W/9: AEROMEDICAL FACTORS


Limits of Perception: Aeromedical Lab

Ivana Franke

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Aeromedical Lab is a place in the IAK where all future pilots test and expand their perceptual limits.

In the aeromedical lab we will encounter phenomena that cause threshold experiences and give us limit-perspective, a space that doesn’t follow rules of the everyday and allows us to expand imagination and invent space in our minds anew. Those experiences are the basis for the course.

Individually we will engage in thorough and systematic quasi-scientific self-reflection of what we have experienced. We will explore the space of freedom to imagine otherwise, that those experiences leave us with, and throughout the semester rigorously work on excavating possibilities to actualize and articulate it in the form of an artwork. Artworks that will be created will not only be representation of what we imagine but will offer the open space for imagination to others.

At the end of the semester we will have expert visit – vision scientist Bilge Sayim will provide scientific feedback on our new first hand expanded perceptual knowledge, as well as the exhibition of artworks.

Ivana Franke Oct 2014_2     daUntitled UntitledUntitled     Untitled 2Die Ewigkeit    photo 1-1

Image on the top:  Travel Along, 2011. Images above: From the Faraway Past and From The Future, 2014 / Scotopic vision diagram / Luminance mode diagram / Sky / IAK students experiencing flicker- induced quasy-hallucinations in the installation We close our eyes and see a flock of birds, in House der Wissenschaft in Braunschweig, during the event Eternity by Hannah Hurtzig and Mobile Academy, 2015 / Student’s reports of perceptual experiences

Landscape and aeroscape look different as we know. Landscape is crowded with all kinds of things that are constantly feeding us with sensory information – while walking on the earth we are receiving numerous signals – flow of patterns and colours is hitting our eyes. Aeroscape, on the contrary, is sensory very sparse space – while flying in the air we are surrounded by sky, with birds view on landscape which is diminishing in scale. We are moving into emptiness. In extreme cases we might enter a fog or be surrounded by total darkness. We might encounter threshold sensory situations that cause spatial disorientation. Experience of such a situation gives us different – limit-perspective, we “move from the perspective of the limited organism to a perspective orientated around much larger spatial and temporal dimensions.” This course will try to take us there.

Suggested readings: Donald Hoffman, The Interface Theory of Perception, A.B. Watson, The Windows of Visibility, Edwin Abbott, Flatland, A romance of many dimensions, Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations, M. Minnaert, The nature of light and colour in the open air

 

 

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