RELATED TERMS: Actor-Network Theory Bruno Latour summarises concisely the necessity of considering at one and the same time the three interconnected dimensions or actantial fields of the design of narrative environments, that is, narrative (discourse), people (society) and environment (real), in the following sentence: “Is it our fault if the networks [of both the modernContinue reading “Latour”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Intertextuality
RELATED TERMS: Reception Theory and Reader Response Criticism; Semiotics Intertextuality, and its cognate term, citationality, is the shaping of a specific text’s meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. It is likely that theContinue reading “Intertextuality”
Interaction Design
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantiality; Performance and Performativity; “If it is understood that all use is interaction, then all design is inter-active design”. (Taylor, 2013: 370) Interaction, a mutual and progressive exchange between two or more entities, human or otherwise, is a key feature of designed environments. The overall pattern of this interaction may be calledContinue reading “Interaction Design”
Intentionality
RELATED TERMS: Philosophy Intentionality has a more commonsense meaning, relating to one’s intention or what means to do or to say, and a more philosophical sense, which concerns the directedness of consciousness towards its other(s), highlighting the dependence of thought upon the world, in contrast to an idealist view of the self-sufficiency of consciousness. BothContinue reading “Intentionality”
Installation Art
RELATED TERMS: Environments – Art; Happenings; Immersion; Ocular-Centrism; Sculpture The term installation is usually applied to arrangements of materials and/or media in interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called land art. However, the boundaries between these categories are fluid, as Rosalind Krauss (1979) discusses. Installation artworks have been constructed in exhibition spaces such asContinue reading “Installation Art”
In Medias Res
RELATED TERMS: Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet or sjuzhet); Semiotic Square “the world has always been in the middle of things in unruly and practical conversation, full of action and structured by a startling array of actants and of networking and unequal collectives.” Donna Haraway, The Promises of Monsters “As Frank Kermode has put it, manContinue reading “In Medias Res”
Imaginary
RELATED TERMS: Storyworld; Iconic Designs, Critical Designs The imaginary mediates between abstract conception and material realisation. The storyworld, for example, takes place in the imaginary. In design practices, the imaginary does not carry a negative connotation in the sense of being a set of deceptive illusions mystifying or obscuring a real. As Adams and SmithContinue reading “Imaginary”
Humanism
RELATED TERMS: Enlightenment; Posthumanism; Posthuman; Postanthropocentrism; Realism; Modernity Michel Foucault argues that the term humanism should not be confused with that of Enlightenment. The importance of grasping the notions of humanism and Enlightenment for design practices is that it bears directly upon how the domain of humanity and the human is understood in the designContinue reading “Humanism”
Human Ecosystem
RELATED TERMS: Anthropocene – Capitalocene – Chthulucene; Plantationocene; Ecology and Economy Systems as small as a household or as large as a nation state may be discussed as a human ecosystem. Human ecosystems interact in a complex web of human and ecological relationships, connecting human ecosystems to the biosphere. Human ecosystems have so thoroughly pervadedContinue reading “Human Ecosystem”
Human Actantiality
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantial Model – Greimas; Actantiality; Agency; Agon; Audience; Design of Narrative Environments; (The) Heroic; Philosophy; People are not exterior, whether anterior or posterior, to the design process nor the designed outcome. An important question, then, in designing such environments, is how this human dimension is to be theorised and practised. Are the peopleContinue reading “Human Actantiality”
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