My research furthers the philosophical and theoretical works of Villem Flusser and Paul Virilio to position scale, specifically bodily self-perception of scale, as a new factor of change for civilization. To demonstrate this, I deploy a series of aesthetic works in photography and video that shift the nature of scale for knowledge production and world building. The culmination of my research is a contribution to visual culture and environmental data visualization, and the founding of my artificial intelligence company, Machinic Phylum Inc.

Abstract

Rooted in modern cognitive psychology and philosophy, this dissertation focuses on practice-based research on aesthetically derived knowledge from three body-to-image relationships. Through projects utilizing photography, video, virtual reality, and real-time computational practices utilizing artificial intelligence, this research centers on the transformation of bodily perception, the body that creates the image, by means of altering temporal and spatial perception in various forms of media to scale the body and in turn to shift bodily self-perception beyond our embodied 1:1 scale to objective reality. My method of inquiry is inferential aesthetics where conclusions are not drawn but points of departure are given toward lines of new inquiry into the nature of time, space, and the body. My research contribution stems from delineating a different categorization and a redefinition of bodily self-perception as an active tool for scaling as opposed to a passing observation or a disorder as analyzed in cognitive psychology.

On this path I have defined three body-to-image relationships with differing ontologies: the body observing the image [1] the body occupying the image [2], the body creating the image [3]. The ontology of these three bodies differs from one another. The body merely observing the image exists in the space outside of the image and external to any meaning. The body occupying the image is a necessary function for knowledge production because to derive any meaning, one must consider and then occupy the context of the image. The body creating the image is the realm of experiential media and technologies, the space where our bodies not only occupy the image but also continually create it and where bodily self-perception constantly shifts. In this third mode essentially, we also become technologically catalyzed shape shifters.