Thesis Outline

Format
An analytical essay exploring related artistic, theoretical, historical and critical issues and practices that inform your practice, without necessarily referring to your work directly.

What is the supernatural of our society?
Exploration of the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts

Topic

Supernatural / Human Perception / Light

Background

Introduction

I have been VJing since 2012 starting in the underground rave parties of Vienna and moving up to club and festival nights later on. This year I took new steps in my audiovisual practice and was more interested in the conceptual and perceptional approach behind my visuals. How can I play with space, time, perspective? How can I create an dialogue between the sound and the visual, while only using very minimalistic formal language?
In 2017 at my 360 degree projection mapping performance in La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris I realised, how much impact light has on the audience, if it surrounds them from all the sides and creates an embodied experience. During this summer I performed at two festivals: Dekmantel in Amsterdam and Atlas Electronic in Marrakech. This two underground electronic music festivals had a lot in common but as well differentiated a lot from each other. My contribution as a visual jockey was to adapt to specific stage setups: Dekmantel festival main stage had an 80 m long half curved LED wall and at Atlas Electronic the main stage was an amphitheater with a terracotta wall on which the visuals were projected.

Dekmantel
first encounter of the physical characteristics of the light was at atlas electronic where I projected a white cone and through the smoke it created a tunnel between the lens of the projector and the display wall.

intensively explore new perceptions this year
reducement of the formal language into minimalstic geometry
the vault

human perception
excitement
anxiety
retina (eye)
strobe
smoke - dissorientation
audio-visual
vault
antropologyical component
for each gig of mine I try to create a specific context
looking at club as a experimental field of expression for audiovisual performances

Body

Imaginary & Real (Chapter I) (Media Archaelogy)

The discovery of Magic Latern through Athanasius Kircher described in his book Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae (1646), how he influenced the people with demonic images, etc

Further exploration Christiaan Huygens

Supernatural (Chapter II) (Media Archaelogy)

Phantasmagoria, an audio-visual dialogue between the dead and the living
before 1750, Christlieb Benedikt Funk in 1783, Johann Samuel Halle in 1784, and Johann Georg Krünitz in 1794, Edme-Gilles Guyot (projection on smoke), Paul Filidort (1790), Robertson

Themes of the Phantasmagoria (supernatural of the 18th century: demons, skeletons, ghosts)
Drawing parallel between paranormal of the 18th century and our times (Gramophone, Film, Typewriter - Friedrich Kittler)
What is the supernatural of our society?
Exploration of the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts
The role of belief(s) in the use of and interaction with digital technologies (?)
Light as a communication media - How was light used a communication media to teleport the spectator into a temporary reality of the supernatural?

Perception (Chapter III) (Psychology)

Light is the stimulus that influences most the human perception (Flicker Effect research guys, Ganzfeld Effect (?), Afterimage (Kurt Hentschläger)
How does our brain perceives the visual effects through the human eye? (Focus on human perception)
Eye and camera
Perceptual psychology
Laws of gestalt
audio and light - one can’t live without the other

Immersion & Interaction (Chapter IIII)

How do new sensory installations allow for new forms of experience and understanding?

To what extend is politically correct to influence and trigger human emotions through light?

Audiovisual embodied experiences

Cyberspace (Dan Graham)
Cybernetics (Gordon Pask)

Different forms of interactive installations
- singular
  - one person is interacting with the installation and rest is watching (Anthony McCall)

- collective
  - only as a group the interaction could start

- performative
  - the audience is watching the performance (COTL?)

- experience
  - everyone could experience the same feeling (space, tunnel installation - walking through) (James Turrell)

Post digital space

This term could be described as physical media spaces build by digital components such as custom made softwares, sensors, digital interactions, algorithms, where the digital merges with the physical, creating a hybrid environment.

Climax
- The role of time

the role of the performer vj

Context (V)

Differences between club and gallery space
- The context of club as experimentation field (3rd link to phantasmagorias)
- dark black space
- club as a transcendental space for body and soul
- Hybrid audience

Conclusion

- short summary of the above
- final statement