Research
Projects
Fields of Research
My research on digital culture is based on discourse analytics and artistic practices. Besides theories of digital culture my approach incorporates theories of visual studies, epistemology and philosophy of technology.
︎ HOMEOSTASIS (Artistic Research Project)
>> Creating a perceptive System & an attempt to simulate individuality
The questions are: Could individualitybe an effect of interaction?And far more specualtive: could even consciousness be an effect of interaction?Generally: Why do we project human characteristics on non human entities?
To tackle these question we developed a very basic artifical intelligence and studied its behavior in different settings. Conclusio 1: The feel of individuality can be created by means of interaction. Once a system with basic behavioral properties (perception, reaction) is defined, it appears to show individual behavior in any situation. This beahvior is a direct result of the relation between the entity and its surroundings in time and geometric space. Since every point in time and space is singular, entities can´t inhabit hte same spot, their behavior is different from each other and appears to be individual. We have not proven yet, that human individuality is a mere product of interaction, but we see that for individual behavior a very simple systgem of rules is sufficient.
Finally we compared the attempt to simulate individual behavior via a perceptive algorithm to the method of key-framing. Conclusio 2: The former proves to be far more adaptive situationwise, because we simulate social behavior, while simulation via the imitiation of body movment allows more detail in movment, but needs to be manually adpated in any new situation.
Screenvideo showing the artificial intelligence at work. It grants the shark in the pool the ability to perceive borders and react according to it. The shark is programmed in a way, that it recognises obstacles and turns if they appear ahead.
These are tracings of the behavior of the shark. Different individual patterns emerge from various ways to engage with the shark via purposely placed obstacles. The Simulation of Individuality through Interactionvia Perceptive Algorithm.
The Simulation of Individuality through Imitationvia Key-Frame Animation.
Further material:
Escape the System via Perceptive Fails. Since, the body of the shark has no density, it passes through walls, if its perceptive system faills to react properly. This happens very rarely.
︎ Omnipresent & multiperspective (Research Project)
>> An unforseeable event seen from multiple angles.We created an archive of audio visual fragments representing an certain event* to find out about the relation of digital audiovisual representation and the event itself. The hyothesis is, that the omnipresence of digital imaging devices like smart phones leads to a genre of press photography which captures even unforseeable events. In the followng video we aligned the video-fragments of the explosions (first and sceond) of the bombing at the Boston Marathon 2013. ( * The event was selcted on the availability of professional press photography and video as well as a large corpus of amatuer images.)
Recreation of the chronology of an terroristic act via audio visual fragments from the web.
︎ Culture Signage (Artistic Research Project)
>> Comperative approach to the genesis of photographic composition in art history.Artistic research on what is considered a “strong photographic image”: This project was part of my dissertation. It was critical for the conception of the term “Contemplative Space“.
