ARTNATIONS: Tracing the methodological legacy of science and technology studies through the logic of socioplastic infrastructure

Science and Technology Studies teaches us to trace associations rather than assume essences. Bruno Latour's actants—any entity that modifies a state of affairs—dissolve the human-nonhuman binary, while Isabelle Stengers's ecology of practices insists on situated knowledges without falling into relativism. This methodological stance inflects how we understand artistic production: not as solitary authorship but as translation across heterogeneous elements, where materials, protocols and discourses all participate in meaning-making. The cameltag functions precisely as such a translation device: a semiotic marker that circulates between domains—archival, urban, digital, institutional—while carrying semantic traces that modify behaviour at each site. It is actantial not because it acts alone, but because it enters into associations that redistribute agency across networks of humans, documents, algorithms and spaces. Infrastructure Studies provides the material substrate for these translations, while Media Archaeology adds temporal depth, revealing how technical protocols carry historical sediment that conditions current assemblages.

Political Ecology frames these socio-technical networks within metabolic flows of energy and resources, while Network Science formalises their topological structure, exposing patterns of connection that persist across scale. Decolonial Theory cautions against universalising Western scientific models, insisting that the very categories of "science" and "technology" carry colonial epistemic violence. Feminism reveals the gendered labour concealed within technical systems—the reproduction that enables production, the care work that sustains networks. Disability Studies asks who is excluded by standardised interfaces, while Sound Studies attends to the vibrational agencies that visual methodologies miss. Philosophical Botany offers vegetal models of distributed intelligence that challenge the animal bias in theories of agency. What emerges from this convergence is not a new methodology but a recognition that certain technical objects—like the cameltag—function as nodes of translation between heterogeneous worlds. This capacity to hold diverse registers together without collapsing them, which might be termed socioplastics, names the infrastructural work of aesthetic forms that operate simultaneously as signs, actants and protocols.

Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics. https://antolloveras.blogspot.com

FAMILY

Infrastructure Studies, Ontology, Cybernetics, Systems Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Critical Urban Studies, Posthumanism, Sovereignty Studies, Semiotics, Media Archaeology, Complexity Theory, Spatial Justice, Political Ecology, Feminism and Gender Theory, Decolonial Theory, Anthropocene Studies, Relational Aesthetics, Commons Theory, Mobility Studies, Technological Critique, Software Studies, Platform Studies, Environmental Psychology, Phenomenology, Place Theory, Landscape Theory, Urban Ecology, Multispecies Studies, New Materialism, Speculative Realism, Actor-Network Theory, Biopolitics, Postcolonial Theory, Critical Aesthetics, Contemporary Art Theory, Social Practice Art, Spatial Politics, Urban Anthropology, Informality Studies, Urban Marginality, Digital Capitalism, Surveillance Studies, Smart City Theory, Sound Studies, Visual Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Humanistic Geography, Hybrid Geographies, Philosophical Botany, Neuroaesthetics, Perception Theory, Disability Studies, Intersectionality Theory, Utopian Theory, Postmodern Theory, Radical Pedagogy, Globalization Theory, Geopolitics, Marxist Theory, Post-Marxism, Value Theory, Evolutionary Economics, Game Theory, Network Science, Scaling Theory, Complex Systems, Historical Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Interface Theory, Protocol Theory, Maintenance Studies, Critical Infrastructure Theory, Southern Epistemologies, Indigenous Theory, Territorial Feminism, Latin American Political Ecology, Subaltern Studies, Accelerationism, Materialist Philosophy, Post-Operaismo, Immaterialism, Object-Oriented Ontology, Digital Political Economy, Law and Technology, Algorithmic Culture, Urban Media Studies, Spatial Art Theory, Architectural Criticism, Urban Planning Theory, Sustainable Urbanism, Right to the City Theory, Environmental Humanities, Political Theology, Governmentality Studies, Logistics Studies, Data Studies, Institutional Theory.