Paper short abstract:

I present a film showing the development of an art project from initial conception to final installation. The film visits "The Archaeology of Cognition" a multimodal exhibition which presents creative activity as a system and where we are taken for a walk through the workings of an extended mind

Paper long abstract:

As an artist and following Material Engagement Theory, I understand creative behaviour from a systemic perspective in which human activity and human environment coalesce into a single extended mind that exhibits its own agency. One way of exploring such a system is to monitor the evolution of an art project from initial, disconnected material explorations to the final installation of a work in an exhibition. Over the last two years I have done just that; recording the activity in my workshop, activity which ended in September 2022 with the installation in the Swiss Ceramics Museum of a work entitled, "Tekenu’s Intent". Alongside the museum installation, I presented a parallel exhibition "The Archaeology of Cognition" in which I laid out, quite literally, the workings of a mind struggling to come to grips with its own intentions. Conceived as a sketch in 3 ½ dimensions, the exhibition showed how a disparate band of gestures, materials and things gather at a particular point in time to make common cause. Together the band make its way towards another point in time, shifting shape, material and understanding before finally settling down (provisionally at least) as "Tekenu’s Intent".

Like Perspectival Kinaesthetic Imaging, the archaeology of cognition exhibition took a multimodal approach, presenting a collection of artefacts, artworks, images, digital software, videos, notebook extracts as a network of intercommunicating nodes. I present a film that walks the viewer through this extended, material mind as it thinks (things) its uncertain way towards a resolution.