Art of Experiment
A handbook for navigating our troubled and precarious times intended to help readers imagine and make their world anew.
In search of new knowledge practices that can help us make the world livable again, this book takes the reader on a journey across time—from the deep past to the unfolding future. The authors search beyond human knowledge to establish negotiated partnerships with forms of knowledge within the planet itself, examining how we have manipulated these historically through an anthropocentric focus. The book explores the many different kinds of knowledge, and the diversity of instruments needed to invoke and actuate the potency of human and nonhuman agencies. Four key phases in our ways of knowing are identified: material, strengthening, reconfiguring and extending, which are exemplified through case studies that take the form of worlding experiments.
This pioneering work will inspire architects, artists and designers as well as students, teachers and researchers across arts and design disciplines.
Rolf Hughes is professor in the epistemology of design-driven research at the Department of Architecture, KU Leuven, and director of artistic research for the Experimental Architecture Group. An interdisciplinary artist and performer, his writing spans creative and critical genres.
Rachel Armstrong is professor of experimental architecture at Newcastle University and visiting professor at KU Leuven. She pioneers the interdisciplinary field of "living architecture," which engages the material and technological potency of life within spatial agendas.