Abstract

This project proposes a forum for discussion that questions how we engage with our ecology. The panel will be framed within an acknowledgment of scale, time, and complexity as an entry point into a conversation about our local ecology and the universe beyond. The panellists’ aim to initiate a dialogue by situating the discussion around their own art and design research practices. These practices have emerged from local investigations into ecological issues that evolved into two overlapping research clusters, Art and Ecology, and Design and Innovation for Sustainability, at AUT University, in Auckland New Zealand. In our first collaborative project we explore how we might connect with and communicate ‘ecology’, in methods and practice that recognize and embrace scale, time, and complexity as a tactic into the subject, rather than as a barrier to engagement and the development of potential solutions. How do we engage and communicate with the ecology in methods that acknowledge and embrace scale, time, and complexity as a tactic into the subject, rather than as a barrier to engagement with it? The panellists approach this through diverse and divergent methodologies, from data visualisation, affective or poetic cinema, to human centred design practices. The subject of the ecology binds the discussion with the acknowledgement of no single path of interrogation into the subject. Jamieson, Denton, and Reay, have initiated a project that centers its focus on the ecology to develop overlapping pathways in and out of their distinct practices, as a method of both developing and interrogating their work, making new work that drifts across their disciplines, but also building towards an ongoing and evolving interdisciplinary teaching and research projects.

• Nigel Jamieson, Andrew Denton & Stephen Reay, AUT University, Auckland, NZ

Full text (PDF) p.95-100