This practice-based research sets out to examine the relationship between physical making processes alongside cultural considerations of landscape through discussion of the making of two key works: Northern Lights, a series of hand drawn images gleaned from a road traffic website in Iceland, and Contemplating the Landscape, a performance piece captured by the same website’s webcams. Theoretical and historical contexts that underpin the scope and concerns of the project include a consideration of the emergence of landscape as a genre in the Renaissance, and critiques (feminist and phenomenological in particular) of this history. Key concepts from the works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in particular ‘the rhizome’ and ‘assemblages’, underpin the discussions of the works, locating their making in a framework of a posthumanist collaboration.Descriptions of the evolution of the Northern Lights drawings emphasise a growing openness to the non-human ‘otherness’ of digital technologies ofrepresentation.Considerations of the making of Contemplating the Landscape draw on recent posthumanist writings about non-human vision (particularly in relation to photography); and, through the context of Rosi Braidotti’s concept of ‘parody’, Contemplating the Landscape’s subversive, rhizomatic evocation of the rückenfigur motif (particularly in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog) is explored. The discussion of the project offers original, detailed insights into the possibilities for posthumanist collaboration between a human (female) artist and the non-human vision of technological imaging systems (specifically, in this discussion, webcams).Through the exploration and description of these unique pieces of collaborative, experimental art making, the project builds upon and consolidates a growing body of contemporary posthumanist investigation that seeks to challenge humans to think differently about ourselves and redefine our relationship with the world.
| Date of Award | 1 Aug 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | |
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| Supervisor | Danny McNally (Supervisor) & Simon McKeown (Supervisor) |
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