Jane Prophet

Sublime Ecologies and Artistic Endeavors: Artificial Life and Interactivity in the Online Project TechnoSphere

THE AUTHOR CHRONICLES HER COLLABORATIVE ONLINE PROJECT TechnoSphere, an interactive artwork accessed via the Internet, exploring some of the issues associated with the work. These include a discussion of the process of collaboration between artists, software engineers, animators, and visitors to the Web site, the thinking behind TechnoSphere’s computer-simulated landscapes, and the focus on interaction with, and within, the project.

Re-addressing practice-based research: funding and recognition

I argue that it is time to stop questioning whether arts practice is research and time to start campaigning to get practice-based research in the arts properly funded. The majority of research in art and design takes place in specialist institutions and post-1992 Universities in the UK. As a result the infrastructure for research is relatively poor and needs sustained investment from a variety of sources.

Net Work: an interactive artwork designed using an interdisciplinary performative approach

Abstract In this paper we outline an interdisciplinary collaborative approach to problem solving that can be characterised as performative as both the goals and solutions develop over time through an open-ended process of trial-and-error. We describe two projects where this methodology has been successfully applied. We first give an overview of the CELL project where the performative approach led to a significant change in the way that scientist Neil Theise investigated stem cells. The success of this project directly led to the work which is the main focus of this paper: the design of Net Work, an interactive artwork that consists of a grid of autonomous buoys that emit different coloured light in response to the environment and the state of neighbouring buoys. We describe our performative approach to building the Net Work prototype and outline in detail its control system which is based on Ashbys homeostat model. The paper concludes with a short discussion of some of the benefits and pitfalls of an interdisciplinary collaborative approach to problem solving.

(Projection) mapping the brain: a critical cartographic approach to the artist's use of fMRI to study the contemplation of death

This paper discusses the authors artwork, Neuro Memento Mori, a self-portrait comprising digital animations and live action video projection-mapped onto a 3D print. The life-sized sculpture of the head and neck, dissected to reveal the artists brain, was produced from MRI data gathered as the artist viewed memento mori paintings and meditated on death. The production of the artwork, made with neuroscientists, explores the relationship between the so-called frontier of neuroscience, data and the map. The use of computation to produce neuroimages, 3D prints and projected video is discussed from the perspective of critical cartography.

Performative apparatus and diffractive practices: An account of artificial life art

Drawing on our own art/science practices and a series of interviews with artificial life practitioners, we explore the entanglement of developments at the artistic edges of artificial life. We start by defining key terms from Karen Barads agential realism. We then diffractively read artificial life together with agential realism to discuss the potential for interventions in the field. Through a discussion of artificial life computer simulations, ideas of agency are problematized, and artificial lifes single purposeful actor, the agent, is replaced by agential, an adjective denoting a relationship rather than a subject-object duality. We then seek to reinterpret the difficult-to-define term “emergence.” Agency in artificial life emerges through what Barad calls entanglement, in this case between observers and their apparatus, a perpetual engagement between observations of a system and their interpretations. The article explores the differences that this diffractive perspective makes to artificial life and accounts of its materialization.

Cultivating Environmental Awareness: Modeling Air Quality Data via Augmented Reality Miniature Trees

The relationship between poor air quality and ill health concerns citizens and health practitioners the world over. An increasing number of Air Quality Data (AQD) apps quantify air quality numerically, yet many of us remain confused about the ‘real’ extent of air pollution, in part because we tend to ignore imperceptible pollution despite data alerting us to its danger. Further, even if we understand it, data about air quality alone does not sustain citizens’ interest in environmental issues. We report on our use of Augmented Reality (AR) to create an app that visualizes AQD as an affective miniature tree whose health corresponds to live AQD. We argue that AR is polyaesthetic, demanding a more embodied engagement from its users which deepens their understanding of AQD. Our participatory design study with 60 users shows the salience of using locally relevant imagery and working with users as co-designers to add features that support social interaction to design an app that gamifies citizens’ interactions with AQD.

The state of immersive technology research: A literature analysis

Abstract Despite the increase in scholarly attention paid to immersive technology, such as augmented reality and virtual reality, few studies have been conducted on the current state of immersive technology research, with no aggregation of findings and knowledge. To fill this gap, this study conducted a systematic literature review of immersive technology research in diverse settings, including education, marketing, business, and healthcare. The full range of SSCI journal articles that addressed issues related to immersive technology were searched. Based on rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria, 54 articles were selected for the final analysis. This literature review analyzed the bibliometric data from the identified studies, their theoretical and methodological approaches, research themes, and contexts. Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) framework, this study classifies and consolidates the factors associated with immersive technology use. Based on that classification, this study proposes a conceptual framework that accounts for the interplay between key elements associated with immersive technology use. The list of factors was then consolidated and mapped onto the S–O–R framework. As a result, this study identifies existing gaps in the current literature and suggests future research directions with specific research agendas.

Model Ideas: From Stem Cell Simulation to Floating Art Work

This paper discusses the role of models in the development of an interactive artwork made as the result of interdisciplinary collaboration. A variety of different types of model were used, each with different functions and status to the team.

Swab drawings

Video artwork presented on DVD.

Sublime and impossible bodies (panel)

Bodies loom large when we configure the potential of digital media and cyberspace. Bodies extended, connected, sublime, erased, implanted, deformed, defaced, empowered, degendered, buffooned, grotesque are the stuff, the background story, and the metaphors of animation, cyberspace, net chat. The ability to transcend and engage with identities centered in human bodies as experiential, social, and biological “real worlds” has fueled much creative and intellectual fantasy and engagement within cyber culture. Bioengineering and artificial life have allowed further possibilities, anxieties, and impossibilities to emerge in most recent times. Flesh-eating diseases, viruses on screen and off, and millennial ecstasy renew expectations and fear about our bodies within digital and popular culture. The panel also considers the sublime, a resonant cultural paradigm of the modern West. Is the body and its nature as “exalted, awe-inspiring” made so through the interventions of human repression and ordering?