04/2024 —
08/2024
data,
digital
humanities,
immersive
technologies
Schattenspiel


04/2024 —
08/2024
data,
digital
humanities,
immersive
technologies
Schattenspiel

graphics
all
process
immersion







text
What happens to social interactions in times when individuals create their own perceptions of reality?
When digital technologies are embedded in the physical world? Where these phygital worlds are individual, visible to some and invisible to others?
This project constructs a world that vividly imagines a future in which immersive digital technologies shape everyday perception, in order to formulate rules and regulations for such technologies in relation to different places and their distinct connotations within urban space.
Through the research-process, core tensions mirroring three intertwined structures of conflict: person to person, person to reality, and person to space started crystallizing out. In the third, interestingly, the familiar relationship—where space is shaped by us and thus remains the object—begins to shift. Space, understood as a distributed canvas across different locations, starts to shape our content and experience in return, subtly repositioning itself as the subject. In this role, it shapes the object (the user) through its own form.
Thus, different locations have different impacts on perception.
A speculative video prototype tells the story of four individuals with different types and intensities of engagement with the technology. Moving away from binary storytelling, it presents multiple points of view that highlight relativity, exploring how conflicts emerge across different locations.
Potential regulatory implications, especially concerning personal freedoms:
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 19.1
Every individual has the inalienable right to be perceived in their natural state, free from external alterations or distortions imposed by sensory adaptation layers or similar technologies.
graphics
text
The project involves the development of a 3D flowchart that presents an analysis of Nicola Suthor’s essay Ein Schattenspiel. Rembrandts „Hundertguldenblatt“ (A shadow play. Rembrandt's ‘Hundred Guilder Print’). Its main aim is to guide the user through the author’s multi-layered lines of argumentation and to actively involve them in the reception of the work, enabling an understanding of Suthor’s theses and their conclusive plausibility.
The flowchart addresses Suthor’s discussion of the portrayal of Jesus as healer and preacher, particularly how this image is anchored in the silhouette. Through a series of questions and points for reflection, the user is encouraged to engage critically with the arguments, while being subtly guided toward Suthor’s interpretation.
User involvement is central to the project. Targeted questions prompt reflection and independent conclusions, while suggested answers support Suthor’s theses and encourage an interactive and in-depth engagement with the essay. A critical moment is the question of the recipient’s threshold of perception and its implications for integrity and reception.
Immersiveness adds a further abstract layer, connecting spatial experience with cognitive content. The spatial design, the architecture reflects Suthor’s thesis on the dual nature of shadows as both a second image of the body and an empty, transformable shell. Static and moving walls create a space for interpretation, translating the essay’s concepts into a navigable spatial structure that is mapped 1:1 to the real room.