main conference abstracts & biographies - University of New South ...

PETRA GEMEINBOECK
Thinking Machines or Why Matter Matters
In this paper I will discuss experimental forms of material entanglements to
examine the interplay between human and non-human agencies and its
performative potential. The aim of this investigation is two-fold: to establish a
transdisciplinary dialogue or, better, pluralogue that looks at performativity
through the lens of machine agency and explores the potential of machine
agency through the lens of performativity; and to frame this pluralogue as a
practice of material thinking and the artworks involved as ‘thinking machines’
that enable the dynamic collision of transmaterial forces, and in the process
become multiple, not only transforming into something else but also changing
the quality of the process.
Building on the concepts of agential realism (Karen Barad), vital materiality (Jane
Bennett), machinic assemblage (D&G), and transmateriality (Mitchell Whitelaw),
I am interested in shifting the focus from representational issues to questions of
agency and materiality. In this practice, agency, human and non-human, is seen
as thoroughly material, always distributed and enacted. A machinic assemblage
then evolves its agencies in the interplay between the materialities that
constitute it, all of which are granted an agential capacity or vitality. Material
thinking here happens where the materialities dynamically constitute and
transversal relations emerge, creating—or more accurately ‘letting happen’—a
performative micro-ecology of materials and relations.
The investigation will involve three of my collaborative research projects: One
work couples a dynamically responsive space with the participants’ body
(Uzume by Petra Gemeinboeck, Roland Blach, Nicolaj Kirisits, 2003), the other two
installations couple autonomously performing robots with our built environment
(Zwischenräume by Petra Gemeinboeck & Rob Saunders, 2010, and Complicit
by Petra Gemeinboeck & Rob Saunders, Liz Williamson, 2011). They open up
spaces for Barad’s ‘congealing of agency’ (2003), where the different agential
forces not only co-evolve but potentially conspire and perform together.
BIOGRAPHY
Petra Gemeinboeck is a Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media Arts at the College
of Fine Arts, University of NSW. Petra’s practice in machine performance,
interactive installation, and virtual environments explores the ambiguities and
vulnerabilities in our relationships with machines, making tangible the desires and
politics involved. Her works engage participants in scenarios of encounter, in
which they are provoked to negotiate, conspire with or even solicit a machinegenerated
co-performer. Petra's works have been exhibited internationally,
including at the Ars Electronica, Archilab, Thessaloniki Biennale, MCA Chicago,
ICC Tokyo, OK Center for Contemporary Art, and the Centre des Arts Enghien at
Paris. She has also published widely on issues of interactivity and machine
agency.
16