Becoming Sensor

Image from research creation project Becoming a Sensor by Natasha Myers.

Dr. Natasha Myers
Associate Professor, Anthropology/Science & Technology Studies

Becoming Sensor is a multisensory research-creation project that aims to decolonize the ecological sensorium. Working at the cusp of anthropology, art, and ecology, this project interrogates the self-evidence of ecology’s objects and methods throwing open the very question of what it means to pay attention. It proposes protocols for an “ungrid-able ecology” to disrupt conventional ecology’s colonial and economizing logics. This kinaesthetically attuned practice reconfigures the naturalist’s notebook by innovating techniques for tuning in to the “affective ecologies” and the “involutionary momentum” that propels plants, insects, animals, and people to get involved in one another’s lives. Through an ongoing collaboration with award-winning filmmaker and dancer Ayelen Liberona, this project documents forms of growth, decay, combustion and decomposition that are essential to the life of the oak savannah lands in Toronto’s High Park.