Living Through the Gaze : design Practice For and Without Human

Abstract

The urge and attempt to escape the author's own gaze is the subject matter of this thesis; to go beyond the way a person perceives objects in its environment, being restrained by different values, ideologies, believes and other layers of applied meanings. One key question of the thesis is: what is the difference between self and other? First there is a discussion of two particular branches of semiotics: biosemiotics and ecosemiotics, both of which supply theoretical support to the aim of this thesis, in particular Jakob von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. However, there is a need of considering more than only the biotic elements of a given environment. This is done by recourse to Object Oriented Ontology and Process Philosophy, two different schools of thought that treat abiotic actors equally important as biotic actors. Finally, three examples of different practical attempts from the fields of art and design are discussed in order to facilitate theoretical contemplation. These are Thomas Thwaites’ Holiday from Being Human as a GoatMan, where he escapes the angst of being a Homo sapiens sapiens; Pierre Huyghe’s Uumwelt where an attempt is made to bridge the gaps between biotic and abiotic Umwelten; and the author’s own co-creation with Argitxu Etchebarne called Symphony for the New Migration in which the duet explores and exhausts different Icelandic environments, and the process of archiving becomes a way to spot the unnoticed and look at how everything mingles.