Wendy Whaley
Coenesthesia: An Aesthetic of Healing Through Hybrid Reality Art
The affordances of new forms of interactive art including virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) have implications for health, opening new perspectives on embodiment. The title of this thesis project – Coenesthesia – is a term for the feeling of embodiment that arises from the sensorial processing of multiple stimuli from various bodily organs. This thesis incorporates the idea of the art object as amenable object and techniques from cognitive neuroscience studies. It explores proprioception and synaesthesia, surreality, and the precognition of autonomic affect. These ideas are applied to the question of how to form revitalizing affects. How can hybrid media art advance exploration and affective engagement with one’s embodied interiority? A coenesthetic aesthetic - a multi-modal, multi-sensorial aesthetic that combines biofeedback with surreality - is proposed as a strategy to form revitalizing affects. Coenesthesia, the hybrid media installation, is an example of the coenesthetic aesthetic in practice.