Topologies: Nature, Mind, Thought. Media Art in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This thesis advances the theory that perceptions of ‘nature’ are changing in an era increasingly understood as the Anthropocene, and that it is possible to map such changes in key film, video and media art. ‘Nature’ is recognised as a contested and complex assemblage, and a pressing problem shared across disciplines is: how to ‘see’ or think about ‘nature’ in the contemporary era. This thesis uses the term ‘the Anthropocene’ to recognise that human actions en masse are now considered equivalent to a geological force and to offer a global context for re-approaching the concept of nature. It asks: What do media artists ‘bring to light’ in their work about contemporary ways of seeing and thinking about nature? How do they reconcile the vastness of geological time with the fleeting and fugitive nature of the senses? And are perceptions of nature changing? These questions are approached through two distinct, yet complementary, research methodologies: a creative work, and a parallel written text. The creative work, Topologies: The Hidden Landscape, is a study of the fugitive nature of our senses in relation to the vastness of the geological record, and comprises a cycle of nine short video ‘miniatures’ (total duration approximately 33 minutes). The parallel written text, Topologies: Nature, Mind, Thought—Media Art in the Anthropocene (approximately 65,000 words), contextualises the research questions and the creative work, within the larger interdisciplinary fields of the arts, humanities and sciences. These situate the research into the media arts within the Great Acceleration (1945–ca. 2015) and the rise of Earth system science between the late 1970s to 2015—a period proposed as a major epistemological break in the way people see nature, and one of emergent conscious awareness of anthropogenic change. The thesis looks closely at ‘small things’ and forms in the media arts—such as the reprise of the field diary, notebook, sketch, étude, miniature and social media trail—to provide a way to link and connect ideas across fields and disciplines, and to sketch the emergence of a topological mode of thought. To do this, the thesis introduces Michel Serres’s concept of topology and extends Gilles Deleuze’s concept of cinema as a ‘mode of thought’ into the media arts to map new ways of seeing and thinking about nature. The written text provides an analysis and discussion of key media art that shares a method of ‘composing with time and space’ to see what they ‘give rise to’. Works have been selected from the fields of experimental cinema, video, sound, music and media art, and include works by Fiona Foley, Santu Mofokeng, Binh Danh, Errol Morris, Terrence Malick, Iannis Xenakis, Claude Ballif, Jeremy Welsh, Brad Miller and Gayle Chong Kwan. The thesis reveals that key media artists perceive the world as a complex topology of sensate, physical, conceptual and cultural space, and point to the media arts as a site for re-thinking relationships to nature.