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84Towards Vitality Semiotics and a New Understanding of the Conditio Humana in Susanne K. LangerIn Lona Gaikis (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Susanne K. Langer, Bloomsbury Handbooks. pp. 223-338. 2023.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 so…Read more
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91On The Material Image. Affordances as a New Approach to Visual Culture Studies (edited book)Art Style. 2021.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…Read more
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99On the Postmodern Age (edited book)Art Style. 2020.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 c…Read more
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6Faszination und SchreckenZeitschrift für Ästhetik Und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 51 (2): 24-51. 2006.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…Read more
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149Marshall McLuhan in a New Light. Old and New Methods of Influencing Emotions in Communities of the Electronic AgeIn Grabbe Lars, Andrew McLuhan & Tobias Held (eds.), Beyond Media Literacy, Büchner Verlag. 2023.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 affe…Read more
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99Vorbemerkungen: 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…Read more
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148Atmosphere and Mood: Two Sides of the Same Phenomenon (edited book)Art Style. 2023.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 f…Read more
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310An Affective Perception: How "Vitality Forms" Influence Our MoodArt Style 11 (1). 2023.The form of an action has a strong influence on the interaction between humans. According to their mood, people may perform the same gesture in different ways, such as gently or rudely. These aspects of social communication are named vitality forms by Daniel Stern, represent a mean to establish a direct and immediate connection with others. Indeed, the expression of different vitality forms enables us to communicate our affective states and at the same time the perception of these vitality forms…Read more
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274Interaction of Nature and Man after Ernst Cassirer: Expressive Phenomena as IndicatorsIn Jacobus Bracker & Stefanie Johns (eds.), Critical Zone [Visual Past 7], Universität Hamburg, Kulturwissenschaften, Germany. pp. 147-161. 2023.According to the neo-Kantian and cultural anthropologist Ernst Cassirer, man always interacts with nature. This assumption forms the basis for his philosophical approach to the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms of 1929. It is based on the thesis that we do not conceive nature as objects (‘Ding-Wahrnehmung’), but immediately feel and suffer nature through the so-called ‘perception of expression’ (‘Ausdrucks-Wahrnehmung’). Thus, our understanding of the world is based on interaction with nature, becaus…Read more
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226Multimodality. The Sensually Organized Potential of Artistic Works (edited book)Art Style. 2022.With a Call for Essays, the special issue Multimodality sought contributions that accept not only the material but also the body-bound dependence of media perception and understanding. To this end, contributions were included that shed light on both the structural and signifying potential of artistic works through multimodal analysis. Particular attention was paid to contributions that clarify how the structural features - the modes - of the arts, their perception, and their signifying potential…Read more
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170Everyday 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 me…Read more
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779Bilder als Agenten kultureller Transformationsprozesse (edited book)IMAGE, Journal of Interdisciplinary Image Science 36, 7. 2022.This book is an anthology about transformation processes. It brings together contributions that were made during the 16th International Congress of the German Society for Semiotics 2021. Due to the Corona pandemic, it was finally not held in attendance at the TU Chemnitz, in Germany, but took place online. 11 sections with different focuses from archaeology, architecture, design, digital humanities, on the body, from the field of literature & youth and subcultures, media, fashion, environment, a…Read more
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166To 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 "scen…Read more
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237Responsibility: The Charge of Meaning in Art and LanguageArt Style International 8 153-167. 2021.This article starts from the assumption that there is a connection between art and language and responsibility. What is it based on? It follows on from the research of the Hamburg Circle in the 1920s by Ernst Cassirer and Aby M. Warburg, and was strengthened in the 2000s by Hartmut Böhme. Their joint starting point is the emotional life of human beings. Thus, they assume that already the perception is shaped by it and can be increased in rituals. Comparably hardly noticed by us, it continues to …Read more
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259From aesthetics to vitality semiotics - From l´art pour l´art to responsibility. Historical change of perspective exemplified on Josef AlbersIn Grabbe, Lars Christian ; Rupert-Kruse, Patrick ; Schmitz, Norbert M. (Hrsgg.): Bildgestalten : Topographien medialer Visualität. Marburg: Büchner, Büchner Verlag. pp. 194-213. 2020.The paper follows the thesis, that the perception of real or virtual media shares the anthropological state of "Ausdruckswahrnehmung" or perception of expression (Ernst Cassirer). This kind of perception does not represent a distant, neutral point of view, but one that is guided by feelings or "vitality affects" (Daniel N. Stern). The prerequisites, however, for triggering these feelings/"vitality affects" are not recognizable objects or motifs, but rather their sensually evaluable “abstract rep…Read more
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411Affordance as a Method in Visual Cultural Studies. Based on Theory and Tools of Vitality SemioticsArt Style International 2 (7): 11-37. 2021.In a historiographical and methodological comparison of Formal Aesthetics and Iconology with the method of Affordance, the latter is to be introduced as a new method in Visual Cultural Studies. In extension ofepistemologically relevant aspects relatedtostyle and history of the artefacts, communicative and furthermoreaction and decisionrelevant aspects of artefacts become important. In this respect, it is the share of artefacts in life that the new method aims t…Read more
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397Neither the art historians Panofsky and Warburg nor the philosopher Cassirer had any interest with their cultural-historical research in fact-based, historical questions. An approach that had become common in the 19th century due to the loss of validity of the speculative aesthetics. On the contrary, instead of this substantial understanding as the documentary concept represents, these researchers focused on a functional understanding of art historical sources. Nevertheless, in contrast to this …Read more
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517What is Reality? Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and the artist Karin Kneffel on the deconstruction of the familiar as liberation from determinationArt Style, Art and Culture International Magazine, Special Issue_6, On the Postmodern Age, Ed. By Martina Sauer 6 (6): 101-120. 2020.What is reality? It is postmodern or poststructuralist philosophers like Roland Barthes, who realized that it only seems that the media present reality in the form of facts, because they actually spread myths. Accordingly, Jacques Derrida made it clear that communication via media is not based on logic, but is characterized by a significant “différance” between a “marque” (trace) of the past and the expectations of the future. Both agreed, that the initial misunderstanding of the concept of real…Read more
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285Visualität und Geschichte. Bilder als historische Akteure im Anschluss an VerkörperungstheorienIn Grüne Niels & Oberhauser Claus (eds.), Jenseits des Illustrativen. Visuelle Medien und Strategien politischer Kommunikation., V&r Uni Press. pp. 39-60. 2015.Special commendation from the Hans-und-Lea-Grundig Prize by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation 2015 -- I -- Do have pictures an impact on future? Yes, say theories of embodiment by making perceptual foundations in place of representational arrangements responsible for it. -- I -- Wirken sich Bildern auf die Zukunft aus? Ja sagen Verkörperungstheorien und machen dafür weniger Repräsentationsmodelle als Wahrnehmungsweisen verantwortlich.
