Dmitry Gelfand and Evelina Domnitch, RU/NL
The Pschophysics of Force Field Tailoring
Immersive art-science is a form of creative expression that aims to rise above the notion of art as representation, in favor of multi-sensorial experience. Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, it invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. Immersivity awakens a synesthetic awareness of both physical and mental space. A myriad of vibratory phenomena, customarily beyond the observer’s reach, are rendered starkly tangible through careful psychophysical conditioning: “the analysis of perceptual processes by studying the effect on a subject’s experience or behavior, of systematically varying the properties of a stimulus along one or more physical dimensions.”
Force field tailoring refers to the efficacious structuring of spatio-temporal characteristics by means of colliding energy fields. The resultant states of matter/energy can be further harnessed so as to incite specific sensory responses. Currently, psychophysicists are empowered by formerly unimaginable instruments of detection and analysis, providing increasingly higher resolutions of multi-event, multi-dimensional interactions. Nevertheless, the ephemeral workings of consciousness have barely been punctured, and remain among the leading questions of modern science. It has become evident that despite its exponentially accumulative potential, science alone cannot fulfill this daunting pursuit. Because neuronal processes (like most of the physical world) lie beyond the human spatio-temporal scale, the origins of cognition can only be explored through perceptual extension. The convergence of immersive art and psychophysical research has spawned this extrasensory intimacy and imbued it with limitless evolutionary possibilities.
About the speakers:
Dmitry Gelfand and Evelina Domnitch create sensory immersion environments that merge physics, chemistry and computer science with uncanny philosophical practices. Current findings, particularly regarding wave phenomena, are employed by the artists to investigate questions of perception and perpetuality. Such investigations are salient because the scientific picture of the world, which serves as the basis for contemporary thought, still cannot encompass the unrecordable workings of consciousness.
Having dismissed the use of recording and fixative media, Domnitch and Gelfand’s installations exist as ever-transforming phenomena offered for observation. Because these rarely seen phenomena take place directly in front of the observer without being intermediated, they often serve to vastly extend the observer’s sensory envelope. The immediacy of this experience allows the observer to transcend the illusory distinction between scientific discovery and perceptual expansion.
In order to engage such ephemeral processes, the artists have collaborated with numerous scientific research facilities, including the Drittes Physikalisches Institut (Goettingen University, Germany), the Institute of Advanced Sciences and Technologies (Japan), Ricso Lab (Russia) and the Meurice Institute (Belgium). They are the recipients of the Japan Media Arts Excellence Prize (2007), and an Ars Electronica Honorary Mention (2007).
Dmitry Gelfand & Evelina Domnitch + Terike Haapoja. Conversation 2: Extended Consciousness: Exploring our sensorial awareness and experiences: Fri 13 Nov, 18-19.30hrs, FBAUL, Auditorium, Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, Largo da Academia Nacional de Belas-Artes. €3
