Written by: Patricia Gibson. Institute of Art, Design + Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland
Abstract: Cartography as a posthuman method cultivates the creative and critical mapping of relational encounters between human, non-human and material entities. These empirically grounded accounts render the dynamic, intra-connected and inexhaustible possibilities verifiable in educational research practices. However, the current literature cites a number of examples of cartography mapping but provides no clarity as to how such an analytical practice might come about. In this paper, I design a Diffractive Transversal Framework to guide the cartographies in my research project where 21 interactive media students collectively author a story with(in) Flors the Teacherbot. The purpose of the framework is threefold: to limit the thresholds of encounter in an ethical and sustainable way; the multiperspectival nature of the framework acknowledges material entities; and transdisciplinarity draws from theory traversing multiple disciplines to become philosophically, educationally, and politically driven. A selected cartography charts the qualitative shift in student understandings around knowledge and its creation. Here, the students diffractively analyse how the collective story came about, rather than its meaning, through structured reflective dialogue enacted with(in) Flors. This is a novel approach to research in automated teaching and demonstrates how the method of cartography can be used to analyse digital data from a posthuman perspective.
Keywords: cartography, transversality, diffraction, new materialism, posthuman critical theory, automation