Category Archives: Uncategorized

RELATED TERMS: According to their website, Soft Agency is a group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars and writers from across the world who work with spatial practices. Their work is rooted in feminist methodological practices and formats, at the intersection of critical spatial practice, radical pedagogies, collectivities of becoming otherwise and alternative modes ofContinue reading “s-o-f-t.agency [Soft Agency]”

RELATED TERMS: A general organology is an account of life when it involves not just organic matter but organised inorganic matter. As Stiegler (2020: 73) puts it, “General organology attempts to establish a theory of technical life, conceived here as a process whose evolution is indissolubly psycho-socio-techno-logical, in addition to being relatively bio-logical, which meansContinue reading “Organology”

USE for: Defamiliarization; Ostranenie; Making Strange RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Modernism; Psychogeography; Situationist International; Alienation effect (Verfremdungseffekt); Epic theatre – Brecht; Xu Zhen Supermarket; Dissensus – Ranciere; Genre – and Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet); Story (fabula) and Plot (sjuzet or sjuzhet); Realism Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange is a literary device that was brought to attentionContinue reading “Defamiliarisation”

RELATED TERMS: Realism; World, World of the Story and World of the Narrative Environment An interesting question for the narrative environment designer is: to what extent was the Dau project, enacted in 2009-2011, and reiterated in 2019, a narrative environment? It also raises, obliquely, the question of the boundaries between (voluntary) ‘participation’ and (involuntary) ‘subjection’ particularly, asContinue reading “Dau Project”

RELATED TERMS: Design, Entwurf, Entwerfen; Storyworld; Everyday; Present-at-hand (Vorhanden) and Ready-to-hand (Zuhanden); Lifeworld – Lebenswelt – Umwelt; Modernism; Philosophy; Sloterdijk; Heidegger; Nietzsche “There is a Dasein whose thrownness consists precisely in the overcoming of its thrownness.” Herbert Marcuse (2005, 1928: 32). As one particular understanding or interpretation of ‘lifeworld’ or ‘being-in-the-world’ or, indeed, the everyday,Continue reading “Dasein”

USE for: Taoism RELATED TERMS: The notion of dao (tao), in as far as it indicates a path, a way or a set of principles, may have importance for considering the kind of pathway or passage that occurs in a narrative environment. Also, reference to the dao is important in highlighting that a narrative environment is always, to someContinue reading “Daoism”

RELATED TERMS: Feminism and Materialism; Historical Materialism – Marxism; Methodology and Method; Modernity and Coloniality; Postmodernism For narrative environment design, cultural studies is an important area of research because, like narrative environments, it is inherently interdisciplinary, or perhaps transdisciplinary, and because of its emphasis upon social practices, including spatial practices. There is therefore a lotContinue reading “Cultural Studies”

USE for: Human geography, Social geography RELATED TERMS: Geography; Scape metaphors; Anthropo-Scenes Those parts of the discipline of geography which are of most value to narrative environment design and analysis are cultural geography, human geography or social geography. According to Merle Patchett (2010), three eras of cultural geography can be identified: the traditional; the new;Continue reading “Cultural Geography”

RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Feminism – Material feminism While themes derived from avant-garde art practice may be of relevance to design practices, of potentially more interest may be those practices of the feminist avant-garde. In confronting an oppressive and conformist patriarchal system prevalent in the in the immediate post-World War Two years, feminist artists developedContinue reading “Feminist Avant-Garde Art Practices”

RELATED TERMS: Arendt; Creative Thinking; Critical Theory; Design Practice and Functionalism; Feminism and Materialism; Genealogy – Nietzsche; Historical Materialism – Marxism; Methodology and Method; Modernism and Avant-Garde Art Practice; Modernity; Postmodernism; Theoretical Practice; Critical thinking in the West can be traced back back to the Socratic-Platonic tradition, with Plato formalising the Socratic critique of receivedContinue reading “Critical Thinking”