Doctoral Candidate Mag. phil. Anita Elisabeth Hafner
Related Supervisors
Study Program Dr.-Studium der Philosophie; Kunst u. kulturwiss. Studien (Stzw)
Abstract The dissertation project aims to investigate the new aesthetic practices of light projections (visuals) since the early 1990s in England’s Techno music culture, focused on the female Austria pioneers working in this field. Visuals are a special form of time-based media shown in the (Techno) club, improvised live and synchronized to electronic music by a disc jockey (DJ) or band, or generated by computer code (see Rohlf 2004, Scheel 2005) Spinrad 2005; Eskandar & Prisna 2006; Faulkner 2006; Fischer 2008, 2009; Lund 2009; Alexander 2010).A media-theoretical investigation on (audio) visual / time-based phenomena took mainly place in exhibition publications (Block 1980, Szeemann 1983, Frohne 1999, Weibel 2006, Fischer 2008, 2009, 2010, Rainer & Rollig & Daniels & Ammer 2009) and is hence "Close to the artistic material" (Diederichsen 2010). In recent years independent scientific publications (Droschl & Höller & Wiltsche 2005, Lund & Lund 2009, Daniels & Naumann 2010, 2011) dealt with the relationship between music and visuals. Dissertations with the subjects club and VJ-ing, focused on (theatrical) performance (Tuco 2014), software development (Batty 2014) and music video (Röthig 2015).The Riot-Grrrl movement in the early 1990s in the North American hardcore punk scene and its propagation of "Girl Power" (see Kearney 2003, Peglow & Engelmann 2013) motivated girls and young women in Austria, to create of active cultural production and participation.I aim to develop primary sources by expert interviews (Meuser & Nagel 2008). My interest is not so much about the person, but the interviewee (visuals pioneer) as an expert for a specific field (visuals). The interviewee is not an isolated case, but a representative. The evaluation of the expert interviews is aimed at analyzing and comparing the contents of the expert knowledge to the literature, which I have gained from a literature review. Cases are included in the study according to the pattern of gradual selection (see Flick 2002).My approach to visuals is not about a bibliographic, but about the artistic technique of the visual pioneers and their emancipatory, participatory approach. The knowledge and experience of visual pioneers are a key to the specific understanding of the field with its problems.