Abstract
Donna Haraway’s “naturecultures” (Companion Species Manifesto) raises questions about the complex ways that nature, culture, science, and creative practice reconfigure one another in knowledge practices focused on social change; this work builds on Haraway’s cyborg feminisms that find hope and agency in technocultural assemblages that disrupt and redraw boundaries of agency and subjectivity. I argue that Haraway’s theoretical lens is vital for considering the political and ethical dimensions of augmented reality (AR), particularly in how AR implicates participants in cyborgean ways of looking, immersing, and controlling. Seeing the Invisible (2022-2023) was an augmented reality exhibition of contemporary art featured simultaneously at 12 botanical gardens and art institutions in seven countries, and featured works by Ai WeiWei, Sarah Meyohas, Daito Manabe, Isaac Julien, among many others. The exhibition’s garden setting and the environmental and scientific themes of the art, in conversation with Haraway’s theories, demonstrates how augmented reality experiences can create fleeting and socially engaged cyborgean identities and experiences for participants with particular ramifications on how to imagine hope and agency in the Anthropocene.
Presenters
Ellen MollInterim Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies, College of Arts and Letters, Michigan State University, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Images Do Not Represent Us, They Create Us: The Image and its Transforming Power
KEYWORDS
Art, Technology, Augmented Reality, Exhibition, Feminist Theory, Nature, Environment
