The ongoing influence of materialist trends, such as actor network theory1and the various ‘object-oriented’ ontologies, has helped formulate post-phenomenological frameworks within cultural geography; ones that broadly revolve around the more-than-human constitution of cultural life2. Ash and Simpson3 identify three major shifts in such approaches:
- a rethinking of intentionality as an emergent relation with the world
- the recognition that objects legitimately and autonomously exist outside of their appearances
- a certain constitutive openness to the ‘alterity’ of the other
They underscore the significance of exploring “the aesthetic causalities of how objects relate to one another” so that aesthetics surface as an important epistemic apparatus. This is, of course, in tandem with the various object-oriented-ontologies that generally appraise aesthetics and creative practices as important philosophical tools4. To this end, certain devotees suggest empirical ways to explore the so-called ‘great outdoors’5. Bogost6 examines in depth three such tactics that are of great relevance to the hyper-constructive method:
- ‘ontographies’, involving, among others, catalogues of things, technical diagrams, or ‘exploded views’, and meant as ways to acknowledge the existence of objects and to delineate structural interrelationships thereof
- ‘metaphors’, concerning ways to speculate about the life of objects; that is, about how the experience of an object would appear to some other object in this (other) object’s own terms
- ‘carprentry’, that is making artefacts that grope for how objects may construct their own worlds.
The hyper-constructive method generally aims at outlining a broad methodological toolkit appropriate for a creative and post-phenomenological geographical research; it is concerned with a hands-on, close, and unconditional examination —in some non-hermeneutic fashion— of all the various kinds of (other-than-)human entities/phenomena that may be encountered in a landscape. Materialist influences aside, however, it also echoes a principally post-humanist perspective in that at the very same time it also intends to expose humans as ever prosthetic, distributed, and produced by, and in relation to, social, environmental, technological, and more-than-human traits7. Human activities are, then, examined through the lenses of the particular material, technological, social, and environmental requisites that condition them. For instance, in Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja fishing is accounted for by means of data concerning fish migration patterns, recordings of submarine ecosystems, stories recounted by fishermen, expositions of fish skin and fishing hooks, video footage from a fish processing facility, poems, photographs of fishing boats, fishermen interviews, and the actual preparation and consumption of seafood.
Such a perspective, one that simultaneously draws on new materialisms and critical post-humanism, relates a lot with non-representational theory where objects, phenomena, and affective experiences are all understood as always transcending the ability of language, reasoning, and discursive thought8. Similarly, from a hyper-constructive stance, a landscape is more of a crux where humans, things, animals, plants, geophysical formations, weather phenomena, and hybrid societies thereof meet, mingle, and entwine in manners that cannot be accounted for by purely linguistic means or by virtue of some other modality alone.
It is worth noticing that while post-humanist trains of thought are sometimes seen as discrepant with object-oriented ontology9, they harmoniously compliment one another herein: more-than-human agents, cultural practices, and material artefacts are all dealt with as simultaneously alien to, and as integral elements of, human nature:
- Alien, in that they cannot (a) be reduced to their phenomenological appearances or to their noumenal correlates, (b) be abstracted or collapse to any certain aspect of them, or (c) be interpreted in just some particular manner. Object-oriented ontologies teach us that anything —from subatomic particles, to intellectual abstractions, to a planetary ecosystem— will always eschew human attempts to fully experience or comprehend them. Following, the hyper-constructive method suggests an eclectic array of tactics to ever alternate the focus on different aspects of what is under scrutiny; including ones that concern the ways such aspects may precondition other things or cultural practices. A multitude of possible facets should be this way exposed, so that an inherently more-than-human ‘otherness’ is foregrounded.
- Integral elements, in that they remain indispensable parts of a human mind that is necessarily situated, enactive and distributed across all sorts of other-than-human things and processes. That it to say, that ‘things’ are no less valid constituents of our cognitive apparatuses than our cerebrum is10.
It should be underscored that the hyper-constructive approach is an empirical affair that oughts not ascribe to any particular ideological or methodological vein. As non-representational theory and certain practitioners from various disciplines point out, language and theory alone would ever fail account for real world materials and their properties11. Pétursdóttir notices that the object-oriented/new-materialist call for research that is primarily concerned with things/objects very often leads instead to their being assimilated and humanised12. She argues that their otherness/thingness is eventually explained out this way; and proposes, instead, a much more straightforward empirical approach that privileges doing/engaging with things rather than just reasoning about them. In a similar vein, the hyper-constructive method is envisioned as an epistemological toolkit to literally practice ontology in a hands-on enactive fashion: through the creative engagement with a landscape, its human and more-than-human inhabitants, and the various phenomena that manifest therein, as well as through the production and exhibition of new kinds of things and events employing, or being inspired, by the former.
Similar approaches are, of course, encountered in miscellaneous other contexts. Consider project AAAA13, mingling art, architecture, anthropology, archaelogy and a formal study thereof by means of crafts and situated field experimentation. Or Salter’s testimonies that, in a series of different creative contexts, succintly illustrate how materials set out their own realities well beyond the creator’s intent14. Of particular relevance to this venture is 'Living Earth', a three year art/research project drawing from Morton’s ‘dark’ ecology15. Living Earth concerns the production of artworks pivoting on an object-oriented-ontology inspired exploration of a broad geographic region between Northern Norway and Russia16. Examples of artworks realised there range from interactive kinetic light/sound installations to soundwalks, and from audiovisual performances to photo essays. Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja shares a number of important similarities with this endeavour since they both concern (sub)arctic regions of the Northern hemisphere and since they are both inspired by a largely object-oriented/dark-ecological perspective that does not –at least not in principle– prioritise humans over nonhumans or nature over technology.
It should be noted that the hyper-constructive method also draws significantly on a wide range of purely empirical fields of practice/study and (layman) crafts. In a nutshell, the method could be described as a very eclectic mix of individual strategies to inquire/probe local objects/phenomena as well as to create new kinds of artefacts with them. In Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja these range from scientific data visualisation to the design of DIY electronic apparatuses, from knitting to multichannel audio composition, and from recording the sounds of whales to cooking seafood. In turn, (digital) craftmanships of sort delinate additional research concerns with respect to subdisciplines in, among others, photography, marine biology, bio-acoustics, soundscape studies, electronic/electroacoustic music composition, filmaking, data science, auditory displays, and other. Under these premises, a series of perspectives and the underline philosophies thereof also pollinate the project (quite often in unexpected fashions). Thence, a maximalist hybridity and ecclecticism is brought forth. It is eventually aspired to arive at complex ways of knowning a landscape that may indifferently draw upon all sorts of creative, informal/layman, techno-scientific, and design-led perspective —ones that built upon first-person engagement with real-life human/other-than-human cultures and complex hybrids thereof.
Of great relevance to Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja are also those experimental methodological apparatuses concerning the study of mobilities and ephemera. Consider, e.g. tactics such as 'go alongs’17, ‘shadowing’18 —that is, being present in some situated empirical context— travelogues/diaries19, or ‘comobility’ —that is, being mobile employing locative applications20. It is interesting to note that proper materialist takes are often implicit in that kind of tactics. For instance, having discussed to some length log/diaries, and other related strategies, Czarniawska-Joerges adopts a rather actor-network/object-oriented stance emphasizing the importance of studying things, both in relation to humans and to one another21. Inter alia, this exposition is concerned with how exactly to carry out this task in a manner that remains genuinely inspired by all the above, but also genuinely creative and unconditionally open to a wide range of hands-on techniques and crafts.
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