Towards a Phenomenological Theory of the Visceral in the Interactive Arts

This is a digitised version of a thesis that was deposited in the University Library. If you are the author and you have a query about this item please contact PEARL Admin ([email protected])Metadata merged with duplicate record (http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2319) on 20.12.2016 by CS (TIS).This thesis explores the ways in which certain forms of interactive art may and do elicit visceral responses. The term "visceral" refers to the cardiovascular, respiratory, uro-genital and especially excretory systems that affect mind and body on a continuum of awareness. The "visceral" is mentioned in the field of interactive arts, but it remains systematically unexplored and undefined. Further, interactive artworks predominantly focus on the exteroceptive (stimuli from outside) rather than the interoceptive (stimuli arising within the body, especially the viscera) senses. The existentialist phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty forms the basis for explorations of the visceral dimension of mind/body. New approaches to understanding interactive art, design and the mind/body include: attunements to the world; intertwinings of mind/body, technology and world; and of being in the world. Each artwork within utilizes a variation of the phenomenological methods derived from Merl eau-Ponty's; these are discussed primarily in Chapters One and Three. Because subjective, first-person, experiences are a major aspect of a phenomenological approach, the academic writing is interspersed with subjective experiences of the author and others. This thesis balances facets of knowledge from diverse disciplines that account for visceral phenomena and subjective experience. Along with the textual exegesis, one major work of design and two major works of art were created. These are documented on the compact disc (CDROM) bound within. As an essential component of each artwork, new technological systems were created or co-created by the author. User surveys comprise Appendices Two, Three and Four, and are also online at: www. sfu. ca/-dgromala/thesis. To access the URL: login as , and use the password . Numerous talks, exhibitions and publications that directly relate to the thesis work is in Appendix One. This work begins with an introduction to Merleau-Ponty's ideas of flesh and reversibility. Chapter Two is the review of the literature, while Chapter Three is an explication of the hypothesis, an overview of the field, and a framing of the problem. Discussions of each artwork are in Chapter Four (The Meditation Chamber), Chapter Five (BioMorphic Typography) and Chapter Six (The MeatBook). Chapter Seven forms the conclusion. References to the documentation on the CD are found throughout the thesis, and italicized paragraphs provide an artistic context for each chapter

From a biosignal to xenotext : the affective dimension of textuality in postdigital art projects

With reference to the categories of aff ectivity and intentionality, the Author considers some of the various research perspectives that can be brought to bear upon the category of literariness in biotextual projects. She therefore introduces the concepts of "technotext" (Hayles), "physio-cybertext" and "biopoetry" (Kac), and "partly non-discursive aff ectivity" (Knudsen and Stage). The author primarily considers the role of non-human actors in constructing biotextual projects; this includes bacteria and other living cells that display the kinds of goal-oriented behawior (or intentionality) that bring about causal changes in biotextual works. Moreover, non-human actors are considered to be a physiological, aff ective force capable of altering the physical shape of such works. Introducing her own concept of "inside-body actors" (meaning the functioning of the body's organs, hormones and other biochemical changes in the organism), the Author demonstrates how these "actors" are crucial to the medium. Her article presents three examples of (trans)literary works that were created in a corporal, aff ective and biological context: The Breathing Wall by Kate Pullinger (with Stefan Schemat and Chris Joseph); Diane Gromala's BioMorphic Typography (part of a larger scientifi c and artistic initiative entitled "Design for the Senses"); and Christian Bök's Xenotext. This last example is one of the most recent works to combine digital text with the biological functioning of microorganisms in a constantly evolving process

Chapter Mackintosh, Bayer y los Eames: diálogos entre tipografía y arquitectura

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences

WARM Newsletter 1979 April-June

This newsletter’s focus is on Sandra Kraskin’s paper adapted from her slide presentation, The American Abstract Artists: Women’s Contributions to the Avant-Garde of the 1930s and ’40s. Kraskin provides background information on the AAA (American Abstract Artists), their work, and the reception and reflection of this art form. We learn about the ARC Exchange between WARM and ARC Gallery in Chicago artists. The reader learns about the Visiting Artist Program, WARM shows/exhibitions/speakers, Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, Women’s Art Weekend, and MCAD courses taught by gallery members. More information is given about the slide registry along with a review of a presentation given by Chris T. Martens. WARM hosted a National Photography Invitational; we get details and learn more about women in photography. WARM recommends sending proposals in for the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program and concludes with a membership form and a continuation from the front cover calendar of events

