In my second year of university at UNSW, I sat in rapt attention through all 12 weeks of content in an art theory class titled 'Art and the Anthropocene'.
Some time after this class, I transferred into Interactive Design major of the Media & Communications degree in Macquarie University.
I didn’t know it then, but, hidden in the reading list, Donna J. Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'Read it here. would shape the way I approached both academics and my personal art & design interests.
Haraway talks about identity as something that is permanently partial; the tension of fragments of incompatible things held together because all are true, and all are necessary.
Other theorists
As ethical media consumers/producers, we most frequently see this as the dualism and opposition of good/evil, ethical/unethical and, perhaps most importantly to our cyborg theme, man/machine.
Communications technologies […] are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies.
Though I didn't realise it at the time, the work I was doing before transferring was focused on purely the human aspect of the man/machine dualism.
Animation? A human labour. 3D and sound design? Meticulously handcrafted with no room for random generation and interactive play. It lacked passion. There was no joy of discovery or the thrill of creation that I experienced as a child poking at things and wondering what would happen.
I was bound by the limits of what my own two hands could do.
A computer though? Isn't limited by much theory it knows or how much practice is has; it can plug in a random number generator and produce as many combinations as it needs to until it hits something interesting.
Now, a fair amount of what the Interactive Design major focuses on is the, well, the interaction of human and machine; we learn about machine logic, the rules for how and why a computer does something, and how to create something with that.
Technology becomes an augmentation of our physical selves.
During class, the very same as before, our discussion came to the artist Stelarc
Instead of man/machine existing as an unequal relationship within my art making practice, suddenly I felt like the two distant pieces of who I was and what I loved could exist in complement and in contradiction to one another; both true, and both necessary.
I desperately wanted to grab that and never let go again.
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Web Design: | |
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Critical Analysis | |
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Media Production |
I expect that, in the future, the cyborg skills I've acquired throughout my years at university will serve me well as a media producer and consumer, both for commercial and personal purposes.
I can see myself working in a design team or as part of a game and interactive media studio, polishing my art making practice. Admittedly, this was somewhat of a childhood dream of mine and it excites me that getting closer and closer to my grasp.
On the other hand, university has made me realise that I would be equally happy to take up a teaching or research role in academic scholar within my cyborgian field of interest.
In any case, the future is coming and I'm ready for it.
