Martina Sauer

Everyday media consumption leaves no doubt that the perception of moving images from various media is characterized by experience and understanding. Corresponding research in this field has shown that the stimulus patterns flooding in on us are not only processed mentally, but also bodily. Building on this, the following study argues that incoming stimuli are processed not only visually, but multimodally, with all senses, and moreover affectively. The classical binding of a sensory organ to a medium, on whose delimitation the common understanding of multimodality is based, is thus abolished. Can arguments for this assumption be found? Building on the research of cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer and his successors, the two American philosophers Susanne K. Langer and John M. Krois, and supported by research from the life sciences in which, in parallel, the arts also play an important role in understanding image formation, as in the work of Heinz Werner and, following on from this, in the more recent research of the child psychologist Daniel N. Stern in collaboration with mirror neuron research by the group of neuroscientists around Giacomo Rizzolatti in Parma, justifications for this will be provided. What the multimodal processing of film images is concretely based on will finally be made clear by means of an exemplary analysis of a video film by the Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist. It aims to prove, that the prerequisites for the thesis can only lie in the fact, that both the modes of perception (visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory) as well as the medially conditioned modes of image formation are based on non-discursive, formal-abstract structures that are also processed affectively. At the same time, the analysis thus shows how the selection and composition of the vital experienced forms can provide information about the socio-culturally shaped self-image of the producer and the viewer.

To relate theories of affordance and frame with the tradition of formal aesthetics, philosophical iconology and the life sciences (keyword Vitality Semiotics) is the starting point of the paper. According to this approach, the structural preconditions of images, as determined by materials, techniques and the composition of the design means, become essential. Through these structures, the producers are able to set impulses that become decisive for the interpretation of space and time or the "scene" as a dynamic event. Against the social and cultural background of the recipients the "scene" gains a meaning to their life. This means to understand the productʼs conception and composition as an affordance which determines the framework of the reception conditions. The benefit of this approach lies in the identification of changes in the self-understanding and thus of trends in to new standards of societies. This is to be illustrated by Exekiasʼ drinking bowl around 540/30 BC in Munich.

How is it possible that emotions in the community can be influenced by media? According to the paper’s concept, this is only understandable if we accept with Marshall McLuhan that media and the human body are not separable. There is no divide. The medium is the message expressed through the body/human being. This has preconditions, because the connection must be based on an analog principle that serves as the transmitter. This lies in non-discursive affectively relevant forms and an equally affectively evaluative mode of perception, as empirical research now confirms. On this basis, as Daniel N. Stern shows, people operate “with vigorous goal-directedness to assure social interactions.” This points to the second premise, that every body/human being – infallibly – perceives a promise in communion with others, namely that of happiness, security, and community. This concept has far-reaching implications for how communities understand themselves, as the research of poststructuralists and frame theorists demonstrates, and as the trial and death of Socrates in ancient Athens attests.

In past decades, the subject atmosphere and mood has gone beyond the physio-meteorological and psychological scopes and become a new direction of aesthetics which concerns two sides of the same phenomenon. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere and mood are neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing. Atmosphere is essentially a quasi-object pervaded by a specific affective quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our outer life experiences, while mood is a quasi-subject pervaded by specific objective quality and thus a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our inner life experiences. A practical dimension is thereby, from the outset, embedded in the consideration of both concepts. This is mainly characterized by actions and, correspondingly, ethical aspects, which concern the design and creation of atmosphere and thus the triggering of mood through works of art. Here, on the one hand, the process of artistic formation, long neglected in the European tradition, is given prominence as an aesthetic practice, and on the other hand, an interactive dialogue is effectively established between the artist, the work and the viewer. Due to the fact that atmosphere and mood, both as in-between, emphasize the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived from two sides, here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live or participate and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the conventional issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. Such an approach would contribute to a critical transformation in aesthetic methodology, namely from the ontological and/or epistemological what to the phenomenological and anthropological how. The tension between atmosphere and mood, as revealed here, opens up a large space for exploring a new understanding of aesthetics. On this basis the special issue pursued to diversify this discussion on an international level.

We live in the age of postmodernism. What does that mean? With a call for essays, we asked for proposals for a better understanding. At the same time, we were looking for posts that show how the arts have processed and are still processing the change from the modern to the postmodern selfconception of man, which has been described by philosophy since the 1950s to today. This special issue thus demonstrates how architects, designers and artists have reacted to the new socio-politically relevant concepts of postmodernism. With contributions of Simone Kraft on architecture, Arianna Fantuzzi on self-portraits, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen on visual arts in the 1980s, Anna Kristensson on design, Iris Laner on postmodern theory and the work of Jeff Wall, Christiane Wagner on postmodern avatars and finally, I contributed with a text on the deconstruction of the familiar in postmodern theory and the work of Karin Kneffel.

Vorbemerkungen: Die Exponenten der spekulativen Ästhetik in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts vertreten die Ansicht, dass eine Begegnung mit den verschiedenen Gegenstandsbereichen der Welt und unsere Einordnung in diese Weltbezüge nur gelingen kann, wenn nicht alles rein zufällig und verschieden ist, sondern vielmehr in einer alles übergreifenden Einheit zusammengehört und einer höheren Idee folgt. […] [Denn] das Schöne steht für den höheren Sinn von allem, was ist und geschieht. In Übereinstimmung mit diesem Grundsatz, jedoch auf völlig anderen Grundlagen, kommen zu jener Zeit Vorstellungen auf, in denen es um den konkreten Nachweis des Schönen, Wahren und Guten in allem geht und damit darum, den betreffenden Wert der Dinge aus ihnen selbst abzuleiten. Es sind die Vertreter der Formwissenschaft, die im Sinne einer exakten Wissenschaft danach streben, diesen Nachweis des Wertes eines jeden (und von allem) aus dem Gegebenen selbst zu erschließen. […]

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them. The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part of human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship.

In hindsight, it is primarily Susanne K. Langer’s theory of act, and only secondarily her theory of art, that is central to the conception of Vitality Semiotics. It focuses on affective, semiotically relevant forms that constitute our world experience, human social interaction, and ultimately art experience. Thus, this somewhat unusual distinction between these two aspects of Langer’s work is not only important for art and our understanding of the world, but can also be seen as fundamental to social interaction and, furthermore, to the universal formation of culture(s). It is, as the article suggests, to be regarded as the basis of the conditio humana.

This is the first coherent monography about the life and work of the important Bauhaus master Josef Albers. It aims to discover Albers as a teacher and an artist anew. Thus, 40 years after his death an artist shall be honored, who has had till now not enough attention within the Bauhaus masters. It fall too short to introduce him solely as the teacher and idea provider of the basic course at the Bauhaus. After his emigration to the US he achieved his breakout as an international artist and revolutionized the art world with his oeuvre and his doing.

Fascination and horror are two key experiences that are present particularly in the early work of Anselm Kiefer. Particularly in Germany these have prompted surprisingly strong reactions. Why is it, that his work dealing with the National Socialism has been received so ambivalently? The answer to this question, the text attempts, is based on the analysis of the pictures’ conditions of impact, their „Wirkkraft“. It can be shown that the process of perception can be understood as forming the basis of a decision. This becomes apparent in the picture’s effects and people’s varying reactions to them, depending on their cultural background. Disclosing this connection makes recognizable the force of the pictures, thus opening a path to questioning it. Moreover, this disclosure leads to a description of the phenomenon as a specifically post-modern.