The chapter offers preliminary notes towards an analysis of the forms of sensing and making sense that emerge at the interface of the organic and the technological� I argue that these forms have... Show moreThe chapter offers preliminary notes towards an analysis of the forms of sensing and making sense that emerge at the interface of the organic and the technological� I argue that these forms have the capacity to productively challenge and expand our understanding of the key notions of aesthetics – aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment – and with that, to rethink the pre- vailing anthropocentrism of aesthetic tradition, shifting attention to the phenomenon that was at the roots of the aesthetic project, namely aisthesis, or sense-perception� One useful context for such an inquiry is a media ecological approach, with its emphasis on relations between different agencies and the shifted role of subjectivity� The questions then include: How can the aesthetic perspective complement the existing theories of forms of cognition within biolog- ical and technical systems? What are the best terms for the analysis of the qualitative aspects latent within the interpretative procedures that happen in living and nonliving matter? And vice versa, how can the “microperformances” and sensorial acts at the cellular and molecular levels affect how we conceive of human perception? Looking at the operations of relating at either human or nonhuman levels through the prism of a medium that underlies them helps to ground this discussion in a particular way� The chapter features particularly the aesthetic strategies exercised by a number of contemporary artists that bring to the fore the mediatic operations as sensory events and exemplify ways of engaging with the broader ecology of media sensorium, still to be discovered and cognized�Keywords: media ecology, sense act, sensing, aesthesis, microperformativity, performative epistemology, art Show less
The chapter focuses on the issue of transmedial and sensory exchange in the context of digital culture and biometric technology. It analyzes critically the epistemic claims behind the various brain... Show moreThe chapter focuses on the issue of transmedial and sensory exchange in the context of digital culture and biometric technology. It analyzes critically the epistemic claims behind the various brain-scanning technologies, focusing on the status of the inner images that underlie cognitive activity. Multimedia performances and artistic experiments designed in collaboration with neuroscientists open up new dimensions in the discussion of translation between different sensory modalities, as well as translation between human perceptive apparatus and computational systems. Engaging the methodologies of contemporary image science and critical neuroscience, the paper shows how artistic scenarios help to both localize and expand our understanding of mental imagery and to offer an alternative to the existing correlations-based approach. Show less
The telematic prosthesis increasingly reshapes our sense of the self and its relation to its surroundings. Today’s tracking technologies (GPS, geotag- ging) enable mobile, dynamic and more... Show moreThe telematic prosthesis increasingly reshapes our sense of the self and its relation to its surroundings. Today’s tracking technologies (GPS, geotag- ging) enable mobile, dynamic and more individual mapping that shortens the gaps between the panopticism, universalism and abstraction of clas- sical maps and the real physical experience. Artistic practices employing navigation techniques explore the potential of individual everyday move- ment to generate and perform new sensory modes of existence and meta-level narratives that can often be referred to as “sublime.” Applied to digital practices, this term describes decentering, dislocation, and disrup- tion of conventional contexting cues, challenging the reliability of ordinary senses for locating one’s subjective and objective “self,” enhancing the feel- ing of potentia. The sound overlay creates additional interruption of natu- ral expectations, the liminal in-between space within the created mobile soundscape. The paper demonstrates the diversity of artistic strategies in which mediation through geotagged sound constitutes transgression into augmented virtual space. Show less
The paper addresses the problem of representation of the processes of change in dynamic systems, specifically focusing on the mechanisms of feedback and plasticity. How adequately can diagrams and... Show moreThe paper addresses the problem of representation of the processes of change in dynamic systems, specifically focusing on the mechanisms of feedback and plasticity. How adequately can diagrams and schemas explain temporal relations and predict behavior in exceedingly complex systems? How can we know and render visible what happens in between the discrete moments in which decisions are made? How does the material medium of signal transference affect the resulting mechanisms and schemas that represent them? The aspect of representation forms here a special tension with what Andrew Pickering (in reference to cybernetics) names performative epistemologies and ontology of unknowability. In this paper I explore the ways of describing the mechanisms of signal transference and feedback loops in three different types of systems – neuronal network, electro-chemical assemblage, and live organism, each of which represents different scale and principles of biophysical organization. In particular, I consider Warren McCulloch's diagrams of neural circuits, Gordon Pask's and Stafford Beer's experiment with chemical computers developing new senses, and a work by a Russian art collective “Where the Dogs Run”, in which the activity of a live mouse in a labyrinth is determined by the movements of its virtual doppelgangers. Show less
