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”
Author Archives: aparsons474
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”
History
RELATED TERMS: Historicism; Historical materialism – Marxism; “History and ethnology became distinct disciplines only in the mid-nineteenth century, when evolutionism, triumphant even before Darwin, caused the study of developed societies to part company with the investigation of so-called primitive societies. Previously, history had embraced all societies, but with the emergence of a consciousness of progress, history limitedContinue reading “History”
Historicism
RELATED TERMS: History; Design of Narrative Environments; Metalepsis; Genealogy – Nietzsche; Aleatory Historicism, Hal Foster (1996: 10) notes, can be negatively defined in the most simple terms as the conflation of before and after with cause and effect, by making the presumption that the prior event produces the later one. Foster also notes that historicism in this sense pervades art history and modernistContinue reading “Historicism”
Historical Materialism – Marxism
RELATED TERMS: History; Critical Thinking; Cultural Studies; Design of Narrative Environments; Epic theatre – Brecht; Feminism and Materialism; Lefebvre; Methodology and Method; Even though the crude teleological determinism, historicism and reductive economism of official communist ideology, or orthodox Marxism-Leninism, came to occupy the space of Marxist thinking, design practices may yet still benefit from considering aContinue reading “Historical Materialism – Marxism”
Incomplete ... 