This article describes methods and ideas that emerged from a continuing enquiry into ‘metadesign’ that led us to think about the role of ‘consciousness’ in teams, communities and the biosphere. In the West the notion of ‘consciousness’ has been shaped by humanism, industrialization and some strident forms of individualism. These have encouraged us to see it in strongly anthropocentric and solipsistic terms. The global economic system also reflects this individualistic ideology, given that ‘growth’, is driven by personal avarice on a (...) collective scale. On the other hand, capitalism encourages enterprises to scale-up when they become successful. Both tendencies reduce the consciousness of organizations and communities. The article illustrates this idea by describing a ‘quadratic’ model of team consciousness that was developed to enhance practical developments that support personal, interpersonal, transpersonal and environmentally situated modes of awareness. (shrink)

The Virtual Embodied is intended to inform and provoke. It juxtaposes cutting-edge theories, polemics, and creative practices to uncover ethical, aesthetic and ecological implications of why, how and in particular where, human actions, observations and insights take place. It refuses simply to hold a euphoric view of technology yet equally resists the apocalyptic scorn which surrounds the new. The contributors use a range of interdisciplinary strategies to point to a re-worked aesthetic for embodying knowledge and explore such areas as colonialism (...) and the internet, the virtual unconscious in electronic systems, theatre as a virtual space, 'information' and the capitalist society, ecstatic bodies and the rave scene, desire and the 'virtual comfort' zone. In The Virtual Embodied many of the authors, artists, performers and designers apply their interdisciplinary passions to questions of embodied knowledge and virtual space. (shrink)