Kristeva demonstrates the way in which the act of excluding abject things constitutes collective existence, identity and the limits of the individual in relation to society.
... so this could be a way of re-defining these limits/boundaries between me/human society/other worldings? (Haraway)
Some thoughts on Haraway...
Re-read Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, but try not to be distracted by the feminist stance. Also remember that Haraway’s lens is that of a biologist’s.
Some quotes to think about… “Irony is about humour and serious play.(Page 1).
…a rhetorical strategy. (Page 1).
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. (Page 1).
I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings.(Page 1).
???? Michael Foucault's biopolitics(Page 1). Nature and culture are reworked; the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other.(Page 2).
Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.” (Page 3).
On Staying with the Trouble...
Some quotes...
Introduction:
Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvic futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.
Ch 1:
These string figures are thinking as well as making practices, pedagogical practices and cosmological performances. ...so making-thinking-being can be a cosmological performance.
Ch3:
Sympoiesis is a simple word; it means “making-with.” Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing. In the words of the Inupiat computer “world game,” earthlings are never alone. That is the radical implication of sympoiesis. Sympoiesis is a word proper to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems. It is a word for worlding-with, in company. Sympoiesis enfolds autopoiesis and generatively unfurls and extends it.
Another word for these sympoietic entities is holobionts, or, etymologically, “entire beings” or “safe and sound beings.”
I propose holoents as a general term to replace “units” or “beings.” Like Margulis, I use holobiont to mean symbiotic assemblages, at whatever scale of space or time, which are more like knots of diverse intra-active relatings in dynamic complex systems, than like the entities of a biology made up of preexisting bounded units (genes, cells, organisms, etc.) in interactions that can only be conceived as competitive or cooperative.
In 1998, a Canadian environmental studies graduate student named M. Beth Dempster suggested the term sympoiesis for “collectively-producing systems that do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries. Information and control are distributed among components.
These scientists show that interspecies—really, interkingdom—meetings and enfoldings can produce entities that hold together, develop, communicate, and form layered tissues like animals do.
3.3. Beaded jellyfish made by Vonda N. McIntyre for the Crochet Coral Reef. From the collection of the Institute for Figuring (IFF). Photograph © IFF
3.5. Page from Tik-Tik the Ringtailed Lemur / Tikitiki Ilay Maky. UNICEF Madagascar and the Lemur Conservation Foundation. Text by Alison Jolly and Hanta Rasamimanana. Art by Deborah Ross. Courtesy of Margaretta Jolly.
3.7. Cover image for Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). Courtesy of E-line Media, in collaboration with Upper One Games, and the Cook Inlet Tribal Council.
3.8. Navajo rug, Two Gray Hills. Weaver unknown. Photograph by Donna Haraway. Purchased by Rusten Hogness’s father, John Hogness, in the Navajo Nation in the 1960s.
Ch4:
I also insist that we need a name for the dynamic ongoing symchthonic forces and powers of which people are a part, within which ongoingness is at stake. Maybe, but only maybe, and only with intense commitment and collaborative work and play with other terrans, flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages that include people will be possible. I am calling all this the Chthulucene—past, present, and to come.
I am a compostist, not a posthumanist: we are all compost, not post-human.
“My” Chthulucene, even burdened with its problematic Greek-ish rootlets, entangles myriad temporalities and spatialities and myriad intra-active entities-in-assemblages—including the more-than-human, other-than-human, inhuman, and human-as-humus.
Ch6:
To study the kind of situated, mortal, germinal wisdom we need, I turn to Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler.
Plants, however, they speculated, “do not communicate” and so have no language. Something else is going on in the vegetative world, perhaps something that should be called art.
Ch7:
Interesting research is research conducted under conditions that make beings interesting. —Vinciane Despret
To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting. —Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy.
Enough reading...some playing...
I think I will 'decenter the human' in a post-human strategy, and so have fun with AI!
ChatGPT is waiting.
ChatGPT ... chat.openai.com/chat/8ac1c121-9557-4e50-8243-a2776ad6db95
Please write the code for the following requirement:
1) PIR activation of FastLed strip WS2812B with 54 LEDS.
2) Each LED must have a randomly assigned Hue (0-255), Brightness (0 - 255) and duration (30 to 3000 ms).
3) Each LED in the array would fire randomly - not in sequence.
(I love the way I say 'please'!)
Reply from AI:
"To fulfill your requirements, you will need to use a microcontroller like Arduino, a PIR sensor module, and a FastLed library. Here is a sample code that meets your requirements: (See below...)
This code initializes the LED strip with FastLed library and the PIR sensor pin as an input. The loop() function reads the PIR sensor state and if motion is detected, it selects a random LED from the strip and sets a random color for the selected LED.
