Research in the Expanded Field

Eleonore Residency. Neal White on behalf of Office of Experiments

Our research on board the Eleoneore will focus on the Office of Experiments operation in an expanded field of research and in particular, Deep Time. The research will address how the social imaginary shapes and responds to chance and natural contingency in the context of Deep Time. In particular, how in recent times through fear and suspicion of humanity’s own power, real or imagined, we have been engaged in the development of new infrastructures to mitigate against global destructive phenomena such as weapons of mass destruction and climate change.
 

We would like to examine how the Eleonore itself provides a context for speculative projects, potentially as part of a network of mobile field stations and platforms. Along with the Space On Earth Station that we built with N55 in 2006, or FUtility, construted at Center for Land Use Interpretation [CLUI] in Utah in 2008-2010 (that we will bring), we will reflect on the work and legacy of Eleonore and other similar projects. We will consider also how such field-based activities are often originated within collective agencies, from CLUI to London Fieldworks, Makrolab, Spurse and the Friends of the Pleistocene. What do such collective art and research projects, mobile field stations and infrastructures tell us about how artists are developing new instruments, experiments and engaged critical communities in the expanded field? How do they engage with key materials from arts recent history, in Land Art and social engagement and then with new applications of technology, to address question such as Deep Time?
 

Given our own experiences in the field, both urban and remote, our specific questions are whether; 1) we can develop an implement a new model that combines participatory experimentation in the field for collecting data, and 2) how existing projects which utilise field based and socially engaged approaches can be networked into large scale arrays . In this respect we refer to arrays of data which are fundamentally positioned as open-access, but also the generation of interpretative materials that might lead to speculative cartographies, collections and databases. We want to investigate what is needed to move from micro to macro aesthetics, developing experimental, yet critical responses, as large-scale infrastructures.
 

Website Office of Experiments

http://www.o-o-e.org/