Material Deconstructions of Time: Posthumanist Interventions Through Media Art

Abstract

The topic of time and how it can be unpacked, deconstructed, and designed with is fundamental to HCI, but it is also extensively engaged within artistic practice. By analysing a selection of ten media artworks, all in different ways concerned with time and temporality, we explore how artists approach these matters as culturally and politically loaded. The selected projects align with the ongoing scholarly interest in alternatives to common perceptions on time, unmaking the normative clock time, and the posthuman discourse. Following an analysis of the theoretical and material expressions of these artworks, we conceptualised four themes through which unmaking was represented: dissecting temporality, the unmaking of the singular, unmaking as messing up , and unmaking the other . We close with a discussion on how these themes intersect with the current discourse on unmaking in HCI and reflect on challenges and opportunities for design and theory.