Virtuelle Lebenswelten – serie

Virtual reality is a technique of interfacing which connects diverse bodies, objects and spaces, thereby mediating between different art forms and modes of experience. This feature also calls for a methodological interfacing of different disciplinary perspectives. The contributors to this volume examine how VR is employed in contemporary art with regard to its technical potential, its aesthetic qualities, and the imaginations it evokes. They highlight the use of VR as a ›world within a world,‹ ranging from encapsulated artificial environments to transitions into familiar lifeworlds. By bringing together theoretical perspectives from art history, media and game studies, this volume provides crucial analysis of selected artworks and expands the critical engagement with a contemporary art form and media practice.

Hidden from view, university data infrastructures circulate, process and store scientific data while requiring extensive energy and metal extraction. The authors of this volume offer a speculative engagement with cultures of scientific competition, institutional habits, server procurement and regulations, and with funding procedures that each in different ways contribute to scientific computing and its planetary effects. Short speculative ethnographic texts and original line art offer witty and thought-provoking takes on the challenges data-driven science faces in times of climate change.

Spaces of negotiation in politics, law, education and administration are shaped by their architectural settings, artworks, interior designs as well as by rituals, ceremonies and processes of imagination. Drawing on art history, legal history and literary studies, this volume analyses the virtual potential of spaces that require both a normative framework and an imaginative dimension to allow different outcomes to be envisaged. The contributions explore the dynamics of premodern virtuality, offering insights into collective spaces such as town halls, churches and courtrooms, as well as into imaginary environments evoked through sculpture, painting, print media and architectural models.