RELATED TERMS: Installation Art; Happenings In an art practice context, environments are mixed-media constructions or assemblages usually designed for a specific place and for a temporary period of time. It is an alternative term for installation art. The term was first used by artist Allan Kaprow in 1958 to describe his own large-scale artworks whichContinue reading “Environments – Art”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Environmental Psychology
RELATED TERMS: Psychology One of the domains of psychology most relevant to design practices is environmental psychology, which is a relatively new branch of psychology. Its key objective is to improve the relationship between humankind and the environment using theory, research and practice. Among the major theories in environmental psychology are geographical determinism, which believesContinue reading “Environmental Psychology”
Environment
RELATED TERMS: Habitat; Niche; World Environment is the name given to the outcome of the active processes of environing, which create an immunological sphere, in Sloterdijk’s terms, and which thereby create a meaningful context for the actants who are engaged in creating, sustaining and changing it. Environment, in this sense, is close to the notions of habitatContinue reading “Environment”
Enlightenment
RELATED TERMS: Humanism; Post-Humanism; Posthuman 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 human is understood in the design process and in relation to the created design,Continue reading “Enlightenment”
Inventivism and Constructivism
RELATED TERMS: Boever et al. (2012: x) suggest that intellectual currents in the humanities in recent decades have moved towards a context that is more receptive to the thought of Gilbert Simondon. This shift has been characterised by Brian Massumi as turning away from a prevailing acceptance of ‘constructivism’ towards what he calls ‘inventivism’. TheContinue reading “Inventivism and Constructivism”
Technology and Political Philosophy
RELATED TERMS: Apparatus – Dispositif Gilbert Simondon (2017: 231), in a text written in the 1950s but not translated into English until 2017, makes an interesting claim about the articulation of technologies and three major socio-political regimes of the 20th century. Each has incorporated, in a different way, a representation and a valorisation of integratedContinue reading “Technology and Political Philosophy”
Neurodiversity and Narrativity
RELATED TERMS: Anime and Manga: Barry Watt, a psychotherapist working mainly with young homeless people, situates the popularity of the South Korean drama series Squid Game within a larger movement of young people towards Japanese and Korean anime and manga. They are looking, he conjectures, for a response to their experience that is not beingContinue reading “Neurodiversity and Narrativity”
Enaction Paradigm – Cognitive Science
RELATED TERMS: Body; Exosomatisation; Ontological Metalepsis; Sensorimotor System; Somatosensory System; World-building Enaction, as a programme for understanding cognition, was initially articulated in 1991 by Varela, Thompson and Rosch (2016). This programme breaks with the formalisms of the information-processing and symbolic representation approaches previously prevalent in cognitive science. Instead, cognition is taken to be grounded inContinue reading “Enaction Paradigm – Cognitive Science”
Sensorimotor System
RELATED TERMS: Somatosensory System; In order to interact sensibly with the world and to manipulate objects skilfully, information needs to be shared between the somatosensory and the motor systems, forming a complex somato-sensori-motor system. The two systems communicate via a network of extensive connections between the sensory and motor cortices but also by motor cortexContinue reading “Sensorimotor System”
Design and Philosophy
RELATED TERMS: Artifactuality and Actuvirtuality; Philosophy “Our thoughts install us in a real fiction.” (Dubreuil, 2015: 75) “Teaching philosophy in art school means devoting oneself to a method of a particular kind, given that the students’ main activity is not to practice philosophy but rather art or design.” (Dautrey, 2020) Through the gradual complexification ofContinue reading “Design and Philosophy”
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