Intimate Transactions (v3): 2005-8, Force of Change - Internal Composition (Image Benedict Foley)
Intimate Transactions (v3): 2005-8, Force of Change - Internal Composition (Image Benedict Foley)

Stage 1 was inspired and directed by an examination of what Dr. Liz Baker calls ecological subjectivity; a sense of self that is intimately relational, embodied and embedded. The work's content and system design was framed around three modes of selfhood she termed Me, Us and Others.

"ME is.. that bit the participant identifies as them – as he or she.. US – for most people on the planet .. is other people like me! Other PEOPLE like me. US is a more inclusive term.. OTHER.. is that stuff which is not like me, that stuff that is really other to me that I have no connection to."

In this way the work hints at the possibility of re-imagining ourselves within an interrelated world.

Intimate Transactions is underpinned by ideas synthesised from theories of critical ecology, ecological subjectivities and the systematic flows of energy and matter within scientifically defined ecologies. It therefore suggests how principles of ecological science and philosophy can assist in developing new forms of process, practice and outcome in the media arts.