Emergent Knowledge Practices

Emergent Knowledge Practices tests the epistemic potential of emergence through
woven sculpture, community collaboration, and experimental pedagogy. My textile
based methods, applied as relational spatial practice, broaden discourse around
emergence, a phenomenon which is usually simulated in computation and less often
directly participated within or made by hand. Through material practice and writing, the
project refines methods, concepts, and forms that make non-reductive knowledge
tangible, accessible, applicable, and actionable beyond my own discipline.
The project draws widely from philosophies of science, complexity theory, cultural
theory, geography, architecture, design, textiles, and sculpture. Key scholars used to
build the argument for a non-reductive spatialisation of knowledge include Doreen
Massey, Wendy Wheeler, Michel de Certeau, Tim Ingold, and Paul Carter.
This thesis articulates Geometries of Knowledge, a concept materialised in practice and
substantiated in the written component. It envisions a generative meshwork of
relationships for coming to know emergently through, with, and between different forms
of knowledge. The concept is equally used as an analytical tool that makes visible
reciprocal and reductive relationships in knowledge-making.
As well as presenting a novel self-organising methodology, this thesis contributes new
models and maps for emergent thinking that are particularly relevant to architecture
and the formulation of emergent design. More broadly, Geometries of Knowledge offer a
speculative architecture for knowledge that could be useful in thinking more emergently
about the maps and models we use to locate knowing in the sensate world.