Trans­form­ing the Phys­i­cal­ity of Emo­tion

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Emotion Studies in a Contemporary Art Debate

• Trans­form­ing the Phys­i­cal­ity of Emo­tion

• Joan Truckenbrod

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Emotion Studies in a Contemporary Art Debate

  Where do emo­tions re­side?  Are they the sole prop­erty of the body or do they res­onate in the in­ter­sti­tial spaces be­tween the ma­te­r­ial world and ephemeral realms; in in­vis­i­ble but pal­pa­ble elec­tronic spaces, in vir­tu­al­ity, in spir­i­tual and an­ces­tral realms in in­dige­nous cul­tures? As re­search de­vel­ops in Af­fec­tive Com­put­ing, cre­at­ing com­put­ing de­vices that em­body emo­tions, – rec­og­niz­ing, ex­press­ing, and sim­u­lat­ing emo­tions in their in­ter­ac­tion with users.  In the field of Emo­tion De­sign can we in­sti­gate spon­ta­neous emo­tions?  Is there an elec­tronic mime­sis that can em­pathize with the user? In­spired by the power of rit­ual and cer­e­mony in in­dige­nous cul­tures, in my art­work I jux­ta­pose ob­jects with video pro­jec­tion. The ob­ject main­tains a pow­er­ful ref­er­ence with a cul­tural and so­cial mean­ing, while mul­ti­ple video pro­jec­tions in­ter­vene.

  These video/mul­ti­me­dia in­stal­la­tions trans­form the emo­tion em­bed­ded in the dig­i­tal video, the ephemeral stream of elec­trons into the mime­sis of the body, into spaces of mem­ory and imag­i­na­tion.  Con­tem­po­rary re­search shows that the en­gage­ment of emo­tions is es­sen­tial for an­a­lyt­i­cal and cre­ative prac­tice.  His­tor­i­cally, Mar­shall McLuhan ad­vo­cated for kines­thet­ics in the ac­ti­va­tion of our sen­sory per­cep­tion, call­ing for the in­te­gra­tion of the senses.  Mo­holy Nagy, in his book Vi­sion in Mo­tion, says that we need to add emo­tional lit­er­acy to the de­vel­op­ment of our in­tel­lec­tual lit­er­acy, which in­cludes an ed­u­ca­tion of our sense, giv­ing peo­ple the abil­ity to ar­tic­u­late feel­ings and emo­tions through a means of ex­pres­sion.  As a mul­ti­di­men­sional pro­cess­ing, trans­form­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion en­vi­ron­ment, can the com­puted ex­pe­ri­ence stim­u­late in­ter­ac­tive kines­thetic emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ences.

• [View Full Paper/Presentation]

Category:

• Panel