Moving across aesthetic theory, embodiment, affect theory, new media, and experimental practices, Foerster’s research attends to questions of agency, subjectivation, and habits by examining how these highly charged positions are articulated and negotiated in aesthetic practices. In particular, she explores how art, design, and architecture use new technologies to enable novel figurations and experiences of complex matters such as climate change, and in how far this sheds new light on the way we tend to make sense of the world. Through close analysis informed by phenomenology, process philosophy, feminist studies, and social studies of science, she investigates in particular how our understanding of complex issues changes if usually non-perceptible elements and processes become available to the senses. Her presentation will give an overview of her research on metabolic aesthetics, the experience of indeterminacy in virtual reality, and her recent work on how digital media experimentations enable new phenomenologies of pain and disease.
Dr. Desiree Foerster is an Assistant Professor for Media and Culture Studies, with an interest in media aesthetics, affect, and experimental practices. She graduated from the Institute for Arts and Media, the University of Potsdam with her thesis “Aesthetic Experience of Metabolic Processes”. Taking on the perspective of process philosophy and media aesthetics, she investigates here the impacts of liminal experiences on human subjectivity. During her Ph.D. and her post-doctoral position at the University of Chicago, she conducted several research-creation projects together with artists, designers, and academics from Concordia University (CA), Arizona State University (US), and IXDM, Basel (CH). She studies Aesthetics, Media Ecologies, Affect, Haptic Media, Phenomenology, Process Philosophy, and Immersive Environments.
Prof. Foerster will also hold a VR demonstration project related to her research: Tuesday, May 2, 2023 Multimedia Project Studio (MPS) Duke West Campus
Co-sponsored by Duke Information Science + Studies (ISS) and the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI)
Computational Media, Arts & Cultures