“Scenography and Synesthetic’s: New Media and Aesthetic Experience” presented by McDowell

Symposium:

• ISEA96: Seventh International Symposium on Electronic Art
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• Scenography and Synesthetic's: New Media and Aesthetic Experience

• David McDowell

• Abstract

  Short Paper

  Summary
  To work effectively with new media, artists need appropriate principles to understand the nature of the space and the nature of the experience their work is to present to its audience. I will suggest two notions which may be useful when thinking about new art forms: firstly, stenography, as a way dealing with how aesthetic space is created and organized through the use of new technologies; and, secondly, synesthetic, as a means of considering the aesthetic
  experience offered by synthetic qualities of new media

  Abstract
  If you have suffered “Doom”-induced motion sickness or watched the awkward gyrations of players of a head-mounted display VR game you will need little convincing that new technology based media can have a pronounced kinesthetic effect. There may be little aesthetic value in the knee-jerk, adrenalin-pumping stimulation delivered up by shoot-’em-up games. Yet kinesthetics and aesthetics – the sense of bodily movement and the idea of artistic experience – have something in common, as the words themselves reveal. Both refer, from different directions, to the senses, to our faculties of perception, of the external world and our bodies’ place and movement within it. 3D, first-person point-of-view games are just minor instances of how new technologies are directly addressing our senses, not just to achieve cognition of information but create experiences which are sensorially rich in themselves. The currency of the expression cyberspace clearly indicates that an experience of space is fundamental to expectations already surrounding new technologies. The experience of space has always been integral to all visual art forms – not simply on an illusionistic level, but on sensory, emotional and cognitive levels as well. New technologies lead to new artistic possibilities. To work effectively with new media, artists need appropriate principles to understand the nature of the space and the nature of the experience their work is to present to its audience. I will suggest two notions which may be useful when thinking about new art forms: firstly, scenography, as a way dealing with how aesthetic space is created and organized through the use of new technologies; and, secondly, synesthetic, as a means of considering the aesthetic experience offered by synthetic qualities of new media.

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