Deus ex Poiesis: A Manifesto for the End of the World and the Future of Art and Technology
No. 12 (2022-09-01)Author(s)
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Edward A. ShankenUniversity of California, Santa Cruz
Abstract
In 2020, the Doomsday Clock advanced to just one hundred seconds before nuclear midnight, the hour at which atomic armageddon would end the world as we know it. Using the Greek theatrical device of deus ex machina and Heidegger's reliance on poiesis as a liberating force from technological enframing, I propose the concept of deus ex poiesis as a potential model for addressing the seemingly insurmountable challenges of the anthropocene, an era in which industrial technologies have instigated global climatic changes on the scale of Earth's five mass extinctions. Drawing on additional theoretical insights from Gregory Bateson, Jack Burnham, Donna Haraway, Alva Noë, Rita Raley and others, my essay discusses two aesthetic approaches: 1) digital artworks that explicitly engage in forms of (h)activism through tactical media; 2 artworks that develop and apply ways of knowing that lie outside of rational scientific models and that explore hybrid forms of perception and expanded states of consciousness. Artists considered include Electronic Disturbance Theater, rTMark, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev, Roy Ascott, Pauline Oliveros, and Kim Jeong-Han.
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