Panel Statement

Panel: LOCATION/SPACE: Responsive Environments

Jan Torpus introduced the media art project Affective Environments, which intimately involves exhibition visitors by connecting their heartbeat, respiration and skin conductance to three installations. The work explores possibilities of interacting with artificial environments excluding decision-making, thus establishing an intuitive interconnection. He compared the artwork to the artistic research project the panel chairs currently work on: Designed immediacy: Atmospheric experience in an affective-responsive environment. Both works connect biofeedback signals to artistic settings but apply different concepts, strategies and methods. The tension between perception of intrinsic processes and encounters with something unfamiliar gives rise to interesting questions regarding peoples’ awareness of their own impact on the respective surroundings and their personal identity.

• Jan Torpus (Institute for Experimental Design and Media Cultures, Basel) is senior researcher and tutor at the Institute of Research in Art and Design at the Academy of Art and Design of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Nortwestern Switzerland and media artist. During the studies of interior design (Massana‑ Art and Design College, Barcelona, 1989‑93) he intensively focussed on space, light and ambience in the contexts of interior and exhibition design. torpus.com     fhnw.ch/hgk/idk