Audiovisual Art and Design

This research deals with Audiovisual Design language elements, elaborated as an audio/visual/verbal system that simultaneously transmits all its elements, emphasizing their relationship and their transversal composition in time and space. Originally from Cinema, Audiovisual Design originate a new discipline in Design, develops along with Television, feeds from Graphic Design elements and improves with Informatics; it has its own process expedited by emergent digital technology post-1990. The evolution of pre-production, production and post-production in audiovisual mediums, more precisely in Cinema, plus an expanding perspective of creating more complex digital Audiovisual Design, leads us to a discussion yp identify the need of a model that would be able to demonstrate the plurality of these frail, unpredictable, “bubbles in the foam”-like elements. That was the beginning of the Audiovisual Foam Model thesis. The thesis fundaments come mainly from Lucia Santaella’s theories of Language and Thinking Matrix, which are tools for understanding the mentioned relationships; and from the Dutch philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s work, that supported the Foam Model because of its metaphoric, systemic and complex character. As an empiric procedure, some study cases were made based on Audiovisual Design of Open Titles, and by the end of this process an experimental Project of the Audiovisual Foam Model was developed, leading to a 3D Immersive Installation named “Passion and Violence”. This research aims to contribute to the academic formation and updating of designers in beginning of the XXI century, in the middle of its contemporary scenario, and to presents a comprehensive approach. The results bring a clearer vision of the language elements of the Audiovisual Design, not only as “borrowed” elements from other disciplines but also as unique, hybrid, complexes elements on their own identity.

The ISEA-conference paper aims to give an inside view of different processes of knowledge creation that occured during the two years of field research (2010–2012) on aesthetics of sustainability in the trinational border area of Switzerland, Germany and France along the Rhine river. The research team worked with academic and non-academic experts (project partners, protagonists) and users of an interactive computer platform. The main focus is on where, how and with whom knowledge creation takes place and how it is presented. Regarding public presentations of RhyCycling’s research results the non-textual presentation format (interactive computer platform) and its impact on reception are of interest.

Inter- and transdisciplinary teams are working increasingly with ‘open’ research concepts. This kind of continual transformation and circulation of knowledge in different forms and formats is an ‘endless’ and rather instable process of knowledge creation. Regarding reception, those circumstances of instability are creative but demanding on the viewer’s imagination. By perceiving the material of the interactive computer platform as a means for creating an individual storyline, transformation may be experienced through involvement. Insofar the platform supports possible reconfigurations of one’s own lifestyle in a playful way.