Emergent Knowledge Practices

Abstract

Emergent Knowledge Practices tests the epistemic potential of emergence through woven sculpture, community collaboration, and experimental pedagogy. My textile-based methods, applied as relational spatial practice, broaden discourse around emergence, a phenomenon which is usually simulated in computation and less often directly participated within or made by hand. Through material practice and writing, the project refines methods, concepts, and forms that make non-reductive knowledge tangible, accessible, applicable, and actionable beyond my own discipline. The project draws widely from philosophies of science, complexity theory, cultural theory, geography, architecture, design, textiles, and sculpture. Key scholars used to build the argument for a non-reductive spatialisation of knowledge include Doreen Massey, Wendy Wheeler, Michel de Certeau, Tim Ingold, and Paul Carter. This thesis articulates Geometries of Knowledge, a concept materialised in practice and substantiated in the written component. It envisions a generative meshwork of relationships for coming to know emergently through, with, and between different forms of knowledge. The concept is equally used as an analytical tool that makes visible reciprocal and reductive relationships in knowledge-making. As well as presenting a novel self-organising methodology, this thesis contributes new models and maps for emergent thinking that are particularly relevant to architecture and the formulation of emergent design. More broadly, Geometries of Knowledge offer a speculative architecture for knowledge that could be useful in thinking more emergently about the maps and models we use to locate knowing in the sensate world. Show more