Interference of the Visual and the Kinestetic in the Postnonclassical Art

Abstract

The Double-Post culture, which is based on the digital “Grand Style”, is noted for its special kine(sthe)tic format, characterized by the virtualization of the spatial, the tactile, and the corporal. Dominance of the visual part generates the person’s desire for a physical experience of the world’s tangibility and own corporality. Overcoming of the lack of tactile in culture comes either through the actualization of direct kinesthetic experience or by means of the indirect visual kinesthetic. The postnonclassical art (the media art, labyrinth-installations, mirrored rooms) offers some previously impossible ways of perception, construction and physical exploration of the multi-dimensional visual reality. The tactile and kinesthetic sensations begin to play the role of an “augmented” virtuality in the viewer-participant’s communication with the intangible, visual spaces and images. Therewith, the kinesthetic and the visual create the counter “flows” of sensory perception, which intersect, overlap and interfere, forming some fundamentally new spatiality and imagery. Due to the interference of the visual and the kinesthetic, the postnonclassical artworks obtain some sophisticatedly dissected fractal spaces that give to a person the fullness of the bodily presence through the simultaneous co-existence of the person’s physical body and an infinite set of mutually exclusive physical reflections to be experienced in the format of indirect visual kinesthetic. The article examines the history of labyrinths and mirrored rooms from the viewpoint of cultural studies and analyzes the media performances by Ph. Decouflé, Ch. Sandison, the Cloud Gate theatre and others, the movies with the plot or composition connected with a labyrinth (“The Cube”, “The Maze Runner”, etc.), and the art installations with mirrored rooms by L. Samaras, Y. Kusama, T. Frank, S. Salat and others.