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dynamic lighting

The Dynamic Lighting concept by Philips is an advanced lighting system that brings the dynamics of daylight into the working environment. Mirroring the diurnal rhythms found in nature, Dynamic Lighting recreates a stimulating ambience customizable to the individuals own preferences.

crossmodal interaction

In collaboration with Heston Blumenthal, the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in Oxford has shown that the flavours of bacon and egg ice cream can be switched by altering the background sound. For example the ice cream tastes more “bacony” with the sound of sizzling bacon, and more “eggy” with the sound of clucking chickens. In the above video, the flavour of oysters is shown to increase with the sound of seagulls and crashing waves. In testing the freshness response of Univlever’s Pringles the lab also confirmed that by altering the volume or frequency (above 2 KHz) of the crunching sound in real-time via a microphone and headset, people rated Pringles 15% fresher and crisper.

Head of research at the Crossmodal laboratory, Charles Spence notes that ‘taken together, these results suggest that our perception and evaluation of food and drink depends not just on the taste, smell, sight touch and sound of the food itself, but also on the packaging, and even on the environment in which those foods are eaten.’

augmented reality

Established in Paris in 2000, Electronic Shadow is a hybrid design platform whose practice is based on research and innovation. Their approach allows unique propositions which merge space, image, material and light in the most diverse contexts from art and architecture to design and scenography. Media technologies becomes totally invisible - no screens or visible interfaces are visible, visitors only need touch the walls or move their bodies and the habitation will respond to them.

hiro yamagata

New York Ace Gallery Installation, Hiro Yamagata (2001)

Hiro Yamagata creates artworks that are simultaneously high tech and elemental, theoretical and visceral, abstract and immersive. He explores the links between science and art, micro and macro phenomenon, and geography, ecology, technology and cultural memory. Yamagata has particularly explored the inexplicable forces of the sun, and its effects on one's environment for over a decade. By working with artificial, man-made beams generated by lasers and other advanced lighting systems (including fiber optic beams, color rays and Intelbeams), he believes "we can better recognize those elements of the sun which we would not otherwise perceive, or attempt to understand."

 

The unifying element is the refractive holographic panels covering all surfaces of the gallery walls, floor, and ceiling. These multiple refractive surfaces disperse and transform white laser beams into scattered spectrums of color. In addition, most of the rooms are filled with hundreds of spinning, mirrored cubes suspended from the ceiling. The laser/lighting systems are run by an intricate series of computer programs designed to generate various rays of light, which travel across and between various galleries, bouncing and refracting off of mirrors and holograms. The viewer is immersed in a vast display of ever-changing lights, unlike any natural phenomenon but perhaps indicative of it. While the lasers emphasize the technological potential of light, commonplace light sources, such as mirrors or floodlights, represent an anchor to reality, albeit with its constantly changing impressions.

immersense

Many virtual environments reduce the observer to a disembodied state within a Cartesian space that is clear for miles around and often quite empty. Although Charlotte Davies's virtual environment Osmose (1995) has been exhibited only six times in North America and Europe, it has received more attention in the international discussion of media art than perhaps any other work. Only a few thousand visitors have actually experienced the installation, but many times that number of art aficionados have avidly followed the debate on aesthetics, phenomenology, and reception of virtual art that has homed in on this particular work.

Defining Neuroarthistory

The Delivery of the Keys by Perugino (Sistine Chapel, 1482)

The most interesting aspect of neuroarthistory is the way it enables us to get inside the minds of people who either could not or did not write about their work. John Onians

In an attempt to further understand the creative process, the recent interest in neuroarthistory contributes to the ongoing investigation into human cognition and consciousness. Echoing the 'embodied mind' texts of Lakoff & Johnson (Philosophy in the Flesh) Neuroarthistory by John Onians confirms that by adopting a textual or 'clerical' approach to cognition provides us with limited access to human nature. Onians cherrypicks 25 philosophers and scientists who exemplify theories of embodiment - from the location of 'psyche' by Aristotle to the neuroesthetics of Semir Zeki. In the process Onian's makes some interesting obsevations e.g. he links the empanthetic neural activity of 'mirror neurons' to Alberti's understanding that a painted scence 'will move spectators when the men in the picture outwardly demonstrate their own feelings as clearly as possible' and similarly that people looking at beautiful faces take on their expression. Another thesis is that Perspective emerged from the converging grid-like linearity of Roman city architecture, as seen in the above fresco by Perugino.

A great prelude to an increasingly important debate however Onians & Zeki's current neuroesthetic agenda is problematic due to their sensory preoccupation with the visual. Ignoring the hyperesthetic effects of electronic media on the nervous system (McLuhan et al) reduces neuroesthetics to the same textual shortcomings their research aims to obsolesce. Developing other biofeedback technologies like the biosensecam and thrillchip by Lydnsay Williams may provide neuroarthistory and neuroesthetics with a more subjectively-biased outcome.

McLuhan in Space

 
  
Space is the notion that connects a multiplicity of elements in McLuhan's large and diverse ouevre. McLuhan made constant reference to space throughout his career and the various dimensions of this thought are articulated through notions of spatial biases, sensations and modes of production. It was space furthermore which anchored the systems of ideas that connected McLuhan to artists and theorists with whose work his own is most productively situated. McLuhan in Space by Richard Cavell

While McLuhan's later work experienced luke warm reception, his reappraisal in recent times shows his views on media and communications have lost none of its punch. McLuhan's 1969 Playboy interview offers his ideas up in a most lucid fashion. In true maverick style, McLuhan rarely 'positioned' or 'framed' his views - his perspective was always in a state of flux. As McLuhan realized, there can no points of view in a society where media promotes their own hyperesthetic models of lifestyle experience.

3deluxe Design

 
Cyberhelvetia Pavillion (2002) by 3Deluxe

The Cyberhelvetia Pavillion by 3Deluxe was part of the “Arteplage Biel” during the Swiss Expo of 2002. A big pool made of glass was illuminated with a water animation whose parameters were depending on the real weather-situation outside, resulting in rougher or calmer water simulations. Pool-side aquaphones featured 3 interfaces to an interactive sound-pool where visitors exchanged sound-messages in digital water bubbles. Using the aquaphones (a combination of a 3d-tracker used as cursor, a speaker and a microphone) people created bubbles by speaking into the microphone which were then shared among 2 projections facing each other on the sides of the pool.

'Don't think disappearance of reality in representation; think disappearance of the self! In postmodernity it seems that simulation has become the existential ground of personality itself.' David Howes

Hyperesthesia, or The Sensual Logic of Late Capitalism explores ideas from The Experience Economy (1999) by Pine & Gilmore and Emotional Design (2004) by Don Norman and posits an interesting question - with the commercially motivated hyperestheticization of everyday products, how long will it be before every aspect of sensation is brought under the scrutiny of intellectual property rights? A scarry thought. The hyperesthetic of McLuhan's acoustic space has indeeed come home to roost...