“We need a new medium that will nurture our senses so that we may all be compatible with the natural and cultural diversity of the world. A new world demands a new medium: a medium to develop a new "common sense" regarding our planet, our land, and ourselves.”

Shin'ichi Takemura, anthropologist and producer of sensorium. http://www.sensorium.org

Welcome to the personal & research website of Michael Hohl. These pages serve as a research and documentation tool for my practice-based investigation into digital media. This ranges from immersive telematic environments to exploring other telematic properties such as "presence indication" between remote individuals via "calm technologies."

I am developing an interdisciplinary framework for exploring remote live-data "visualised" in different sensorial modalities with 'natural' displays. Part of this investigation is to understand how and why some telematic effects can create such vivid and powerful experiences with digital media; and what they say about our zeitgeist, how they change our perceptions and expectations towards technologies, towards our culture and artefacts. How they can be combined or enhanced with other effects. To describe the role(s) and responsibilities that interdiciplinary teams of media artists, designers and more technical people could have.

A holistic art & design methodology drawing from own, critical practice, other makers work; art & design theory as well as computer-science (HCI) frameworks. Applied. Contextual. Interdisciplinary.

current topics

- intruiging qualities may relate to telepresence / telematics.
- interactive media can be much more (we have new responsibilites and we need a new medium that will nurture our senses ...)
- ambiguity vs. transparency
- physical world / natural phenomena
- collaboration aspects
- communication art
- computers change how we perceive the world and ourselves, perception, expectations, examples

The website is currently organised around my key terms and categories of interactive environments which are the categories of interactive installations and experiential qualities like telepresence, cross-media-mapping/transformation of data, and biofeedback as the most interesting ones.

As it is helpful as well as necessary to document the development of my ideas, insights and influence from other input, visits to conferences, galleries, trade fairs, museums and other relevant venues are documented in the conference section that could also be titled "inspiration" or "input", making "conferences a subsection, which might happen in the future. (semantic items of the website could be as well "objects" and so e.g. [Citations] could be semantically coded, allowing a fast find for quotations.) As well as [key terms] and [insights].

"contextual review" e.g. visited interactive installations that are well documented, and which features will be described, their technical backgrounds, their assets and drawbacks.

The diagram above lacks a strong point of from "metaphors we live by" from Lakoff & Johnson. That there is an embodied experience before language. On the other hand radio is language. Interesting problem here.