Ontological Machines: Subjectivity and Relational Desire in Immersive and Interactive Environments
This practice-based artistic research focuses on two contemporary spaces; namely the pedagogical spaces of healthcare Simulation Based Education (SBE), and the exhibition spaces of installation art. These seemingly unrelated activities share a range of technological and operational similarities that render their combined study under the banner of ‘immersive and interactive environments’ both novel and necessary. The lack of broad engagement with questions of representation, aesthetics, and affect is conspicuous in an educational practice that is reliant on, and implemented through, a network of overtly visual mediums, material technologies, and sensory modalities. In healthcare SBE, clinical skills are acquired, and medical knowledge is reinforced while a biomedical worldview is quietly spatialised through the immersive and interactive environments in which healthcare simulation is performed. With the rapid adoption of SBE in healthcare training both nationally and internationally, the apparent dearth of philosophical inquiry that examines healthcare SBE outside of the performance metrics of technical skills training and competencies of patient safety warrants examination. I use the philosopher Karen Barad’s ‘diffractive methodology’ and Levi Bryant’s theory of ‘ontological machines’ to examine how the immersive techniques and interactive technologies deployed within these seemingly unrelated spaces shape specific forms of meaning, knowing, and being in the world. In response to fieldwork conducted in a simulation training facility of a South-West UK medical school, the practice component of this research is articulated through a series of what I introduce as immersive and interactive installation art Prototypes. These Prototypes explore subjectivity and relationality through wearable technology that captures real-time participant biodata to augment physical spaces with digital layers.
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