Abstract

Keywords: cognitive assemblage, distributed cognition, ecological art, ecology, nature, cyber-semiotics, metaphor, installation, immersion, machine learning

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?

• Scott Rettberg is a professor of digital culture in the department of linguistic, literary, and aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Rettberg is the author and coauthor of novel-length works of electronic literature such as The Unknown, Kind of Blue, and Implementation and combinatory films such as Toxi•City: A Climate Change Narrative and Penelope. His work has been exhibited both online and at art venues such the Venice Biennale, Beall Center in Irvine California, The Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum, Arts Santa Mònica, the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, and The Krannert Art Museum. Rettberg is the cofounder and served as the first executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization. Rettberg and his coauthors were winners of the 2016 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature for Hearts and Minds, The Interrogations Project. He recently published the book Electronic Literature (Polity, 2019), a comprehensive introduction to the history of genres of electronic literature.

Full text (PDF) p. 395-401