We propose aesthetic engagement as a valuable construct for organisation studies to advance its contribution to organising for sustainability. Aesthetic engagement is defined as a set of material practices that re-engage humans and systems to trigger and accelerate transitions towards regenerative futures. We adopt an aesthetic, practice-based approach to study the emerging field of circular fashion, zooming in on six research projects evolving around bio-based textile design. Our results show that matter needs to matter more in sustainable organising in three key material practices: (1) re-presenting alternative systems, (2) re-imagining affective materialities and (3) re-claiming embodied ethical agency. Matter that reflects new ‘imagined’ realities - whether in artefacts, bodies or socio-material spaces - could greatly support stakeholder engagement and collective identity-building towards transitioning to regenerative futures.
The New Aesthetic and Art: Constellations of the Postdigital is an interdisciplinary analysis focusing on new digital phenomena at the intersections of theory and contemporary art. Asserting the unique character of New Aesthetic objects, Contreras-Koterbay and Mirocha trace the origins of the New Aesthetic in visual arts, design, and software, find its presence resonating in various kinds of digital imagery, and track its agency in everyday effects of the intertwined physical world and the digital realm. Contreras-Koterbay and Mirocha bring to light an original perspective that identifies an autonomous quality in common digital objects and examples of art that are increasingly an important influence for today’s culture and society.Influenced by a diverse range of figures, ranging from Vilém Flusser, Arthur Schopenhauer, Immanuel Kant, David Berry, Lev Manovich, Olga Goriunova, Ernst Mayr, Bruce Sterling and, of course, James Bridle, The New Aesthetic and Art: Constellations of the Postdigital doesn’t just propose a description of a new set of objects but radically asserts that New Aesthetic objects analogously function as organisms within a broader digital-physical ecosystems of things and agents.
Voor haar promotieonderzoek naar de interculturele ontmoeting in het hoger kunstonderwijs bestudeert Margo Slomp groepsgesprekken in de eigen lespraktijk. Het (auto-)etnografische en narratieve onderzoek verbindt het spreken van de participanten met hun levensverhalen. In dit artikel schetst ze een serie educatieve ontmoetingen en verbindt ze deze aan de fenomenologische begrippen van de ‘tussenwereld’ of ‘intermonde’, pathos en responsiviteit om de interculturele ontmoeting te kunnen duiden.
This project develops a European network for transdisciplinary innovation in artistic engagement as a catalyst for societal transformation, focusing on immersive art. It responds to the professionals in the field’s call for research into immersive art’s unique capacity to ‘move’ people through its multisensory, technosocial qualities towards collective change. The project brings together experts leading state-of-the-art research and practice in related fields with an aim to develop trajectories for artistic, methodological, and conceptual innovation for societal transformation. The nascent field of immersive art, including its potential impact on society, has been identified as a priority research area on all local-to-EU levels, but often suffers from the common (mis)perception as being technological spectacle prioritising entertainment values. Many practitioners create immersive art to enable novel forms of creative engagement to address societal issues and enact change, but have difficulty gaining recognition and support for this endeavour. A critical challenge is the lack of knowledge about how their predominantly sensuous and aesthetic experience actually lead to collective change, which remains unrecognised in the current systems of impact evaluation predicated on quantitative analysis. Recent psychological insights on awe as a profoundly transformative emotion signals a possibility to address this challenge, offering a new way to make sense of the transformational effect of directly interacting with such affective qualities of immersive art. In parallel, there is a renewed interest in the practice of cultural mediation, which brings together different stakeholders to facilitate negotiation towards collective change in diverse domains of civic life, often through creative engagements. Our project forms strategic grounds for transdisciplinary research at the intersection between these two developments. We bring together experts in immersive art, psychology, cultural mediation, digital humanities, and design across Europe to explore: How can awe-experiences be enacted in immersive art and be extended towards societal transformation?
Fashion has become inextricably linked with digital culture. Digital media have opened up new spaces of fashion consumption that are unprecedented in their levels of ubiquity, immersion, fluidity, and interactivity. The virtual realm continuously needs us to design and communicate our identity online. Unfortunately, the current landscape of digitised fashion practices seems to lack the type of self-governing attitude and urgency that is needed to move beyond commercially mandated platforms and systems that effectively diminish our digital agency. As transformative power seems to be the promise of the virtual, there is an inherent need to critically assess how digital representation of fashion manifests online, especially when these representations become key mediators within our collective and individual public construction of self. A number of collectives and practitioners that actively shape a counter movement, organized bottom up rather than through capital, are questioning this interdependence, applying inverted thinking and experimenting with alternative modes of engagement. Starting from the research question ‘How can critical fashion practitioners introduce and amplify digital agency within fashion’s virtual landscape through new strategies of aesthetic engagement?’, this project investigates the implications of fashion’s increasing shift towards the virtual realm and the ramifications created for digital agency. It centers on how identity is understood in the digital era, whether subjects have full agency while expected to construct multiple selves, and how online environments that enact as playgrounds for our identities might attribute to a distorted sense of self. By using the field of critical fashion as its site, and the rapidly expanding frontier of digital counter practices as a lens, the aim of this project is to contribute to larger changes within an increasingly global and digital society, such as new modes of consumerism, capital and cultural value.
De creatieve industrie levert oplossingen voor maatschappelijke uitdagingen, en wordt daarom gezien als aanjager van innovatie in sectoren zoals de zorg. Zo brengen mkb-ers binnen deze industrie een divers aanbod aan games op de markt, met als doel een positieve impact op het welzijn en gezondheid van de samenleving. Vooral voor de doelgroep kinderen is de belofte van zorg-games groot, omdat zij nog bezig zijn hun attitudes en gewoontes te vormen. Zorg-games maken data-uitwisseling, en daarmee personalisatie, monitoring, en bijsturing mogelijk. De waarde van games zit dan ook in de mogelijkheid om op grote schaal dienstverlening op maat aan te bieden. De opschaling van games wordt echter belemmerd doordat er geen gevalideerde systematiek is om, op een ethische manier, game engagement en gedragspatronen bij kinderen te meten. Een dergelijke systematiek is van belang om games te optimaliseren zodat ze relevant zijn én blijven voor diegene die ze afnemen (gezondheidzorg en zorgklanten). Dit is cruciaal voor mkb-professionals, die behoefte hebben aan handvatten voor een data-gedreven aanpak, een langere levenscyclus van hun games, en een grotere afzetmarkt binnen de zorg. Dit voorstel adresseert deze behoefte: “Hoe kunnen mkb-professionals een nieuwe generatie zorg-games ontwikkelen, die met ethisch verkregen data de (1) game engagement en (2) gedragspatronen van kinderen inzichtelijk maken, zodat optimalisatie en validatie mogelijk is?” Om deze vraag te beantwoorden wordt een consortium tussen Jeugdgezondheidzorg (JGZ), gamebedrijven en kennisinstellingen opgezet dat op iteratieve wijze onderzoekt hoe gebruikersdata uit games inzicht kan geven in (1) engagement en (2) gedragspatronen van kinderen, met (3) correcte toepassing van de privacyregelgeving rondom data-uitwisseling. De intentie is om een “lerend” lab op te zetten waarbij gebruikersdata input vormt voor adaptieve entertainment- en preventiestrategieën. Het project levert kennis op over de strategische inzet van zorg-games voor kinderen en een blauwdruk van criteria waaraan deze games moeten voldoen.
