VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

My proposal is based on the examination of digital art installations by artistic collective such as Teamlab, Marshmallow and Atelier des Lumières. I propose to explore the phenomenological characters of the image (its plastic and mnemonic qualities, its rhythm) and its relation to the body of the viewer to understand what is generally agreed to be a “marvellous” experience. I reckon that the scrolling rhythm of the images as well as their formal structure is essential to the quality of the felt experience, contributing to an oceanic feeling, of fluid immersion, of continuity between the support (natural or architectural), the gesture of the spectator and the image. This is accentuated by the choice of images marked by fractal rhythm structures, allowing the perception of the infinitely small in the infinitely large. Perhaps this rhythm generates alpha waves (Ivea, 2016), but also a sense of agency (Lesmoir-Gordon, 2010) that could have a link with the golden ratio (Influx, 2022). In this sense we postulate an equivalence between rhythm and structures as proposed by Christopher Alexander. In the Nature of order Alexander describes the moment of fusion between the organic self and the environment as organism as an epiphany, a feeling of wholeness which comes from a recognition of shared organic structures.