STRUCTURES OF CARE TOWARD AN AESTHETICS OF CARE IN COMPUTATION

Agency and/or Creator

• Silvia Ruzanka, IDSVA

Bureau/Division/Agency

Library

Files

Document Type

Text

Broad Creation Date

2026

Language

English

Location

Portland

Abstract

What would it mean to re-orient the regime of computation around care? Could we imagine a form of computation based not on rationality but on plant-thinking? What role can art and aesthetics play in re-imagining our future to aid us in altering these structures of care to allow for a radical being-with?

This project aims to reveal the entanglements of computation and being, and open possibilities for new configurations by orienting computation within an aesthetics of care. I argue that as our being has become interwoven with the digital, we have given over our care and being-as-care to computation; and that through restorying as the practice of an aesthetics of care, we can envision and enact new potentialities in our being with the digital.

I begin with Heidegger’s thinking on being and care, extend it through feminist philosophers Luce Irigaray and Catherine Malabou, and incorporate the compost thinking of Donna Haraway and the care ethics of Joan Tronto. I use restorying as a method for alternate readings of artificial intelligence in science fiction, for suggesting speculative new forms of computation, and for thinking of games as sites in which we can simulate and enact new structures of care.

I conclude by bringing aesthetics of care into projects in experimental games, virtual reality, and media art archaeology. I contend that an aesthetics of care brings us into what Douglas vii Hofstadter calls a “strange loop”, continuous motion folding and reflecting back on itself. Care, the act of mattering, reflects back on itself: caring about what we care about, care for our care, matter reflecting on the mattering of matter, opening new potentialities for technopoeisis and being in the age of computation.

Keywords: computation, aesthetics of care, restorying, artificial intelligence, science fiction, plants, games

Disciplines

Aesthetics | Arts and Humanities | Digital Humanities | Philosophy

Publisher

Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

City

Portland ME

Recommended Citation

Ruzanka, Silvia, "STRUCTURES OF CARE TOWARD AN AESTHETICS OF CARE IN COMPUTATION" (2026). Academic Research and Dissertations. 83.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/83