The previousMillis variable is used to track the time since the last LED was lit, and ledIndex is used to keep track of the last LED that was lit. The FastLED.show() function updates the LED strip.
Note that this code is just an example and may need to be modified depending on your specific requirements and hardware setup."
Video 1: Sneaking up on my AI generated prototype circuit... it gets me every time!
Studio views with the clay tower under construction.
The cotton mycelium - to me - is still unfinished / unresolved. It has huge potential as part of an improved, dynamic sensory environment.
Bolt's ‘Mapping the Movement’ as a reflection ... 29 March
A 'cartographic' reflection'...
What might be revealed through the work?
It might simulate hidden lives (both animate and inanimate) to increase awareness of these hidden lives and our connectivity to them. (Haraway and Braidotti)
How could it perhaps shift your practice?
???unclear at the moment??? Although I am experiencing an extreme learning curve at the moment. I can feel the mental 'rust' falling off! I certainly haven't done anything like this before.
How could it transform material practice in the field?
How could it shift discourse in the field? (design/art/theory criticism?)
These are similar as I work on both at the same time... entangled. I'll keep journaling to document the movement between the two.
How could it shift discourse in the field in other disciplines? (e.g. Psychology/ electronics)?
Don't go to ground and work alone...keep interacting with your peers/lecturers. Perhaps post on some of the fora you belong to? See what they think? (PLNs - Professional Learning Networks... always valuable)
How might it affect its audience? In what ways?
That can't be known at the moment...only guessed at. Using the idea of 'abjection' (Kristeva) might be provocatively awful. Or it could go the other way... be positive and comforting like Woodward. Wait and see until something is ready to install somewhere. Outside under a tree?
How might it change our understandings about the world in which we live?
I am really taken by the idea mooted by Latour, Haraway, Braidotti and Bendell that we are now living in a 'post-Anthropocene' time - call it what you will. This implies adaptation and learning to live and die in a very different way.
"Neither the critters nor the people could have existed or could endure without each other in ongoing, curious practices. Attached to ongoing pasts, they bring each other forward in thick presents and still possible futures; they stay with the trouble in speculative fabulation." (Haraway)
How could we know this? How could I measure this?
This sounds so scientific! Too scientific? QED? Hmmmm....
A 'cartographic' reflection'...
What might be revealed through the work?
It might simulate hidden lives (both animate and inanimate) to increase awareness of these hidden lives and our connectivity to them. (Haraway and Braidotti)
How could it perhaps shift your practice?
???unclear at the moment??? Although I am experiencing an extreme learning curve at the moment. I can feel the mental 'rust' falling off! I certainly haven't done anything like this before.
How could it transform material practice in the field?
How could it shift discourse in the field? (design/art/theory criticism?)
These are similar as I work on both at the same time... entangled. I'll keep journaling to document the movement between the two.
How could it shift discourse in the field in other disciplines? (e.g. Psychology/ electronics)?
Don't go to ground and work alone...keep interacting with your peers/lecturers. Perhaps post on some of the fora you belong to? See what they think? (PLNs - Professional Learning Networks... always valuable)
How might it affect its audience? In what ways?
That can't be known at the moment...only guessed at. Using the idea of 'abjection' (Kristeva) might be provocatively awful. Or it could go the other way... be positive and comforting like Woodward. Wait and see until something is ready to install somewhere. Outside under a tree?
How might it change our understandings about the world in which we live?
I am really taken by the idea mooted by Latour, Haraway, Braidotti and Bendell that we are now living in a 'post-Anthropocene' time - call it what you will. This implies adaptation and learning to live and die in a very different way.
"Neither the critters nor the people could have existed or could endure without each other in ongoing, curious practices. Attached to ongoing pasts, they bring each other forward in thick presents and still possible futures; they stay with the trouble in speculative fabulation." (Haraway)
How could we know this? How could I measure this?
This sounds so scientific! Too scientific? QED? Hmmmm....
Spatial fabulation
3 April:
Haraway argues that 'SF' is a recurring and ubiquitous theme in her book 'Staying with the Trouble. (See video at 22:10) One of her 'SF's - that resonates with the way I am currently thinking - is 'speculative fabulation'. I want my work to tell stories; to become a type of life-size diorama that viewers can sink into; to be 'strange and charmed' (Ede, 2000).
"Neither the critters nor the people could have existed or could endure without each other in ongoing, curious practices. Attached to ongoing pasts, they bring each other forward in thick presents and still possible futures; they stay with the trouble in speculative fabulation." (Haraway, 2016, p. 150)
Combining this idea of Haraway's with my experiments in electronics/robotics gave rise to the idea of constructing 'spatial fabulations' as a general container for my work. A spatial fabulation would then be an animation/fabulation that exists in an actual 3-D space. This word is not new and it seems I share it with architects. (Mayrhofer-Hufnagl, 2022)
Their spatial fabulations exist in virtual reality as an alternative to drawing as a visualization for architectural practice. It also exists in film (Mayrhofer-Hufnagl, 2022, p. 252). And - of course - in stop-frame animation; another of my loves.
