Output details

The Environing Air: A Meditation on Communications Structures in Natural Environments

The Environing Air is published in PhaenEx, the international peer reviewed, online journal of the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture (EPTC). The research explores the positioning of telecommunication structures in natural environments through the case study of an existing installation in Assynt, far north-west Scotland. An encounter with this installation is created through phenomenological description, questioning the purported separation between the ‘natural’ and the ‘technological’.

The analytical approach of the work applies Heidegger’s accounts of objects to this contemporary matter; objects that are ‘ready-to-hand’ explicitly fulfill a purpose, the consciousness of which recedes whilst we focus on the task in hand. ‘Un-readiness-to-hand’, may include objects that have become un-useable by being missing, malfunctioning or whose function is ambiguous. These concepts are developed here to re-sensitise the human to the natural within the technological so that the potential impacts of our technological productions upon human beings and their surroundings, may be thought through more deeply.

The paper was first presented within the EPTC panel of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Waterloo, Canada, 2012) before further selection and publication. Its content was refined through a dialogue between the author and Dr Chris Nagel, California State University Stanislaus, as appointed commentator. Whilst agreeing that the world of the technological human and ‘nature’ are ‘inescapably co-mingled’, Nagel adopts a skeptical/functionalist purview of nature, while the author hopes for a responsible technological development that fosters a deep and respectful connection with the ‘natural’ environment.

This research represents a formal approach towards the understanding of a technological object that both contrasts with, and informs, the development of the visual work of Output 2. A strong link has been forged with the EPTC, leading to an invitation to participate in the peer review process for the 2013 EPTC conference.