WILDERNESS AS REENTRANT FORM: thoughts on the future of electronic art and nature
Type
Publication
Authors
Dunn ( David Dunn )
Category
Article
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Publication Year
1988
Abstract
The image of grass and weeds asserting themselves through the cracks in concrete walls or asphalt streets has always reminded me of the tenuous audacity of the city dweller. The tenacious presence of such living things is a cautionary delight. We are not the rulers of our biospheric house but merely tenants who have radically transformed the architecture to fit our own decorative expectations. This transformation has been so thorough that we now find ourselves in a coevolutionary dance with Gaian elementals who must decide to either raise the rent or evict us into the deep vacuum of space and its subsequent colonization. But our step into outer space has also been a blessing. For the first time, we have seen the Earth as a whole, with the promise of universal citizenship an admonition to take greater care of home.
This is the predicament that the Deep Ecology movement has specifically articulated: we must define a participatory relationship between contemporary humanity and the greater environmental complexity of the biosphere in a manner that is mutually life-enhancing. This begins with an assumption that the traditional Western philosophical dichotomies between human and nature are no longer tenable. The Romantic regard for nature as source of aesthetic contemplation, as well as the mechanistic view of nature as clockworks merely to support the unique event of the human soul, is insufficient. We are part of dynamic living processes from which we can never extricate ourselves and to which we owe our continued survival.
This is the predicament that the Deep Ecology movement has specifically articulated: we must define a participatory relationship between contemporary humanity and the greater environmental complexity of the biosphere in a manner that is mutually life-enhancing. This begins with an assumption that the traditional Western philosophical dichotomies between human and nature are no longer tenable. The Romantic regard for nature as source of aesthetic contemplation, as well as the mechanistic view of nature as clockworks merely to support the unique event of the human soul, is insufficient. We are part of dynamic living processes from which we can never extricate ourselves and to which we owe our continued survival.
Number of Copies
1
Library | Accession No | Call No | Copy No | Edition | Location | Availability |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main | 165 | 1 | Yes |