STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

This project explores the philosophical question of the ground of being in terms of the ontological characteristics that enable individuals, interpretive communities and landscapes to demonstrate mutually constitutive interactions.
This topic is significant because it explores the question of the ground of being, one of the central questions in metaphysics, in terms of a perspective from which the question has rarely been explored. It does this not in terms of phenomena understood as discrete units, or purely in terms of process, but through the mutual constitution that emerges through dialogue between phenomena.
The question of the ground of being is explored in philosophical traditions in terms of three major approaches: the static, the dynamic and the correlation of both the static and the dynamic.
The static approach examines phenomena and their unifying ground in terms of a static, superordinate mode of being that unifies all phenomena as in Platos The Republic. The dynamic perspective examines the question in terms of the ground of being as constituted by a process of becoming as in Whitehead's process philosophy and correlation of the static and the dynamic emerges in Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching .
This researcher has developed a preliminary exploration of related questions which can be seen at http://www.urbanatmospheres.net/Ubicomp2005/Papers/Metapolis%20UbiComp%20Workshop%20Proceedings%202005.pdf

My research question is centered on an inquiry into the possibility of arriving at the ground of being through an exploration of interactions, understood at an incline of metaphorical and literal interpretation, between humans, interpretive communities and landscapes.
The methodology employed in this project consists of three interrelated forms of enquiry. I adapt a cognitive system of Ifa that has its origins among the Yoruba of Southern Nigeria, which operates in terms of an implicit understanding of ontological correlation between various phenomena .We explore this system in order to develop ideas that could provide clues to ontological relations between phenomena suggestive of an ontological ground that unites them.
The second research method consists developing an experiential relationship with the spaces under study in order to cultivate a sensitivity to the peculiarities of topography and atmosphere that have inspired the artists whose responses we study. This enables a sensately informed but critical and theoretically enriched response to the artists' mediations .
The third research strategy we employ is that of dramatizing the form through which the essay's overarching purpose is pursued by developing the project in terms of a dialogue between the researcher, the ideas they explore, the text through which this exploration is dramatized, and visual depictions of the act of navigating these landscapes. This enables the audience to participate vicariouslyin the act of spatial navigation, both physical and mental, that inspired the artists' responses to the landscapes in question.
This research project contributes to knowledge about the questions it explores and the disciplines through which it does this in terms that could be understood as operating within centripetal and centrifugal relationships to those disciplines. In terms of centripetal relationships, this study contributes to knowledge about the questions it explores in ways that expand our understanding of particular disciplines. In relation to centrifugal relationships, it can be understood to expand our understanding of relationships between disciplines.