This reflection stems directly from my previous one titled Plato’s Back, a consideration of how the theory of affect can be instrumental in understanding the historical context and consequences of translating Plato’s work into German in the first decades of the 20th century. The reason for linking these two pieces is that both are informed…

On December the 6th, as part of the Meet the Makers sessions, Grace Boyle spoke about her work as a multisensory storyteller. She states that human beings don’t have 5 senses, but up to (at least) 33. She talked about how this multisensory principle comes into being in her artistic work. In her performances, she…

On Monday 6 December, the members of the Dramaturgical Practices Course (theatre module) had the honor to meet the multisensory storyteller Grace Boyle. Boyle is the founder of ‘Feelies’, a London-based studio that creates multisensory XR content. With this project, she aims to debunk the Western belief that humans have only five senses, and attempts…

The second session of the Transmission in Motion 2021-22 series contextualized philosophical and cultural appropriation of Plato in German thought in the period leading to German industrialization and the rise of National-Socialism (Utrecht University 2021). Paul Ziche situated the translations and interpretation of Plato’s works against the backdrop of the publishing milieu of the time,…

Two central questions were left at the end of today’s seminar on Plato and the rise of German Nationalism. One participant questioned the uniqueness of the relationship between modernism and German fascism: can equal connections and parallels not be drawn between other instantiations of totalitarianism and modernism? Either by looking at the rise and fall…

It was difficult not to understand Zarzycka’s presentation in relation to Google’s decision to fire two of its top ethical AI researchers earlier this year. Zarzycka brought up this controversial decision herself in trying to elaborate on her own difficulties and feelings about becoming a Googler, but she is, understandably, not in a position to…

During the first session within the Transmission in Motion Seminar of 2021/2022, Marta Zarzycka spoke about her transition from academia to being a User Experience (UX) Researcher in the commercial tech industry, specifically at Google Cloud. There are some profound differences between academia and the tech industry, but what spoke most to me during this…

The Transmission in Motion 2021-22 seminar series opened with a presentation from Marta Zarzycka on translating academic research on affect to user experience research. During her academic career at Utrecht University Zarzycka researched the role of digital photography in shaping collective Western consciousness through the representation of trauma. Drawing on her current work at Google,…

This year’s Transmission in Motion seminar is about radical translation: not in the sense of (linguistic) translation from source to target, but in the sense of relational and transversal practices. In this latter sense, practices of translation affect all parties and perspectives that emerge from and participate in the process. Translation, then, happens in-between media,…

Indulge me, very briefly, to share something about myself: I am not a dancer. Far from it, in fact; I am not a sportsy person at all, though I try to keep moving during a pandemic that has severely limited our options to go outside and move about the world. It seems best, in some…