Zoekresultaten

Uncommon sense

In this presentation of her current research project Rebecca Louise Breuer questions the common enhancement of the body through, for instance, self-tracking, data collecting and monitoring of everyday and athletic movement. She attempts to provide an alternative perspective through discussing the concept of uncommon sense by turning to (micro-)phenomenological philosophical concepts as presented by Gilles Deleuze, Hermann Schmitz, Claire Petitmengin and Peter Sloterdijk. The case study used during this presentation, which will sketch an artistic, creative alternative to common sensoring devices, is found in the sound producing pressure sensors incorporated in the Lace Sensor Dresses by Anja Hertenberger and Meg Grant, artists working in the field of e-textiles and wearable electronics.

Controlling the stimulation of senses in design for dementia

Angels talking back and new organs of perception

This article focuses on the role of the artistic process in connecting to the natural environment. In my research I have explored what participants experience and learn when they engage in different types of arts-based environmental education (AEE) practices that I have facilitated. The premise of AEE is that efforts to learn about our (natural) environment can effectively take their starting point in an artistic activity, usually conducted in groups. I found that, on the whole, two major orientations can be distinguished. One starts from the point of aesthetic sensibility: the tuning in with the senses, or with ‘a new organ of perception’ (Goethe), in order to perceive ‘the more than human’ with fresh new eyes. This tradition can be traced back (but is by no means limited) to the Romantic Movement. Art in this context may help to amplify the receptivity of the senses and strengthen a sense of connectedness to the natural world. The other major orientation in seeking bridges between nature and art builds on a view of artistic process as leading to unexpected outcomes and ‘emergent properties’. The fundamentally singular experience of making a work of art may evoke an aesthetic object that becomes a ‘self-sufficient, spiritually breathing subject’ (Kandinsky). The artwork can be spontaneously generative and multilayered with meanings, some of which may even be ambiguous and paradoxical. But perhaps more importantly: it can catch the participant of an AEE activity by surprise, overwhelm him or her as ‘coming from behind one’s back’. The element of improvisation, of taking in the new and unanticipated and accommodating for it, is the core quality here. These two orientations, when practiced as part of AEE, have implications on how we relate to nature through art. In the closing of this article I address the question of whether it is possible to bridge the dualism between the two orientations.

Enactive Cinematic Perception

Since the arrival of cinema, film theorists have studied how spectators perceive the representations that the medium offers to our senses. Early film theorists have bent their heads over what cinema is, how cinema can be seen as art, but also over what cinema is capable of. One of the earliest film theorists, Hugo Münsterberg argued in 1916 that the uniqueness of cinema, or as he calls it photoplay, lies in the way it offers the possibility to represent our mental perception and organisation of the reality, or the world we live in: “the photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time, and causality, and by adjusting the events to the forms of the inner world, namely, attention, memory, imagination, and emotion” (Münsterberg [1916] 2004, 402)

Indoor environmental criteria for older adults

Europeans are living longer than ever in history, because of the economic growth and advances in hygiene and health care. Today, average life expectancy is over 80, and by 2020 around 25% of the population will be over 65. The increasing group of older people poses great challenges in terms of creating suitable living environments and appropriate housing facilities. The physical indoor environment plays an important role in creating fitting, comfortable and healthy domestic spaces. Our senses are the primary interface with the built environment. With biological ageing, a number of sensory changes occur as a result of the intrinsic ageing process in sensory organs and their association with the nervous system. These changes can in turn change the way we perceive the environment around us. It is important to understand these changes when designing for older occupants, for instance, care homes, hospitals and private homes, as well as office spaces given the developments in the domain of staying active at work until older age.

Immersive experience framework: a Delphi approach.

The concept of immersion has been widely used for the design and evaluation of user experiences. Augmented, virtual and mixed-reality environments have further sparked the discussion of immersive user experiences and underlying requirements. However, a clear definition and agreement on design criteria of immersive experiences remains debated, creating challenges to advancing our understanding of immersive experiences and how these can be designed. Based on a multidisciplinary Delphi approach, this study provides a uniform definition of immersive experiences and identifies key criteria for the design and staging thereof. Thematic analysis revealed five key themes – transition into/out of the environment, in-experience user control, environment design, user context relatedness, and user openness and motivation, that emphasise the coherency in the user-environment interaction in the immersive experience. The study proposes an immersive experience framework as a guideline for industry practitioners, outlining key design criteria for four distinct facilitators of immersive experiences–systems, spatial, empathic/social, and narrative/sequential immersion. Further research is proposed using the immersive experience framework to investigate the hierarchy of user senses to optimise experiences that blend physical and digital environments and to study triggered, desired and undesired effects on user attitude and behaviour.