Das medienwissenschaftliche Forschungskolloquium bietet DoktorandInnen und Post-Docs die Möglichkeit, ihre aktuellen Promotions- und Forschungsprojekte zu präsentieren und im kollegialen Rahmen zu diskutieren.

LEITUNG
Direktorium des ZeM
KOORDINATION
Dr. Adelheid Heftberger, ZeM

Bodily perception in Virtual Reality(VR)
Zeynep Akbal

In my philosophically motivated and clinically relevant research, I aim to use an experimental intervention in virtual reality(VR) in which the participants can swap bodies with another person and afterwards confront their own body image in the body of the other person. I specifically research whether such embodiment experience could influence the perspective we have upon our own bodies and whether it is possible to observe certain shifts in the perception we have upon ourselves. I use ‚Machine To be Another’, a virtual setup which enables the body-swap illusion and the confrontation with the ‚doppelgänger‘. I will present the methods and the data I collected from interventions in which I have worked with 40 people.
The main motivation of my research is to bring virtual technologies into the course of self- exploration, specifically bodily-perception. Where does the virtual reality stand in mediality and can we use it as a medium for reproducing certain philosophical questions which may lead us to reconsider our own bodily self? With an attempt to connect empirical work in virtual technology and neuropsychology with theories in media sciences, the results of my research may potentially reveal the distinct connection between mediality, psychology and phenomenological way of understanding the lived body experience (Leibliche Erfahrung).

Die Haut, das Ich und das Andere
Anke Steinborn

Die Haut – so die These des Vortrags – fungiert als Schauplatz der sinnlichen Erfahrbarkeit der Protagonisten – ihrer Geschichte, ihrer Identität und ihrer Selbsterfahrung im Spiegel des Anderen. Anhand des Wechselspiels zwischen der textilen Hülle und der Haut soll den Beziehungen zwischen Image und Identität, Text und Textur, Bedeutung und Affekt im Kontext des Films nachgegangen werden. Ziel der Untersuchung ist es, unter die symbolische Hülle der Kleidung zu schauen und das Wesentliche, die Identität darunter zu ergründen.

Personen

Zeynep Akbal is a PhD candidate in Media Sciences at Philosophy Faculty, Potsdam University. In her philosophically motivated and clinically relevant research, she explores the possible consequences of an alignment with the virtual body in virtual reality (VR). She aims to raise relevant philosophical questions related to phenomenology of body based on collected empirical data. She has been teaching at Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt University (Investigating Mind-Brain-Body Interactions in Virtual Reality) and at EMW (Studiengang Europäische Medienwissenschaft), Potsdam University (Bodily Perception in Virtual Reality: Exploring the body as an object). She has worked closely with BeAnotherLab and is an associate member of BeAnotherLab Berlin node. She has been giving workshops in which she explored the different effects of body swap setups in VR.
Currently she is working as a collaborator at The MindBrainBody Institute (MBBI) which situated at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain,Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Anke Steinborn, Dr. phil., Dipl. Des., akademische Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für Angewandte Medienwissenschaften der BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg. Studium der Kulturwissenschaft, Filmwissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte an der Humboldt Universität und Freien Universität in Berlin sowie am Goldsmiths, University of London. Promotion 2013: Der neo-aktionistische Aufbruch. Zur Ästhetik des American Way of Life. Berlin, 2014. Aktuelle Forschung: Transtextual Storytelling.