Public Lecture Series "Immersive Arts" - Immersion and Extended Realities
Zürich University of the Arts (22 März 2022)

Immersion is a variously shaped and fragile state of mind that is easily lost due to sensual input that ´the “I” may experience as unfitting, disturbing, improper, alien, surprising, strange, unfamiliar, errant, etc. Sometimes, irritating triggers are incorporated into the design of the user experience of a VR-world. Sometimes they originate (un)intendedly in the real world and remind us of our divided corporal condition.

In this lecture, I will comment on a selection of alienating situations that I experienced in recent VR pieces. The transformative impetus of VR on our self-concept is mind-opening and encourages speculation on the ontology of the perceptive and/or ludic self and the supposedly formative influences of media on our cognitive or even behavioral capacities. I will trace these experiences back to a model of perception derived from the field of cognitive psychology and process philosophy. Once having established a preliminary inventory of the complex perceptual situation in VR, I will switch to practical considerations concerning VR conceptualization and writing: How can spatial and interactive experiences be translated into a linear reading setup? After a short deviation into the history of scriptwriting and its condensation into a conventional format, I will share aesthetic and formal solutions for scriptwriting in VR, found during a previsualization experiment for the interactive VR-Film “The True Film” (in development) performed at the Immersive Arts Space, ZHdK.

read more at https://blog.zhdk.ch/immersivearts/lecture-spg222/#2

German Studies Association Conference 2021, Indianapolis (30 Sept 2021)

"The Murmur in "Theory of Film" - Siegfried Kracauers filmontological concept before and after emigration" (german presentation)

Netted Letters - Development of an Interactive and Immersive Research Environment
Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

Digital editions facilitate rich contextualisations of archival materials such as personal letters, notes, photographs and objects. The research team develops a new presentation and collaboration format for historic discourses including VR.

Our case study focusses on the writer, film scholar and philosopher Siegfried Kracauer (1889 – 1966). We will develop a prototype for an interactive research platform to visualize his intellectual exchange. To this end, a rich corpus of textual and (audio-)visual references will be linked to his archived correspondence, supporting alternative interpretations and fostering exchange among experts. At the same time this online platform addresses a broader public by implementing ludic experimentation in VR as a means of discursive kowledge production.

read more at https://data.snf.ch/grants?q=netted%20letters
read more at https://www.hslu.ch/en/lucerne-university-of-applied-sciences-and-arts/research/projects/detail/?pid=5668

Beyond Change - Conference (Swiss Design Research Network) (9 März 2018)

"Beyond Change – Questioning the role of design in times of global transformations"

Against the background of the omnipresence of the net as visual metaphor and a recent turn to cultural critique in Digital Humanities, this presentation addresses the epistemological implications of social network visualizations as implemented in digital archives of historic epistolary heritage. Reporting my current reflections in conceptualizing and designing a hybrid online platform for research collaboration and experimental narration, I stress the issue of digital potentialities in the presentation of written correspondence.

read more at http://www.beyondchange.ch/front

Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg (25 Apr 2018)

Presentation at the Research Training Group 1767: Factual and Fictional Narration
read more at http://www.grk-erzaehlen.uni-freiburg.de/english-summary/

Eberhard Karls University Tübingen (1 Feb 2018)

Presentation of my dissertation at the Research Training Group 1808: Ambiguity – Production and Perception 
read more at http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/en/research/core-research/research-training-groups/rtg-1808-ambiguity-production-and-perception.html

German Literature Archive Marbach

Research Grant "Digital Humanities" by MWW Research Association 

Institute of Experimental Design- und Mediaculture (IXDM) at FHNW, Basel (2 Nov 2016)

Presentation of my dissertation at the Critical Media Lab Colloquium 
read more at https://www.ixdm.ch/ambiguity-contemporary-cinema/

Workshop: Invited by the PhD-group, Prof. Dr. Giaco Schiesser at ZHDK in Zürich (17/18 Nov 2016)

Extensive presentation and discussion of my dissertation and critical feedback to the artistic research projects of other participants 

International Screenwriting Research Conference 2016, Leeds UK (8-10 Sept 2016)

abstract
This paper addresses the question of methodology at the earliest inception of story development. It draws on the Deleuzian concept of “topological transformation”, which is introduced and contextualized in order to establish a fresh perspective onto the practice of story development. The concept of topological transformation can most fruitfully be adopted, when considering a film narration as an organized magnet field of virtual images, referring to actual and past, private and public experiences with beings and/or matter. I state that the maybe not-yet-defined topic(s) as well as the not-yet-existing narration which concretizes through a complex and dynamically self-organizing process of recursions can be enhanced with the help of several non-logocentric techniques applied e.g. by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Sergio Caballero, and others.

abstract
The PhD dissertation on “Ambiguity in Contemporary Cinema – Attempts in Aviation” traces a prominent narrative tendency in cinema, outlining its dramaturgical potential as well as its ethical (or micropolitical) implications. In order to describe a number of typical patterns in ambiguous film narration that are operative already on the pre-conscious level of affects, I draw on concepts from the process philosophy by Alfred North Whitehead and its more recent reformulations by Gilles Deleuze and Brian Massumi. Departing from Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel the reader gets on a virtual flight through carefully chosen film examples with a cultural anchor point in Contemporary Japan.

supervisors:
Prof. Dr. Timo Skrandies, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Germany
Prof. Herbert Wentscher, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany
Prof. Thomas Bauermeister, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany

In: z. B. - Praxisbasierte Forschung in Design und Kunst. Ed. by Klapsing, Daniel et al. Weimar: Bauhaus-University Press, 2013, pp 215-223.

abstract
This essay summarizes the development process of the multi-channel video installation Shifting Ground as well as its constant changes through different presentation contexts/exhibitions. The text was published in a conference reader on artistic research. (ISBN 978-3-86068-490-0)

In: Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, vol 3:1, 2011, pp 45-53.

abstract
The article breeds my personal intercultural viewing experience of Naoko Ogigami's Megane (2007) with a reader-response critical approach, considering Ogigami's playful and humorous stagings of Japanese cultural stereotypes and paradoxes as (cross-cultural) dramaturgical device. As such, in Megane they prove successful in designing the viewer's cognitive processes to an extent that in the end, the relief of our common patterns of thought induces a unique and lasting form of catharsis. The corporeal feeling of lightness remains long after the film has concluded.

Conference: Breaking Boundaries, Leeds, UK (6 Nov 2010)

1-3 Dez 2011, Bauhaus-University Weimar
(Member of the project presentations committee)

abstract
Since the 1990s, numerous art colleges and universities in Europe have established degree programmes in Artistic Research and Design Research. These programmes encourage artists and designers to develop their own epistemological and methodical approaches to concrete problems which differ from purely scientific and artistic / design approaches. In view of the different forms of these disciplines and the development of PhD programmes at various universities, it seems that interdisciplinary, hybrid forms of knowledge and their corresponding methods can neither be comprehensively depicted nor disciplinarily organized. This conference aimed at demonstrating research methods in creative processes, artistic strategies, their results and artefacts, and at discussing how they might be integrated into academic classification systems.

more information at www.practice-based-research.com