Technoetic Arts - Volume 18, Issue 1, 2020

Since René Descartes famously separated the concepts of body and mind in the seventeenth century, western philosophy and theory have struggled to conceptualize the interconnectedness of minds, bodies, environments and cultures. While environmental psychology and the cognitive sciences have shown that spatial perception is ‘embodied’ and depends on the aforementioned concepts’ interconnectedness, architectural design practice, for example, has rarely incorporated these insights. The article presents research on the epistemological foundations that frame the communication between design theory and practice and juxtaposes it with scientific research on embodied experience. It further suggests that Asian aesthetics, with its long history in conceiving relations and art as interactive, could create a bridge between recent scientific insights and design practice. The article links Asian aesthetics to a discourse on ecologies in the post-Anthropocene, in dialogue with contemporary conceptions of time. It outlines an approach to the interconnectedness of minds, bodies, environments, the sciences and cultures, in favour of a future that is governed by creative wisdom rather than ‘smart’ efficiency.

Cybernetic theory and interactivity have much in common, including human interrelationships between modern technology and how they define and reveal the whole interactive process. Most of the key notions in both can be described as the system in conversation about the system, talking to each other through the information passed back and forth between the particular relationship in audiences and artworks. These similar languages are feedback, control, conversation and system thinking in the field of cybernetic theory and interactive artworks. As can be seen, some concepts of the cybernetic are applicable to interactivity. So, how can cybernetic thinking be applied to interactive artworks? The purpose of this article is to explore the interplay of cybernetics theory and interactivity and the connection between cybernetic/system thinking and technological/interactive artworks by illustrating the similarity of characteristics and comparing the conversation of two network systems. The goal is to deconstruct and reshape their relationships by thinking of interactive artworks in the way of cybernetic thinking.

This research looks what happens to human reproduction when human genetic information is digitized. By employing speculative design as a transdisciplinary strategy to construct such an alternative future to open up public dialogues, it aims to stimulate audiences in an artistic way to deliberate two key questions: (1) how will biotechnology recondition and recontextualize the natural processes of genetic information (i.e. expression, replication, transmission and mutation) and our physiological processes (e.g. reproduction)? And (2) what might be the ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI) for using such biotechnology? To this end, this practice-based research introduces the ‘e-gamete Digital Procreation Service’ (2019) – a speculative design project that has been developed as an approach to invite audiences to a future scenario of network-transmitted genetic information and computer-simulated human procreation. The carefully designed future service (an ironic practice of commercialization) allows human reproduction to take place outside of the human body. Audiences are encouraged to contemplate what novel situations might occur within their own futures and to consider broader questions like how family, parenthood, marriage, etc. are redefined and what new social relationships might emerge. By employing speculative design as an artistic research tool/tactic to step outside the technical limitations and craft the future service, the project asks vital question about the future in a provocative and quasi-realistic manner. Thus, the research forms a unique entanglement of sensitive topics by dealing with future biotechnology and human reproduction.

In response to the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, the entire Chinese education system was switched to an online teaching model within a short time. As a front-line teaching manager, I am aware that this entails major changes to the teaching environment and information media, with a subtle psychological impact on both ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ subjects. Specifically, information technology has an impact on educational fairness and learners’ psychological needs. In this article, I observe the influence of online teaching on learners’ cognition and feelings from the perspective of the ‘needs hierarchy’. The research findings will be helpful to understanding the impact of information-based teaching methods, and to push forward with new forms of telematic online learning.

Electronic music is advancing not only in the way it is being used in performance but also in the technological sense, due to software developers advancing the ability of the synthesizer to enable the composer to create newer sounds. The introduction of the amino acid and protein synthesizers from MIT is one such example, along with sampling sounds from interstellar bodies through the process of sonification in order to create presets as additional source material for the composer’s palette. The creative process used in creating electronic music on a tablet computer introduces a new musical instrument to be used in live music performances. The fluidity and immediacy of how electronic sounds can be created with tablet computer synthesizers affords the composer to have a new behavioural sense of using them as a musical instrument that can be played intuitively. Exploring this new interface of musical composition is a subject this article will address as well as the psychological aspects pertaining to how an audience can relate to electronic music as an emerging art form removed from the classical music tradition. It will also discuss how the composer of electronic music can affect the listener’s ability to envision new conceptual landscapes, leading to experiencing new ideas and subjective fields of visionary understandings. The composer’s ability to use conceptual models, which influence the way sounds are made and how those sounds influence the listener’s experience, is an important focus of this article.