RELATED TERMS: Deixis and Deictic Acts; Heterarchy; Metalepsis; Ontological Metalepsis; “A weird knowing. Weird, from the Old Norse, urth, meaning twisted, in a loop.”(Morton, 2017: 92) Douglas Hofstadter (1979: 18) argues that a strange loop occurs whenever, by moving upwards or downwards through the levels of a hierarchical system, you unexpectedly find yourself right back where you started.Continue reading “Tangled Hierarchy and Strange Loop”
Author Archives: aparsons474
Medium and Media
RELATED TERMS: Transmedia, Cross-Platform and Multimedia; Visual Arts and Visual Media; World-Building “To me, the facade of a building is like the first sentence of a novel – it sets the tone, the mood, and hints at what’s to come.” (Alexis Dornier quoted in Sharma, 2025) The choice of what media and materials to useContinue reading “Medium and Media”
World-Building
RELATED TERMS: Arendt; Design of Narrative Environments; Global Challenges; Heidegger; Lifeworld – Lebenswelt – Umwelt; Ontology; Sloterdijk; Terraforming; Theoretical Practice; World; World-as-Milieu Use for: World-forming, World-making, Worlding, World-shaping, Welt-Bilden “the last man will save from the rubble a stool or a tree stump on which to rest from his labours …” (Cliff and De Chabaneix,Continue reading “World-Building”
Affordances
RELATED TERMS: Actantiality; Disciplinary societies and Societies of control; Lifeworld – Lebenswelt – Umwelt; Methodology and Method; New Materialism; Phenomenology; The notion of affordance is important for design practices as it emphasises the active nature of perception; the importance of the moving body in perception; the co-constitution of the human, the environmental, the ecological and the economic;Continue reading “Affordances”
Actor-Network Theory
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantiality; Actantial model – Greimas; Human Actantiality; Agency; Theoretical practice; Ethnomethodology; Latour; Storyworld; Apparatus – Dispositif; Object-Oriented Ontology According to Jary and Jary (2000), actor-network theory combines post-structuralist insights with detailed empirical studies of scientific practices and technologies, organisations and social processes. It builds on the work of Bruno Latour, John Law and Michel Callon. TheContinue reading “Actor-Network Theory”
Actantiality
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantial model – Greimas; Actor; Actor-Network Theory; Affordances; Heterarchy; Human actantiality; Lack, Loss and User-Centred Design Practices “Why should you always have live things in stories? said the Professor. “Why don’t you have events, or circumstances?” “Oh, please invent a story like that!” cried Bruno. The Professor began fluently enough. “Once a coincidence was taking a walkContinue reading “Actantiality”
Actant
RELATED TERMS: Actantial Model – Greimas; Actantiality; Actor; Actor-network theory; Agency; Avatar; Human actantiality; Performance and Performativity Why actant? In order to develop a consistent approach in which the narrative, the environmental and the people dimensions of narrative environments are all understood to act, it is necessary to adopt a theory of action that is post-humanist inContinue reading “Actant”
Actantial Model – Greimas
RELATED TERMS: Actant; Actantiality; Actor-Network Theory; Semiotic Square; Human actantiality “Abstract semiotic models like the very articulate and powerful one developed by Greimas and his school should, therefore, be conceived not as point of arrival but as point of departure of the comparative analysis [of cultures of meaning], offering a solid framework in relation to which contrasts could beContinue reading “Actantial Model – Greimas”
Deixis and Deictic Acts
RELATED TERMS: Deictic Cascade; Diegetic Levels; Heterarchy; Metalepsis; Modes of Existence; Tangled Hierarchy and Strange Loop; Transgression Designs enact deictic cascades that frame their actions, or their actantiality, their potential for action, in the theoretical language adopted here. In practice, such hierarchical cascades of deixis form strange loops and heterarchies, giving shape to the shared,Continue reading “Deixis and Deictic Acts”
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