Fiction machines (2016-2019) [multi-component output with contextualising information]
- Submitting institution
-
Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management
- Output identifier
- 3324
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2016
- URL
-
https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.c.4936830
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Fiction Machines’ is a multi-component output that considers how media artworks
can expose, rewrite and critique the mechanisms of contemporary control
technologies from informational and affective perspectives. The research also
addresses the role of re-appropriation in enabling artworks to become self-reflexive
machines, ones that can perform affective control over the viewer. The outputs
comprise a body of video art works, a journal article, a curated symposium and
special issue of the International Journal of Creative Media Research (IJCMR).
Contextual information comprises a documented research timeline.
The research was theoretically underpinned by Deleuze and Guattari’s work on
control societies, as well as Brian Holmes’ ‘electronic noosphere’ and Benjamin
Bratton, who calls for the definition of new types of machine that utilise a more
‘promiscuous figurative imagination’. In response, ‘Fiction Machines’ develops a new
method of ‘speculative recycling’ alongside the deployment of video as a new form of
‘subversive re-writing machine’ that utilises over-identification as a critical tool for
both enhancing and destabilising control mechanics. Authoritative and calming
artificial voices and experimental editing tactics are also used throughout the video to
draw viewers in and expose the fictions of their construction.
Oporavak (2016) takes the language of data recovery to extreme levels,
manipulating both digital and non-digital materials via its sentient interface.
Meanwhile, We must capture (2018) identifies ways of capturing ‘human sensibility’,
and Implex (2019) appropriates and enhances the language of behavioural
marketing. Tweed’s research findings were disseminated in a journal article for the
IJCMR that critically interrogates Oporavak and its methods. Tweed’s ‘speculative
recycling’ methodology was developed further alongside a range of interdisciplinary
approaches as part of a symposium (Bath Spa University, 2019), and a special issue
of IJCMR, which expands the toolkit for how fictional strategies can be used as part
of the conception and deployment of practice-based research.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
