For the 8th edition of Vasari Project, Le Laboratoire d’Art, in partnership with BRAVO, is pleased to invite Prof. Derrick de Kerckhove for a conference on virtual art.
Between the Renaissance and Cézanne, the poetics of space were ruled by perspective and the spectacular. Even the magic illusions of the Baroque era were eventually directed at effecting a transition from a multisensory to a dominantly visual spatial representation. Take trompe-l’oeil, for an example of the eye giving information normally provided by the hand. Today, the trend has been reversed and a paradoxical tactile, proprioceptive sensory modality has been developed over the centuries of electricity. We may be traversing a Neo-Baroque era where the effects of a dominantly visual episteme are reversed in multimedia, 3D and VR. In the global environmental perception that is developing, the point of being, that is a proprioceptive sensation of the world, may be doubling if not replacing the point of view as the principal referent of one’s position in space.
Derrick de Kerckhove is a Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto and was the former Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology. He received his Ph.D. in French Language and Literature from the University of Toronto in 1975 and a Doctorat du 3e cycle in Sociology of Art from the University of Tours (France) in 1979. He was an associate of the Centre for Culture and Technology from 1972 to 1980 and worked with Marshall McLuhan for over ten years as translator, assistant and co-author.
Vasary Project is a program of training and professionalization offered once a year. Through this initiative, BRAVO invited several prestigious lecturers such as Fred Forest, Jean Detheux, Sophie Lavaud, Christian Van Dendorp and Jean Châteauvert.