Overview

In recent years I have worked mostly on three topics. First, a theory on how we become expert perceivers in media environments (images, movies, architecture) and how those alter our embodied skills and habits.

Second, a theory on the role of aesthetics and emotions in our evaluation and exploration of the artifacts that make up those environments. I explore this for our appreciation of art, yet another focus in the next years will be on aesthetics and emotions in neurourbanism and their influence on how cities impact well-being.

Third, there is a more direct focus on transformations through the different arts. This includes the long-term impacts of design and innovations in media and the arts as well as the cognitive challenges and perspectival changes that so-called high art poses. .

Theories

Analytical Philosophy of Mind has arguably had a focus on the impact of language on the Mind. Language has sometimes been labeled as the “ultimate artifact” and language certainly occupies a central role in how we categorize and perceive the world, we instead shifted our focus to other cultural artifacts. The Arts and Mind Lab currently focuses on two domains: architecture and the built environment as well as images and film. We study those domains across two dimensions: the long-term impact of design on our mind and the transformative potential of intense interaction with extraordinary artifacts or artworks in those domains.

In a nutshell, I work in three interrelated areas. I am working on (1) a general media theory of the mind that aims to capture how we are determined by the culture, technology, and the artifacts — in short, the arts — that surround us.

While (1) is for me a fundamental theory of how the mind works, I am also interested in the more specific engagements with art. Here I defend (2) a theory of art as remediation. Art and and extraordinary objects have the potential to transform us in way that differs from the slow and dripping impact culture has.

I bring both together by applying those general insights to architecture and the built environment by developing (3) a theory of neurourbanism that aims to understand the impact of urban density on human health and flourishing.Some of the central tenets I want to defend about our artifactual mind are based on a New Cognitive Media Theory. New Cognitive Media Theory has evolved originally as a theory of filmic perception and as a response to Cognitive Film Theory that I claim is too deferential with respect to cognitive sciences by ignoring two things. The embodied, enactive nature of our engagement with moving images and the twofoldness of our image experiences. I defended the first here and the second here. I also believe that we need a more encompassing, comparative media theory that includes new media and AI as well as architecture and the built environment.

Recently I brought all the above together to an exploration of our modern mind with a focus on mental health. The focus here will be on how Urban Density impacts our well-being and how and Urban Mind Science could look like.

Affect and Emotions play a central in our interaction with the environment. I explore this in multiple ways. First, I defend a theory of Aesthetic Emotions that sees such emotions as both constituting our evaluation of objects and guiding our exploration. Related to this, I look into the ways artworks transform us, by defending an Affective Aesthetic Cognitivism that builds on the idea that what aesthetic emotions afford are expansive cognitive operations. Successful artworks are special in that they are extraordinary objects that afford a multiplicity or novelty of perspectives that can explain the expansive effect they have on us.

Genealogy

Es beginnt alles mit einer Idee. Vielleicht willst du ein Unternehmen gründen. Vielleicht möchtest du ein Hobby in etwas Größeres verwandeln. Oder vielleicht hast du ein kreatives Projekt, das du mit der Welt teilen möchtest. Was auch immer es ist – die Art und Weise, wie du deine Geschichte online vermittelst, kann einen gewaltigen Unterschied ausmachen.