Technological mediation: archival Worldmaking.
Mediation is the substance of which interactions of exchange and transformation are made. Everything that exists is the result of the dynamic interplay of a variety of different things, from atoms and molecules to cells and animals to interpersonal connections and ecosystems to organizational structures and technology. Our becoming in the world is a result of the dynamic inter-meditational relationships we maintain with other bodies, places, objects, concepts, cultural and historical events. Technological mediation has transformed the way we conceive of and represent bodies, promising an alternative virtual existence that bypasses the weight of the physical body. By compressing temporal relations, transforming communication through screens, and expanding global communities, these technologies serve as ‘prosthetic enhancements’ and mediators of spatial relations (1).Mediation theory is rooted in the ‘post-phenomenological’ approach in philosophy of technology, which was founded by Don Ihde (2). Embodiment relations arise when humans use technology as an extension of their own bodies and perception.
The praxis of mediation that reflect on processes of embodiment, of engaging with the living presence experienced within the body, and posits that this place of being and knowing offers a unique and critical perspective to reflect on personal and shared experiences of a diasporic identity.
This paper abstract discusses the practice as research, integrating diverse methods of mediation into a framework for creating immersive media performative artwork inspired by the body and the diasporic experience of being in the world. The framework takes the form of embodied worldmaking through philosophical context and through reflection on the development of the framework in my creative practice. The emergence of this framework stems from the experience of traversing between and through multiple frames of movement and materials, and the desire to develop a methodological framework that will support the integration of bodily practices and archival materials in my work. The paper will offer a glimpse of creative practice centered in an ongoing research that examines the role of embodiment and emergence of technologies in the creative archival art methodologies and identity construction. The paper is a reflexive perspective on technological mediation, with the intention to particular used methods connecting embodied movement practice, embodied interaction design, and performative process of archiving.
The paper is structured into four sections. In each section, I will describe the different relationships between various methods of mediation within the framework through the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari(3), Elizabeth Grosz(4), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty(5). This is crucial in understanding the complexities of engaging with multiple movement and meditation spaces, including the material, conceptual, and affective dimensions of the work.
The first section, "Choreographies of Mediation," will delve into the multiple frames of movement involved in creating the artwork. The second section, "Archival Dwelling," will explore the performative processes of creative archiving inspired by Derrida's Archive Fever (6). Specifically, it will focus on the tension between recording and destruction, the performative process of recording, poetic mapping, and the concept of "Anarchive”(7) .
In the third section, "The Diasporic Gesture," I will reflect on intermediated phases that carry and re-materialize intricate, dispersed, disembodied, and fluid patterns of movement, gestures, and inscriptions across bodies, time, and space.
The fourth section, "Architectural Screendance," will reflect on the concept of rhizome as presented by Deleuze, and provide an overview of the development of an immersive screendance environment(8). In particular, it will focus on the development of the current collaborative research project "Experiential Continuity" at the n::D Lab.
Grosz, Elizabeth, and Peter. Eisenman. Architecture from the Outside : Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001.
Ihde, Don. Technology and the Lifeworld from Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1988) A Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi.
Grosz, Elizabeth, and Peter. Eisenman. Architecture from the Outside : Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever : a Freudian Impression. Pbk. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Manning, Erin. “How Do WE REPAIR?” Theater (New Haven, Conn.) 50.2 (2020): 47–61.
Rosenberg, Douglas. “Archives and Architecture.” Screendance. United States: Oxford University Press, 2012.