Digital Synesthesia

12. Mai 2015, 11.00 Uhr Interface Culture Lecture Room, Kollegiumgasse 2, 3.OG

Vortrag von Dr. Katharina Gsöllpointner im Rahmen der Interface Cultures Lectures Series

In my lecture I will introduce the arts-based-research project Digital Synesthesia. I will present the project‘s main hypothesis, which states,  that digital art – because of its digital, i.e. binary code based, constitution – can provide synesthetic experiences for non-synesthetes. As synesthesia is a special phenomenon of perception it can serve as a good example for the research of perception in general. Likewise and vice versa, digital art can serve as an aesthetic analogy to synesthesia and therefore help investigate its aesthetic components. Research findings seem to indicate more and more that perception is not only a process of mere sensory-based stimuli but also influenced by semantic and conceptual inducers. On the basis of exemplary digital artworks I will describe structural (syn)aesthetic correlations between synesthesia and digital art.

Katharina Gsöllpointner 
is a university lecturer and free scholar in media art and communication with a special focus on the cybernetics of art as well as media aesthetics. Since the 1980ies she has published extensively about history and theory of media and digital art, media aesthetics and on the transdisciplinarity of art and sciences. From 1991 to 1995 she was the manager of the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz (w/ P. Weibel). Currently she works as a researcher at the Digital Art Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna where she is, together with Ruth Schnell and Romana Schuler, head of the artistic research project Digital Synesthesia.
www.katharinagsoellpointner.at
www.digitalsynesthesia.net
www.sprachmedien.at  

Einladung.pdf