Thinking with Tides: Engaging with Embodied Technical Processes within the Tidal Ranges of the Thames Estuary

The following paper reports on findings from doctoral research in Arts and Computational Technology. The research is about tidal environments. More specifically, it engages with the tidal ranges of the Thames Estuary and explores what thinking with tides might signify. In the face of uncertain futures—sea-level rise, increase in flooding, pollution—and through art practice, it reflects on how combining different ways of knowing the Thames Estuary could reintroduce questions of locality, situatedness and diversity to make the estuary differently available. The paper is divided into four sections. The first section summarises the kind of tidal processes that unfold in the estuary. The second section introduces the methodology, Practising in the Wild, and explains how Embodied Technical Processes (ETP) are necessary to engage with the estuary. The third section presents an inventory of different technical objects that are used to think with the estuary and its tides. Finally, in the last section, two art projects—by composer John Eacott and art collective YoHa—are discussed. Both projects were situated within the tidal ranges of the Thames and applied ETP. It concludes with reflections on future studies that this research is currently developing.