Sarah-Mace Dennis: Re-imagining inspirited geographies: new media narrative's potential for remapping desire into experiences of place
BCA, BA(Hons) Griff. PhD candidate, UTS.
Email: Sarah-Mace.Dennis@student.uts.edu.au
Evolving through an engagement with a series of regional and/or remote sites and landscapes the PhD research explores the potential that interdisciplinary, new media practice offers for generating narratives of desire that re-imagine 'inspirited' geographies: landscapes of remembrance that acknowledge the spiritual pull of past relationships between people and place in the process of envisioning culturally dynamic and environmentally sustainable futures.
Generated through extended engagement with each site, the project will explore the way that traditional and emerging storytelling technologies can be used to assist people in the mapping and sharing of local knowledge – developing new ecologies of communication and meaning that re-interpret the landscapes in which they live. Recognizing that personal narratives are an essential component in re-conceptualizing many of the objective, positivist lines of thinking that have historically provoked cultural and environmental erosion, local residents will be invited to share and distribute 'narratives of desire' that respond to past, present and future visions of identity, ritual and place. In particular, processes undertaken during an engagement with the people in each site will ask: how have the desires of people who once lived, or who still live in these places contributed to the way that sites and the people who stay within them have been shaped (architecturally, spiritually, ethically)? In what ways have the desires of people, both past and present, been over-coded by larger cultural structures, and can there be a relationship between this over-coding and ecological decline? Are there ways that the overthrown desires of those now passed can re-invest themselves in future ideas and movement, and to what change? Can the desire of landscapes get under the skin of people and encourage the mobilizing of new ideas, and if so, how can creative practice contribute to this process?
Throughout the research, video, still and sound recording technologies will document the mapping processes and connected stories that evolve during the periods of time spent in each landscape. These aural and visual materials will become content used in the development of three contemporary artworks – one generated for each site – that explore intersections between site specific installation, interactive video, and the interconnecting of remote participants and locations through videoconferencing technologies. It is anticipated that the hybrid realities created by these artworks will open up new possibilities for the intertwining of physical and digital languages and worlds and the creation of new narrative environments where stories are generated through the participation and movement of users in and through each landscape and/ or space.
Project Blog: http://re-imagininginspiritedgeogrpahies.blogspot.com/