MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
A thought on
More Than Meets the Eye. New Media Aesthetic(s) - 2015
Katja Kwastek
As discussed in the text, “the very nervous system” performance used this relationship between movements and sounds differently, attempting to change the audience’s perception of the acts and their positions within the system. As the audience felt that the surrounding sounds were directly connected to their movements, this created a special moment of multisensory connection that Kwastek believed would remain with them long after they had left the installation.
According to “On the Observation of Observation” by Feingold. K, Rokeby. D and Bonde. N, I believe, due to this reference not only to the historical significance of early analog installations but also as a statement of artistic notions of interaction that have tried to meld different mediums in order to reveal divergent and completely different perspectives on a piece of art and how audiences, as well as artists, may interact with it. Each of them could then create their own unique experiences in relation to and based on that.
“Aesthetics” is the study of sense perception - the circuits formed between the world, the body, and the mind resulting from our multi-sensory perceptions. The term “aesthetics” in philosophy refers to sense perception in general. Immanuel Kant, for example, discussed aesthetics as framed by the perception of nature’s beauty. But in brand new world we are facing the question of the definition and aspects of digital aesthetics as the computer has become increasingly important in art, design, and the way we perceive the world.
I find the experience of connecting a body movement with a different action to create a distinctive medium and as a result (as it was in “The Very Nervous System”), to create a different perception, to be similar to Jean-Michel Jarr’s 1981 performance of a laser harp Links to an external site., an electronic musical user interface and laser lighting display.
Digital music is set to enter a reformed era thanks to a non-contact system that has been developed and implemented. In the early 1920s, Russian physicist and inventor Leon Theremin created the first non-contact musical instrument, the Theremin. As a result of this invention, electronics became widely used in the world of music. Geoffrey Rose invented the laser harp in 1975 and coined the name laser harp, but not much information is available about his invention. Also, Bernard Szajner, a Paris-based visual effects artist, had been working in this field for 30 years and visualized music using lasers.
References:
http://www.kenfeingold.com/observation_of_observation.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_harp
https://core.ac.uk/reader/144878330
If you are interested to know more about Theremin, please check out this link