Sensate skins: unfolding an affective responsive aesthetics

Candidate: Dennis Humphrey
Type: Master of Arts (MA), School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: March 16, 2007
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Susan Kozel
Thesis: Download Thesis Document

Abstract

This thesis explores responsive aesthetics in art installations—how individuals, through their senses, engage in meaningful, affective exchanges with a responsive artwork that focuses on touch and the body as the critical loci of reciprocity. Concepts drawn from multidisciplinary writings assisted in developing this responsive aesthetics: approaches to the body, lived experience, reversibility and intercorporeity from existential phenomenology; the construction of the self and sexuality from psychoanalytical theory and gender studies; models of responsivity, the relationships between haptic, visual and multimodal perception from physiology, human perception and art criticism. The construction and exhibition of a prototype haptic responsive installation, sensate skins, provided a means of embodying and exploring the multiple folds of responsivity and gathering engagent impressions on their lived experience.