Papers (Peer Reviewed)

Aerial Pitfalls

Art-Eco-Science Field Collaborations

Art-eco-science practitioner Keith Armstrong is committed to a hybrid practice. He collaborates in the field with ecological scientists recording biodiversity, species loss and extinction and creates works that play
a role in redesigning social relations to natural systems. Currently working closely with aerial robots (aka drones or UAVs), Armstrong wants to understand how ‘we’ might better use drones, away from societal preoccupations with surveillance, privacy, AI and remote warfare, and our apparent drive to create bleak ‘new natures’. In this conversation, Armstrong and sustainability scholar Tania Leimbach explore the potential of arts- science collaborations to radically transform attitudes, perceptions and modes of participation.

Embodying a Future for the Future: Creative Robotics and Ecosophical Praxis

In recent years I have begun to integrate creative robotics into my ecosophical art practice, which I have long deployed to investigate, materialise and engage the thorny, ecological questions of the Anthropocene. I have been seeking to understand how this form of practice may promote the cultural conditions required to assure, rather than to degrade, our collective futures.
Firts published in Fibreculture Journal, FCJ-203, Issue 28, Creative Robotics: Rethinking Human Machine Configurations, 2016.

Re-Imagining Static Utopias: (Unraveling the Bat/human Problem):

In 2010 the 'Remnant Emergency Artlab' set out to alleviate this utopian hangover through a creative provocation called the 'Botanical Gardens ‘X-Tension’ - an imagined city-wide, distributed, network of 'ecological gardens' - in order to ask, what now needs to be better understood, connected and therefore ultimately conserved?

'Grounded Media': Expanding the Scope of Ecological Art Practices Within New Media Arts Culture

Proposes a form of art practice that is focused around the understanding that our ecological crisis is also a cultural crisis that is driven by our sense of being separate from the ecologies upon which we depend. Presented at DAC 2007.

Intimate Transactions: The Evolution of an Ecosophical Networked Practice

Considers the issues and implications of applying an ecosophical, practice-led methodology during the Intimate Transactions project and its relevance as a guiding method for other creative practitioners similarly interested in eco-social and eco-political engagement. Published in FibreCulture Journal.

Investigating Ecological Subjectivity: Intimate Transactions (Shifting Dusts)

Examined whether ecosophically orientated art works could assist participants making connections between the ‘problem of ecology’ and the a problem of how we image ourselves within the world. Presented at Pixelraiders 2, Sheffield, England.

Towards an Ecosophical Praxis of New Media Space Design

Early investigations in and through new media practice where I had begun to develop new approaches to artistic practice built upon concepts drawn from the disciplines of scientific and cultural ecology. Presented at DAC 2003.