Ksenia Fedorova

 

Ksenia Fedorova is an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow specializing on media theory and media art aesthetics. She holds PhD in Cultural Studies (University of California Davis), Ph.D in Philosophy/Aesthetics (St.Petersburg State University, Ural Federal University), MA in Art History (University of Colorado, Boulder), and MA in Philosophy (Ural State University). She is the co-editor of Media: Between Magic and Technology (2014, in Russian, short-listed for the national Innovation and Kandinsky awards, 2014) and has taught classes on media and media art theory and history in Russia, the U.S. and Austria. In 2007-2011, she was an initiator and curator of the “Art. Science. Technology” program at the Ural branch of the National Center for Contemporary Arts (Ekaterinburg, Russia).

As a fellow at Humboldt University she prepares a monograph manuscript based on her dissertation work, “Feedback Interfaces, Encodings of Affect in Media Art and Technoculture”, as well as conducts research for her new project “Mental Imagery, Neurointerfaces and Sensory Translation in Art and Science”.
The primary concern of her work is how new technologies affect our perception and ways of thinking, including understanding of the self and its relationship with the world. Her earlier work addressed the effects of technological mediation through the notion of the technological sublime, conceived as an encounter with the alien within ourselves, that undermines the stability of the human position as a subject of aesthetic experience. Ksenia’s most recent research concentrated on the problem of communication and translation of affect via feedback interfaces in media art and technoculture. The work considered artistic reflections on the effects of the psychological mechanisms of projection and recognition in relation to algorithmic procedures in digital simulation. The new research will be devoted to the issue of transmedial and sensory exchange in the context of digital culture and biometric technology. To which extent can (or cannot) human sensing abilities be analogized with the technological ones? What kinds of insights can the mechanisms like neurointerfaces give about mental functions, such as imagination? The premise of the project is that the practices of collaboratory artistic and scientific experimentation open up new perspectives on how to treat cognitive processes that stay optically invisible to their own subject.

Selected publications:– Book/ Edited volumes
Media: between Magic and Technology, co-edited with Nina Sosna, Moscow: Armchair Scientist Press, 2014 (in Russian).
Art Focus for Technologies: Charm and Challenge, NCCA, Ekaterinburg, 2011 (exhibition catalog) – Journal articles and book chapters
1. ‘The Ambiguity Effects of the Techno-Sublime’, in Contemporary Visual Culture and the Sublime, ed. Temenuga Trifonova. London, New York: Routledge, 2017.
2. ‘Plasticity and Feedback. Schemas of Indetermination in Cybernetics and Art’, in the Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), 2016. P. 51-58.
3. ‘Sound Cartographies. In Search of the Sublime’, in L.A. Re.Play: Mobile Network Culture in Placemaking, special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac, vol. 21, issue 1, 2016. P. 44-59.
4. ‘Transmediality, Transliteracy, Transduction and the Aesthetics of the Technological Sublime’, in OPEN FIELDS. Art and Science Research Practices in the Network Society, ed. by Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits, Armin Medosch, special issue of Acoustic Space, Vol. 15, 2016. P. 118-129.
5. ‘Augmented Reality Art and Proprioception: Towards a Theoretical Framework’, in the Proceedings of the 21st International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), 2015 (electronic publication).
6. ‘Mechanisms of Augmentation in Proprioceptive Media Art’, in Media&Culture Journal, issue Augment, December 2013.
7. ‘The Technological Sublime in Media Art’, in The Garden of Digital Delights, ed. by Chris Hales, special issue of Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis, n. 67, 2013. P. 33-44.
8.  ‘The Problem of the ‘Immaterial’ in New Media Art’, in Discussion, 8 (38) 2013. P. 42-47 (in Russian).
9. ‘Category of the Sublime in light of the Philosophical Theories of Affectivity’, in Questions of Theory and Practice. (11) 2013. P. 75-83 (in Russian).
10. ‘Mission to Earth: Terrestrial Proprioception and the Cyber-Sublime’ (co-authored with Marc Barasch), in The Projected and Prophetic: Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace, and Science Fiction, ed. Jordan J. Copeland, Rodopi Press, 2011, electronic publication.