Martha Blassnigg is co-investigator of the HERA TEF UK project and the HERA Knowledge Transfer project “Advertising the Sublime”, a collaboration with Utrecht University, EYE Film Institute Netherlands and Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. She is a Cultural and Media Anthropologist, trained in Cultural Anthropology and Philosophy, and parallel in Film and Cinema Studies, with a background in film restoration, documentary filmmaking and photography as research practice. She conducts qualitative research into the perceptual, creative processes during enhanced or amplified situations such as experiences of spiritual practices and cognition in audio-visual environments, exploring the body-mind correlation in relation to issues such as time, memory and consciousness.

She is Associate Editor for Leonardo Reviews and a member of the Leonardo review panel. She has completed two documentary films and has previously worked as film restorer at the Netherlands Filmmuseum Amsterdam.

Current research:

Blassnigg is undertaking philosophical and historical research in order to situate the metaphysical dimensions of technology and art within the processes of human perception and consciousness. In this she focuses on the perceptual experience of audio-visual media in both a historical and contemporary context in relation to issues of time, memory, intuition and affection.

Within the UK team of the TEF project she works on the implications of aesthetic intuition on memory processes, consciousness and affection in relation to the reciprocal creative influences between experimental and advertising film. She explores specifically the agency of the beholders and the involved cognitive processes and interpretive frameworks with an attempt to develop a philosophical/anthropological conception of intuition as a heuristic for the aesthetic immersion and epistemology for affective knowledge and experience transfer. She applies Bergson’s understanding of memory and the affect as a crucial constituent of the underlying internalised processes to the experience of the beholder in audio-visual environments during and after the mediated event and contextualises this in discussions of memory, consciousness and affection in the fields of media archaeology, consciousness studies, psychology and philosophy.

Key outcomes of the research into a historical and philosophical perspective on perceptual issues of advertising and AV media are to date the continuity of Romanticist approaches to the experience of colour and light in late 19th century technological innovations of AV media, which opens up a pathway to an occult, spiritual dimension. This reinforces a re-reading of Etienne-Jules Marey as a true avant-gardist in the context of the late 19th century science-art-technology convergence with cross-references to popular visual culture (Liebig trade cards) and examples from high-art and letters (Turner to Goethe).

Forthcoming publications:

Co-authored book:

Blassnigg, M. and Punt, M. (2013): Seriography, Instantaneity and “All-At-Onceness”: Recollection, Co-operation and Procreation in Image Mediation. (forthcoming)

Edited book:

Blassnigg, M. 2012. Light, Image, Imagination: The Spectrum Beyond Reality and Illusion. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. (in press)

Chapter in book:

Blassnigg, M.  2012. ‘The Delightful(l) Mind: A Case for Aesthetic Intuition’. In: Light, Image, Imagination: The Spectrum Beyond Reality and Illusion. Blassnigg (ed.), Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. (in press)

Recently published:

Blassnigg, M. 2011. ‘Intuition and Imagination at the Convergence of Arts, Science, Popular Culture and Commercial Application: Clues from the Past’, in Kluszczynski, R. (ed.) W strone trzeciej kultury. Koegzystencja sztuki, nauki i technologii. Towards the Third Culture. The Co-existence of Art, Science and Technology. Gdansk: Laznia CCA, pp. 66-77.

Blassnigg, M.  2011. ‘A convergência da Arte e Ciência: Pistas do Passado’ (‘The Convergence of Art and Science: Clues from the Past’, transl. by Cleomar Rocha and Júlio César dos Santos), Z Cultural, Revista Virtual do Programa Avançado de Cultural Contemporânea, Ano VII(02), ISSN 1980-9921. [Online]. Available at: http://revistazcultural.pacc.ufrj.br/a-convergencia-da-arte-e-ciencia-pistas-do-passado-de-martha-blassnigg/

2010. ‘Revisiting Marey’s Applications of Scientific Moving Image Technologies in the Context of Bergson’s Philosophy: Audio-Visual Mediation and the Experience of Time’. Medicine Studies. Volume 2 (3) Issue: “Medical Imaging: Philosophy and History”. Springer, pp. 175-184.

For a list of publication go to: http://trans-techresearch.net/researchers/martha-blassnigg/papers

Comments are closed.