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Reconstructive Strategies for Artists Engaging With ecology: An Examination of the Relationship Between Culture, Nature and Technology in Ecological Art

With the rise in industrial capitalism during the 20th Century, artists increasingly focused on the threat of a disappearing natural world. In the high technology era of the late 20th Century, artists whose practice is termed 'ecological' based their work around new understandings of the relationship between nature and culture, fundamentally underpinned by a shift toward evolutionary, systems-theoretical perspectives from those of conquest and exploitation. Now, at the dawn of the 21st Century, the information era has brought into intersection the discourses of information technologies, quantum physics, and biological science, awakening artists to the challenge of engaging with ecology as the primary subject of their practice. The doctoral project that is the subject of this exegesis focuses critical attention on our scientific and aesthetic understandings of water - a crucial symbolic element of global import in survival. It explores the representation of water in and through art practice that is informed by political ecological awareness and new (digital) technologies. My practice exploits the potential of recent digital technologies to create experiences that aim to encourage a more ecologically sustainable human engagement with nature through this focus on water. This exegesis describes and locates the creative work within an ongoing discourse in contemporary culture that actively seeks to re-establish and redefine the relationship between culture and nature.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/194885
Date January 2005
CreatorsBarnes, Katherine Rachel, n/a
PublisherGriffith University. Queensland College of Art
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Rightshttp://www.gu.edu.au/disclaimer.html), Copyright Katherine Rachel Barnes

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