[ISEA2011] Panel: Chris­tiane Heibach – Un­medi­ated Ex­pe­ri­ence? Re-Me­di­at­ing Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal Ap­proaches

Panel Statement

Panel:  Interart / Intersensorium. On the Interrelation of Media and the Senses

Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal ap­proaches have be­come very promi­nent within the last few years.  One rea­son for that might be that mul­ti­me­dia art de­mands mul­ti­sen­sory modes of per­cep­tion that chal­lenge the tra­di­tional epis­te­mo­log­i­cal mod­els that focus on vi­sual per­cep­tion and inner imag­i­na­tive processes. They rely on dis­tant per­cep­tion and ne­glect the in­ter­re­la­tion be­tween sen­sory data and their in­di­vid­ual in­ter­pre­ta­tion in the per­ciever’s mind. Fur­ther­more per­cep­tion is the re­sult of the in­ter­re­la­tion be­tween mul­ti­sen­sory per­cep­tion and emo­tional, sub- and pre­con­scious processes – and this is em­pha­sized by some con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal ap­proaches. But their con­cepts mostly un­der­stand phys­i­cal/sen­sory ex­pe­ri­ence as im­me­di­ate, that means: un­medi­ated. From a me­diathe­o­ret­i­cal point of view un­medi­ated ex­pe­ri­ence doesn’t exist as we only per­ceive through media – be it the human body or the air which trans­ports sound waves and light or the tech­ni­cal media we use for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­for­ma­tion dis­tri­b­u­tion. The ques­tion my pre­sen­ta­tion will ad­dress is the fol­low­ing: How can mul­ti­sen­sory and bod­ily ex­pe­ri­ence be com­bined with con­cepts of media with­out falling back into the clas­si­cal epis­te­mo­log­i­cal sub­ject-ob­ject di­vi­sion? And what kind of per­cep­tion model is needed to be able to ex­plain the com­plex­ity of our daily mul­ti­me­dia en­vi­ron­ment?

  • Chris­tiane Heibach is a re­searcher in aesthtics, media and lit­er­ary stud­ies at at the        Karl­sruhe Uni­ver­sity of Arts and De­sign (Germany). Since 2009 she is con­duct­ing her own re­search pro­ject “Epis­te­mol­ogy of Mul­ti­me­dia”, funded by the Ger­man Re­search Foun­da­tion and is Re­search Fel­low at the HfG-Re­search In­sti­tute. In 2007 she com­pleted her ha­bil­i­ta­tion on mul­ti­me­dia per­form­ing art forms at the de­part­ment of Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­ary Stud­ies and Media at the Uni­ver­sity of Er­furt where she worked as as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor until 2008. Re­search fields: Me­di­aepis­te­mol­ogy, aes­thet­ics of new media, his­tory and aes­thet­ics of in­ter­me­dia and mul­ti­me­dia art forms, his­tory of aes­thetic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary media and lit­er­ary the­o­ries.                                                                                                christiane-heibach.de, medienepistemologie.de; netzaesthetik.de

Full text (PDF) p. 1167-1173