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Document Type
Text
Broad Creation Date
2024
Language
English
Location
Portland
Abstract
This dissertation explores the concept of oceanic phenomenology, defined as a subjective, athletic ocean experience. This oceanic experience is studied through surfing, sailing, open water swimming, and freediving to reveal the athlete-philosopher-artist in a quest for meaningful existence. Athletic experiences are opportunities for analysis not only of the body’s movement in creative performance, but also the athlete’s sensory awareness as focused intensity or presence, and the resulting artworks of those experiences, be it film, literature, painting, or photography. The movement of the body in the ocean offers a physiological, psychological, and philosophical transformation of the athlete. In addition, while in the ocean, water athletes are able to encounter sentient, marine life creatures which opens up a larger feeling of connectedness and being-in-the-world. An oceanic ontology is thus developed through our experience of reality in the ocean, and the transformation of self upon reflection of those experiences when back on land. Presence, grace, space, time, and ethics of a body in motion are explored through the athletic endeavors of swimming, surfing, sailing, and freediving in the ocean to actualize and define the life of an athlete-philosopher-artist. It is with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Aristotle that this thesis is able to take hold and validate the body’s movement in nature to enable and offer phenomenological, oceanic experiences of a water athlete. I apply their philosophical perspectives to water sports, and thus elucidate how the sea is rich with phenomenological opportunities.
Disciplines
Art Practice | Arts and Humanities | Cognition and Perception | Philosophy
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Pyle, Terri, "Oceanic Phenomenology and the Athlete-Philosopher-Artist" (2024). Academic Research and Dissertations. 63.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/63
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