Mapping the Data Event: A Posthumanist Approach to Art|Education|Research in a Regional University

Abstract

This chapter aims to rework humanist understandings of data in art|education|research by developing the ‘data event’ as a methodological concept which is productive for post-qualitative inquiry. Working with data as event involves a posthumanist reconceptualisation of art|education|research practice that does not separate sensorial data from the dynamic, relational occasions in which they are produced and encountered. This means that the ‘data event’ is inherently resistant to interpretation, reflection and representation, whether artistic, scientific or linguistic. In exploring the implications of a posthumanist ontology of data in art|education|research, the chapter works through a series of conceptual operations as they have been developed through the States and Territories project undertaken in a regional university. The process philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze operate as touchstones throughout the chapter, as they engender diffractive encounters with recent theoretical movements associated with posthumanism and post-qualitative research.