Diagramming Relations
My research topic involves dealing with a high level of complexity. The entanglement of bats, planning and data systems is difficult and multilayered, with causal relations often uncertain. The research process has its own complexity, with earlier investigations informing other processes. Out of necessity, I designed a visual language to handle this complexity and map relations convincingly. I also used versions of it in different illustrations and promotional material for the project. The diagramming language went through multiple iterations. What is presented is its final version.
The language is inspired Barad’s agential realism, as described in her 2007 book Meeting the Universe Halfway. Barad describes all being as being-in-relation, and so no object in the diagrams pre-exists the process by which it is generated and understood. The diagrams give relations primacy over objects – where many diagrams represent relation and process as mysterious, unlabelled lines, here primary relations are clearly named, with their relation to their constituting and emanating objects made explicit. This clarity has been invaluable for detailing the dense webs of processes I investigated and also enacted through my creative practice.
The practical and expressive needs of the language have taken precedent over philosophical fidelity to Barad, and differs markedly from her own diagramming. Nevertheless I have named the diagrams ‘onto-epistemograms’, after Barad’s onto-epistemology, intending them to show the co-constitution of becoming and knowledge, of matter and meaning.
Creating an onto-epistemogram
A guide to how to describe a process or situation as an onto-epistemogram.
