STRATA at RIXC Art Science festival.

 

STRATA at the Open Fields exhibition & conference, taking place in Riga, Latvia, in the framework of RIXC Art Science festival. The audiovisial performance and installation by artist Das Vegas, Vygandas Vegas Simbelis.

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STRATIC/STRATA

Despite various insights into materiality and discussions of the interrelated concepts, we argue that one of the major implications and takeaways of the project is the aesthetic synesthetic experience. Such experience brings a bodily and sensory perception of the sounds and imagery, in which sound and visuals converge into a single coherent whole and create intrinsic multi-modal experiences. The sound is seen and the visuals are heard. Through this process, other modalities of full-body sound experience and exposure of the internal processes are taken into account. With the convergence of the digital and analog, the manifestations of the digital in the physical world become part of the same aesthetic experience. We argue that its main relevance is to the fields of both post-digital and HCI.

From the start, the S T R A T I C project concerned itself with the limits of human senses at those edges where the boundaries between various formats and forms dissolve and new modalities and experiences arise. In the audio-visual performance and art installation, both the audio and the visual work together – to create evocative and extreme experiences. The project seeks to overcome the separation of the audio and the visual. It also draws on convergences of practices and attitudes in order to evoke various sensations.

With this project looking through a post-digital lens we have aimed for the humanization of interactive technology. One way of humanizing digital technologies is through encompassing and relating to our complex and rich cultural capacities. The other way is through the deeper involvement and engagement of our bodies, emotions, and experiences with the technologies with which we interact. With this project, we have aimed for creating evocative experiences that are at the limits of our human perception.

With such evocative experiences, which manifest through listening to the visuals and seeing the sounds, i.e. perceiving synesthesia, we can relate and inspect the life-logging movement with its “cold” understanding of numerical aesthetics and also compare it with other more humane approaches towards the quality of life. In this case, our work complements the notion of the post digital with a concept of qualified-self by bringing evocative experiences and supporting the notion with more humane qualities and values in our interactions, such as: to cope with the mass of information we generate without the information losing its sentimental value – a form of qualified-self instead of the more recognized quantified-self movement.

The project site: www.stratic.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Das Vegas: www.dasVegas.net