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318Warburg und die Natur(-wissenschaft): Affektpsychologische Fundierung von Kultur im Hamburger Kreis um Warburg, Cassirer und Werner und deren NachwirkungenVisual Past, 5/2018, Special Issue: Image Senses. 2020.What distinguishes humans form animals? Acknowledging that humans are part of nature, that can process psychologically their affective-vital reactions to nature, and thus be held responsible for cultural processes, is the result of art historical, cultural-philosophical and life science research over the past two centuries. This line of argumentation led to the consideration that there must also be a connection between affective-psychological reactions and formal, a-historical mechanisms that ar…Read more
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411Framing Emotional Perception: Affect and Effect of Aesthetic Experience, or Extensions of Aesthetic Theory Towards SemioticsArt Style: Art and Culture International Magazine 4 (4): 73-87. 2019.How does an audience receive a work of art? Does the experience only affect the viewer or does it have an effect and thus influence his or her actions? It is the cultural philosopher Ernst Cassirer and his successors in philosophy and developmental psychology as well as in neuroscience to this day who postulate that perception in general and perception of art in particular are not neutral in their origins but alive and thus meaningful. They assume that both are based on analogous principles: in …Read more
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392´The better form´ - Josef Albers´s Idealistic Concept of Art Reveals its Socio-Cultural FunctionArt Style: Art and Culture International Magazine 2 (2): 30-55. 2019.With the aim of teaching and practicing art for the good or moreover the better, Josef Albers proves to be an idealist. At the same time, he confirms with this conviction that art can also arouse the opposite. This conviction is already evident in the grammatical form of the term, which proves that art is functional or a technique for socio-cultural applications, whether good or bad. In the presentation of the political and philosophical background of this idea as well as in the analysis of Jose…Read more
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221Marion Lauschke / Franz Engel / Johanna Schiffler (eds.): Ikonische Formprozesse. Zur Philosophie des Unbestimmten in Bildern. De Gruyter: Berlin 2018 (review)Sehepunkte. Rezensionsjournal für Geschichtswissenschaften 19 (4). 2019.
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463Cézanne - Van Gogh - Monet. Genese der Abstraktion. 2. edn. Diss. Basel 1998 (2nd ed.)ART-Dok. 2014.Do abstract paintings still make sense and if so what do they mean? By reducing the paintings to simple square blots as by Cézanne, to lines as by van Gogh and color traces as by Monet their meaning is fundamentally questioned. But by interpreting these compositions as effective forces or rather affective stimuli a new and different meaning becomes apparent. Landscapes are no longer introduced but made real in the aesthetic experience. Therefore aesthetics or rather aisthetics (perception) can b…Read more
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795Ästhetik versus Kunstgeschichte?: Ernst Cassirer als Vermittler in einer bis heute offenen Kontroverse zur Relevanz der Kunst für das LebenIn Stefan Niklas & Thiemo Breyer (eds.), Ernst Cassirer in Systematischen Beziehungen: Zur Kritisch-Kommunikativen Bedeutung Seiner Kulturphilosophie, De Gruyter. pp. 239-260. 2018.Aesthetics versus Art History? Ernst Cassirer as Mediator in an ongoing Controversy on the Relevance of Art for Life. Against the background of Ernst Cassirer’s cultural philosophy, art studies are to be classified as cultural studies. Central to this is Cassirer’s philosophy as the basis for answering a question that has been posed by the methods of formal aesthetics and iconology since the 19th century but is still unanswered today, namely the question of the relevance of the arts for life. In…Read more
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43Josef Albers. "So ist Kunst ... Erlebnis"Weimarer Verlagsgesellschaft. 2018.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 revol…Read more
Martina Sauer
Deutsche Gesellschaft Für Semiotik
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Institute for Image and Cultural PhilosophyAdministrator
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Deutsche Gesellschaft Für SemiotikOther (Part-time)
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |