For as long as humanity existed, people have been occupied with the essence of things around them. Philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers tried to understand the world since the ancient times, looking up at the sky, at nature, at art to find the answers to the most fundamental questions. Later many other scientists studied the air, the…

Frank Kessler’s lecture brought forward several questions about the role of the media in daily life and its potential to transform the way we perceive and describe our daily experiences. For example, I started reflecting on the ways that cinema has reconfigured the senses and shaped our experience of the world, and how it has…

Frank Kessler’s session of Transmission in Motion on the 13th of January, the topic was “Media and the Reconfiguration of the Senses” with a special focus on vision. During the session, we were presented with several philosophers who somehow engaged with the topic such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, Béla Balázs, Vilém Flusser, and most…

In the past session of Transmission in Motion, thanks to the lecture of Frank Kessler, we gained more insight on the role of the senses in different media, with special attention to the reconfiguration of them and the discussions around that topic from several scholars. Beginning with the legend of Zeuxis and his competitor Parrhasius,…

Frank Kessler addressed in his lecture several ideas on how different media affect the sensorial perception of the observer. The emphasis during this lecture was on media that are based on images; photography, film and television. What is the place of theatre in this story? In this short blog, I will address several concepts and…

There is hardly any figure more prominently present in the academic discipline of media studies than Marshall McLuhan. His theories have shaped and cemented the study of media, and he stands out at as a creative mind who coined, created and analyzed terms and concepts for media. However, this does not mean that his theories are…

Imagine: A woman brings her boyfriend to work every day. They take the metro together. She takes care he doesn’t fall but somehow he also appears independent. He makes a rigid but friendly impression. In fact, he would seem over-alert if it wasn’t for that slight, endearing smile. ’He’ is made from plastic and his…

In mainstream culture, emotions almost always seem to be connected to an object, image, or speech act – that is, to an ‘other’ – which makes the subject feel a certain way. So, for example, ‘it makes me feel sad to see images of suffering’, or ‘it makes me feel happy that my friends threw…

It is still debated by many scholars in art history whether or not should Prehistoric art, such as cave drawings, be studied as an art form at all or just considered a historical and archaeological phenomenon. This is due to the fact, that there are no other sources or documents from that era that could…

Nicolas Salazar’s seminar on cave art, created a strange feeling of anachronism. In a period characterized by a “digital turn”, and in a period the where the “virtual” poses new ontological questions about issues of embodiment and human experience, how can cave art offer new insights on art, experience and culture? The easy answer would…