HOWEVER.
All of these are virtual 2-D representations of reality. This would be a long discussion all by itself. Photography/film/virtual reality as representation. The interesting thing is that - with a headset - my virtual exhibitions do become virtual realities.
I'm also reminded of Mary Sibande's work that showed recently at DAG. I conducted a walkabout on 'AfroFuturism' as related to her work, but now I want to re-consider her installations and photographs in terms of 'spatial fabulation' rather than purely AfroFuturism.
Practically:
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I've also been working on horizontal surfaces - as opposed to my vertical 'tower'.
I waxed non-woven cellulose roving stained with copper chloride and rust together with wire so that I can bend and shape it. (on the left). However - I think it is too opaque.
The roving on the right has been glued (wood glue) together with the wire and I think this will be more responsive to the random lights generated by AI in video1.
Sound installation - 'Requiem' 17 April
I've been watching the work of an inspiring artist - Yuta Ikeya - called 'Metamorphonic' which set up resonances with my thinking and modes of making and connective being.
Here the sounds are generated by silk moths moving over capacitive paint which in the video is the copper paint which conducts electronic signals. The substrate looks like it has been generated by 3D printing - but I'm just guessing... no clues given.
"These three habitats are designed for different stage in the life cycle of Bombyx mori, the domestic silk moth. The habitats are equipped with capacitive sensors powered by Touch Board by @bareconductive0. 21 electrodes linked to different notes are touched by these insects at their own timing, producing ambient soundscape. The sound might be good for your studying, working, or relaxation." (Ikeya, 2022)
MORE at bareconductive.com/blogs/community
In the Robotics course I am doing online (Udemy), capacitive sensors pick up touch and convert these to sounds. There is the potential to generate graphite based touch pads which will also - along with copper - also conduct 5V electronic signals. Of course copper and graphite paint have the potential to generate a 3D 'drawing'.
Moore, 2023. Connective mycelium
(from a photo taken during my Master's experimentation with Pleurotus mycelium)
Indian and white ink.
200g Fabriano hotpress.
14 x 20 cm
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Bruch's 2nd movement of his Violin Concerto is - for me - a collection of the most movingly plaintive notes - which Trevor loved dearly.
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Stef Veldhuis
I've recently been to an exhibition hosted by the Dutch Embassy by the artist Stef Veldhuis. https://stefveldhuis.com/
This was based on his original Waddenorgel installation off the coast of the Netherlands. He used Organ pipes, Sensors and Drone motors. "The Waddenorgel, or Organ of the Wadden Sea, is a sound installation consisting of sixteen organ pipes that react to the gap width and heartbeat of a single mussel lying in the Wadden Sea. Created in collaboration with the Waddenacademie and the Oerol festival, the Waddenorgel offers new practices of listening in order to get a deeper understanding of the mussel as a vital part of the oceans’ ecosystem."
His team installed the exhibition in a mussel bed off the uChaka Aquarium in Durban. Unfortunately the SA Customs refused to release the 16 organ pipes and Stef had to borrow 4 from an organ tuner in Durban so the effect was much reduced, but still evocative. I was more interested in speaking to his electronic technician who is also an artist....Jelle Reith ([email protected]). I will be following up with him.
The Waddenorgel is created in close colaboration with Jelle Reith, Katja Phillippart, and the Waddenacademie.
I've recently been to an exhibition hosted by the Dutch Embassy by the artist Stef Veldhuis. https://stefveldhuis.com/
This was based on his original Waddenorgel installation off the coast of the Netherlands. He used Organ pipes, Sensors and Drone motors. "The Waddenorgel, or Organ of the Wadden Sea, is a sound installation consisting of sixteen organ pipes that react to the gap width and heartbeat of a single mussel lying in the Wadden Sea. Created in collaboration with the Waddenacademie and the Oerol festival, the Waddenorgel offers new practices of listening in order to get a deeper understanding of the mussel as a vital part of the oceans’ ecosystem."
His team installed the exhibition in a mussel bed off the uChaka Aquarium in Durban. Unfortunately the SA Customs refused to release the 16 organ pipes and Stef had to borrow 4 from an organ tuner in Durban so the effect was much reduced, but still evocative. I was more interested in speaking to his electronic technician who is also an artist....Jelle Reith ([email protected]). I will be following up with him.
The Waddenorgel is created in close colaboration with Jelle Reith, Katja Phillippart, and the Waddenacademie.
