Cedric Kiefer

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
09/04/2020

Article

Augmenting The Physiognomic Gaze Across Space and Time

A Conversation with onformative

Cedric Kiefer, Devon Schiller

Vol. 3, no. 1
2018
09/04/2020
https://doi.org/10.47659/m4.054.art

37 min.

To observe a river as it meanders is a bit like watching the grass grow. You can know it is happening. But you cannot see it.

Augmented photography can be used in the digital arts to over-code upon real-world environments with computer-generated data, in order to translate stimuli across sensory modalities, and thereby extent or increase our faculties for perceiving spatial and temporal relations. Because of this media-specific affordance, the augmentation of the photographic medium may have especial application for the “physiognomic gaze,” a way of doing “form interpretation” or “nature knowing” based on the physical behaviors and psychological phenomena of the human face, head and body. The innovativeness of such technological prosthetics becomes manifest how new ways are generated to both perceive and to know those experiences that were previously unseeable or otherwise unsensable. Here, I converse with Cedric Kiefer (co-founder and creative lead) of the onformative studio for digital art and design in Germany about their works Meandering River (2017), Pathfinder (2014) and Google Faces (2013). And we explore how onformative uses the augmented photograph in their digital artworks to extend the physiognomic gaze, bringing data not visible to the naked eye into the senseable sphere, to offer the audience different perspectives about space and time.

Keywords: augmented photography, computer-generated data, digital art and science, onformative, physiognomic gaze

Devon Schiller is a Member of the Academic Staff in the Department of Image Science at Danube University, Austria, where he lectures as a media rhetorician and visual semiotician. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, He holds a BFA in Art History and Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, an MA MediaArtHistories from Danube University. From a theoretical framework of cognitive semiotics, emotions history, and image science, Schiller’s scholarship focuses on the media genealogies and visual rhetoric of physiognomy, the science of facial expression, and digital biometrics. Devon is certificate trained in the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), as well as the Neuropsychological Gesture Coding System (NEUROGES), and has conducted grant-supported research on automated facial expression recognition at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS). He is also an internationally exhibited digital artist.

Cedric Kiefer is co-founder and creative lead at the onformative studio for digital art and design in Berlin, Germany. He established the Studio in 2010 at a restored factory, along with co-founder and managing director Julia Laub. A team of creative coders and generative designers, onformative exhibits their work in Australia, China, Europe, and North America, as well as having clients such as Nike and Porsche. In 2013, the Art Directors Club (ADC) recognized Cedric as a “Young Gun” for his vanguard creativity.

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