Digital Earth Art®

The Intersection of Embodiment and Planetary Subjectivity – The Aesthetics of Sensory Ethics in Digital Earth Art®

Takeshi Maki — Founder of Digital Earth Art®

Introduction: Exploring Sensory Ethics through Digital Earth Art® – Rethinking the Human-Earth Relationship through Bodily Perception

Climate change, ecological crises, and rapid technological advancements are fundamentally altering the relationship between humans and the Earth.

In this context, ethics itself is being challenged and requires redefinition.

Traditional ethical frameworks have focused on reason-based norms and the justification of actions.

However, they are insufficient for addressing the pre-linguistic dimensions of bodily perception, emotion, and resonance with the environment.

Digital Earth Art® proposes a new concept called “sensory ethics” to respond to this dimension.

Sensory ethics refers to ethical phenomena that arise not through rational judgment or norms but as bodily, sensory responses.

Through engagement with the artworks, viewers experience a tactile resonance with the Earth and others, naturally giving rise to impulses such as “I want to protect” and “I want to care for.”

This bodily response constitutes the core of sensory ethics.

Digital Earth Art® fuses portrait photography with images of the Earth.

As a form of digital environmental art, it transforms and agitates the viewer’s visual perception.

This sensory resonance evokes an ethics rooted in the body.

Chapter 1: The Structure and Significance of Digital Earth Art® – New Ethical Experiences through Artistic Structure

Digital Earth Art® is not merely an artistic genre but a philosophical practice that opens new ethical circuits in the relationship between humans and the Earth.

By transforming vision into tactile perception, the viewer’s body is reconstructed not as a subject that “reads meaning” but as a sensory organ activated by perception.

The artworks have the following three-layered structure:

1. Contours of the portrait photograph

2. Latitude and longitude lines of the Earth image

3. Visual dislocation arising from their fusion

Viewers are confronted with dual questions: “Whose face is this?” and “Where is this Earth?”

This visual disturbance is intended to produce ethical permeation grounded in planetary realism.

Traditional portraits fixed the essence of the individual or social markers, but in Digital Earth Art®, the portrait appears not as a representation of the subject but as a structure visualizing the relationship between humans and the Earth itself.

Viewing is not merely “seeing” but an emotionally immersive experience, and ethical resonance arises in the moment the artwork seems to “look back” at the viewer.

Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework of Sensory Ethics – Ethics Arising from Bodily Resonance

Traditional reason-centered ethics has largely overlooked bodily and sensory dimensions.

Sensory ethics suggests ethics as bodily transformation rather than as a matter of commands or logic.

Resonance with others and the environment occurs within the body through vision, touch, and hearing, which leads to ethical attitudes and actions.

Ethics is experienced not as judgment but as a bodily process.

The generation of sensory ethics in viewing progresses through four stages:

1. Visual observation

2. Sensory intrusion

3. Resonance of the subject

4. Ethical impulse

In the fourth stage, viewers experience a moment in which their body directly produces an ethical response without mediation by reason.

Chapter 3: The Generation of the Body and Planetary Subjectivity – Ethics at the Moment Self and Earth Overlap

In Digital Earth Art®, the body is not a fixed entity but is continuously generated and transformed within its relationship with the Earth.

The fusion of portrait photographs and Earth images allows viewers to experience the blurring of boundaries between self and planet.

What emerges is not an individual subject but a planetary subjectivity grounded in interdependence at a planetary scale.

Through the tactileization of vision, ethical resonance arises, and sensory ethics surpasses conventional subject-centered ethics.

Chapter 4: The Generation Process of Sensory Ethics – Ethical Moments Directly Experienced by the Body

Viewers perceive subjects through portrait photographs and Earth images.

The tactile overlapping of images blurs the boundary between self and Earth, and the body and senses resonate with the Earth.

Through this process, ethical concern arises, and viewers experience impulses that respond bodily rather than rationally.

Traditional evaluations of right or wrong are suspended, and sensory ethics emerges directly.

Chapter 5: Application in Education and Social Practice – Cultivating Awareness of Coexistence through Viewing

Digital Earth Art® can be applied in education, environmental policy, and social practice.

Through the experience of viewing, children and students develop ethical sensitivity rooted in the body.

Experiencing the relationship with the Earth bodily strengthens sustainability awareness and consciousness of coexistence.

Through art, individuals and groups share ethical resonance, promoting social solidarity.

Digital Earth Art® functions as an educational and social apparatus that complements reason-centered ethics through the integration of vision, touch, and ethics.

Chapter 6: Conclusion and Future Perspectives – Ethics Emerging from the Relationship Between Body and Planet

Digital Earth Art® visualizes the relationship between body and planet through the fusion of portrait photography and Earth images, generating ethics as a bodily response within digital environmental art.

By tactileizing vision, ethics emerges as a bodily shiver preceding reason, complementing traditional abstract and normative ethics.

Sensory ethics offers a new approach to environmental and planetary-scale challenges and enables the social development of body-rooted ethics through education, policy, and social practice.

Organization Information

• Name: Digital Earth Art®

• Established: 2023

• Founder / Director: Takeshi Maki

• Location: Nipponbashi, Chuo-ku, Osaka, Japan

• Email: digitalearthart@gmail.com

• Trademark Registration: No. 6827076 – Digital Earth Art®