Institute of Art Design + Technology Dún Laoghaire
Ireland’s campus for the Creative Industries

In the Ocean we Hardly Know

Alternative Knowledge and Narrative Processes
Research and Design Elizabeth O'Brien
Programme MA Design for Change
Supervisor Clyde Doyle

Introduction

A project examining alternative ways of knowing and narrating with ocean environments, as a response to the planetary-scale environmental crises and dominant understandings of matter as inanimate and agentless. Incorporating post-anthropocentric and new materialist theory, marine and auto-ethnographic research, and novel tool testing practice.

This work presents a process of place-based learning and narrative generation. Demonstrating the potential power of worlding and mythology to engender new/old understandings and generate between human actants and the more-than-human of ocean environments.

Worldbuilding Framework