The burning gaze. An aesthetics of shame in the age of the virtual
Federica Cavaletti
research: Seminar
The burning gaze. An aesthetics of shame in the age of the virtual
Federica Cavaletti
Shame is an emotion that shakes us to the core, and to which we are accustomed to assign a strongly negative valence; at the same time, by bringing to attention essential aspects of our image and identity, it holds a high transformative potential.
In the contemporary context, the dynamics of shame turn out to be conditioned by the technologies that mediate social interactions. In some cases, and perhaps unexpectedly, these very technologies can provide the opportunity for a positive reshaping of the emotion in question.
On this grounding, the book presented in this seminar sets to answer the following questions. What do we mean by shame today, in the so-called age of the virtual? What tools do we have at our disposal to try to overcome it?
Biography
Federica Cavaletti
Federica Cavaletti’s main research fields are aesthetics and phenomenology, and she combines theoretical and empirical methods of investigation. She obtained her PhD degree in Humanities (curriculum: Communication, media, and performing arts) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan. The topic of her dissertation was time perception in audiovisual media, which she explored both theoretically and by means of methods from cognitive psychology and empirical phenomenology (micro-phenomenological interviews). Within the ERC project “AN-ICON”, she is mainly contributing to the “Theory” and “Practices” research axes. More in particular, she is working on the first-person experience of VR environments and on the dynamics of the gazes implied in these environments. She is also addressing these topics in relation to the uses of VR in professional domains such as psychology, psychiatry, and medicine.
research: seminar
The burning gaze. An aesthetics of shame in the age of the virtual
Federica Cavaletti
Shame is an emotion that shakes us to the core, and to which we are accustomed to assign a strongly negative valence; at the same time, by bringing to attention essential aspects of our image and identity, it holds a high transformative potential.
In the contemporary context, the dynamics of shame turn out to be conditioned by the technologies that mediate social interactions. In some cases, and perhaps unexpectedly, these very technologies can provide the opportunity for a positive reshaping of the emotion in question.
On this grounding, the book presented in this seminar sets to answer the following questions. What do we mean by shame today, in the so-called age of the virtual? What tools do we have at our disposal to try to overcome it?