Sense of Being Here

For the KISD exhibition Sense of Being Here: Designing Phygital Interactions I co-developed, in the field of design theory and research, three phygital room installations that examine the interpenetration of spatial spheres and sensory perception, theoretically and practically.

The entanglement of VR environments with real-life sensory impressions offers numerous approaches to dissolving stereotypical opposites such as analogue and digital or material and immaterial. The installations show that seeing, hearing, and feeling are by no means naturally given faculties but effects of assemblages, formatted by a range of social, technological, and medial actors. That formatting can be experienced because the installations rearrange it: the first joins space and sound into a situation one can enter, Distorted Movement works with the multiplied self, and Twisted World warps spatial orientation. The works were realised with Unity and Arduino.

The exhibition was developed under Prof. Dr. Carolin Höfler together with Oliver Köneke and Hannes Hummel; Simon Meienberg, as teaching assistant, was responsible for the exhibition design and photographed the exhibition. It was shown on 8 and 9 December 2017 at KISD, Room 11, Ubierring 40, Cologne.

The premise of perception as an effect of assemblages I pursued further in the research-based teaching project Beyond the Senses, through the urban experience of Venice, and in Screen Spaces, in the image-space structure of robot-assisted surgery.