The familiar perspectival image space seems to implode and explode at the same time. The experience of explosion is created by digital 3D as its audio-visions are crossing the boundaries of the screen and seem to jump right out at the audience. Complementary to this, the introduction of touch screens and various Natural User Interface (NUI) technologies effects an implosion: the collapse of the perspectival space that analog media technology in part evokes through distance and in part installs through physical separation both in front of and behind the image.

My presentation will focus on the construction of the modern – analog – image space since the Renaissance, its present deconstruction through D3D and NUI technologies, the emergence of a new digital media image space and the aesthetic consequences of these parallel processes of regression and progression for audiovisual storytelling.

Curriculum Vitae

Gundolf S. Freyermuth, Ph. D., is a writer, editor, director, and since 2004 Professor of Comparative Media Studies at the ifs international film school, Cologne. Since 2010, he is also one of the founding directors of the Cologne Game Lab.

He studied Comparative Literature at the Free University Berlin and wrote his Ph. D. thesis on digital aesthetics. Prior to his academic career, Freyermuth worked in the media; inter alia as editor for the monthly TransAtlantik, reporter for the weekly stern, head reporter for Tempo Magazine and for more than a decade as a freelance writer from the US West Coast. He has published three novels, eleven books of non-fiction and appr. 500 papers, essays and feature articles. He also writes movie scripts and directs documentaries.

His academic research and writing focuses on digital audiovisuality and storytelling, cross- and transmediality, games and network culture.

Freyermuth holds dual German-American citizenship and currently lives in Berlin and Cologne, Germany.