A brief overview on the evolution of drawing machines

Through the pictorial narratives engraved on the walls of the caves during prehistory, we are sure that Humans used drawing to express feelings and communicate, long before inventing writing. In the same way that utensils were used to help him, he also used several utensils to draw. In the middle of the twentieth century, with all the technological evolution, we saw machines that helped artists in drawing and others that are extensions of the artist. In a project seeking the development of a robotic system capable of drawing autonomously we were faced with the question for how long artists have used drawing machines for their aid or even their extension? In this work, we present a collection of artworks that demonstrates the use of drawing machines throughout history in the last 500 years and how they are being adapted and reinvented according to the most current and also developing technology. At present there is a vast field of experimentation of these machines with Interfaces and Sensors and Intelligent Human-Computer Interaction.(undefined

It Could Have Been Great: An Examination of Kandinsky\u27s Bauhaus Paintings and the Great Synthesis of the Arts

When Nazism descended upon the German art world in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, artists were treated as an expendable group of political undesirables. Among them was Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who experienced firsthand the political pressure placed on his career, as he attempted to visualize a weltanschauung or world view, that involved the marriage of different types of art, media, and practices. For Kandinsky the Great Synthesis of the Arts revealed the collective historical narrative, to which all artists contributed, and he strove to actualize this lifelong goal over the course of his teaching career at the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. His push for synthesis is conveyed in Kandinsky\u27s Black and Violet (1923), Development (1926), Fragile (1931) and Gloomy Situation (1933). Iconographical analysis of these four paintings reveals the hope for synthesis that ultimately experiences a downturn and inevitable defeat due to the rise of Nazism, the termination of Kandinsky\u27s teaching career, and the eventual dissolution of the Bauhaus

Crossover Logics

As more and more of modern life is measured and calculated by computational machines, our realities are flattened into streams of data, bits, and binary. As a graphic designer operating under societal and technological systems that unrelentingly speed up, simplify, and reduce the individual into a digital form legible to machines, my response to these conditions is to search for moments of imagination, poetry, and play within these structures. In my practice, I pair machined forms with human gestures to bridge the duality between computer and human logics, the rational and the emotional, and the measurable and unmeasurable aspects of human experience. Crossover Logics documents my explorations at the edges of the schematic, the linguistic, and the coded, using and subverting these rational, conventional systems of communication to give form to personal experience and thought. Rather than reject the technological, I leverage technology to make work that is generative, with a multiplicity of meanings. Crossing between these seemingly opposite tendencies, I create patterns and structures that combine into alternative maps, diagrams, and systems that generate a poetic friction between the hard instrumentality of data logic and the intimacy of internal logic

Exploration in Design, Graphic Communications and the Creative Process

In lieu of the traditional thesis, I have chosen to culminate the Master of Arts in Related Arts program with a creative project and a paper that describes and evaluates the completion of the project. The project involved a personal aesthetic and technical development of the aesthetic in graphic design and communications. Documentation of the creative arts project is presented in a portfolio which includes graphic designs, publications, and news feature stories. The project is interdisciplinary in that it involves skills in art (design) and English (writing) as well as effective interdisciplinary communication skills necessary to produce interdepartmental publications. Included in the portfolio are: a resume; Celebration ‘80 program and flyers; letterhead, business card, and opening invitations for the Art Gallery Co-op; poster and program for the play Only an Orphan Girl ; the graduate art exhibition catalog; public relations articles about Celebration ’80 and Only an Orphan Girl ; news feature articles about the arts; and Around the Arts, an Eastern Illinois University School of Fine Arts publication. The paper describes and evaluates the completion of the creative arts project by exploring varying philosophies encountered while working on the creative arts project concerning the nature of art and the creative process. The paper also explores the effectiveness of the materials of the portfolio in terms of integration of the visual and written aspects and the elements of design. The paper discusses line, color, shape, texture, and form as related to the materials of the portfolio. The conclusion of the paper is specifically addressed to a description of the creative process with examples given from the process of designing the materials of the portfolio

Words + Pictures: A Manifesto

In the second decade of the 21st century, academic comics studies is well established as a serious intellectual subject, but for many non-specialists, including university administrators, a sense of frivolity still attaches to comics. This brief essay braids together personal history and intellectual analysis: 1) it compares the cultural position of comics today to the position of novels in the 19th century; 2) it analyzes the complementary nature of the verbal and visual channels; 3) it argues that neither words nor pictures should be considered primary in a narratology of comics; and 4) that comics are eminently well suited to be studied as a branch of literature (though fine arts departments can also stake a claim)