Dr. Kevin Williams
Kevin Williams is an Associate Professor of
Communications at Shepherd College. He earned his doctorate in the
philosophy of communication, emphasis on phenomenology and semiotics,
at Ohio University. He earned a Masters in speech communication, with
an emphasis on new technologies, from William Patterson University,
NJ. He earned a dual major Bachelors of Arts in Communication and Fine
Arts, emphasis in music, from Ramapo College, NJ. His research is
focused on the phenomenology of mediation, and the impact of new
technologies on the cultural life-world. He is a member of the Edmund
Husserl Society, the International Jean Gesber Society, the
International Communication Association, and the National
Communication Association. The research presented in this seminar was
developed out of dissertation research, and later drafts of this
on-going study have been funded in part by the Shepherd College
Faculty Development Committee. It has been presented in different
forms in the United States and Canada. He is currently developing a
book-length manuscript on philosophy and Frank Herbert's epic science
fiction series,. The Dune Chronicles. He lives in the woods, on
the edge of town, with his wife, Tina, and their numerous dogs, cats,
and rabits.
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"Synesthesia: Music
Video's Integral Aesthetic"
To gaze upon the musical lines of
Kandinski’s painting; to hear the gothic cathedrals in Schumann’s
Third Symphony rising; to feel the gaze of The Panther’s eyes in
Rilke’s poetic writing; and to watch the musical visuals of many music
video's editing, is to engage with painting, musical composition,
poems, and videos that express perceptions of the integration of sense
modalities. These works communicate an aspect of embodied
consciousness that is often neglected, disregarded, or dismissed: that
awareness is synesthesia—the crossing or overlapping of sense
experience. Understanding synesthesia as inherently fundamental to
human communication, consciousness, and experience allows further
distance from understanding visual phenomena in the shadow of
historically and linguistically imposed categories, and movement
towards an integral theory of visual communication. It allows us to
recognize that the distinctions between touch, taste, sight, sound,
and smell are conventional categories with heuristic and hermeneutic
value. While these differential categories are based on experience (I
can differentiate between sight and sound), and are useful (such
distinctions facilitate speech and dialogue), they lead cognition away
from the recognition that these phenomena are also interconnected and
integrated (as an intertwining, chiasm, or flesh, in Merleau-Ponty’s,
1968, terms). The senses cooperate: one sees more clearly with hands
and feet than eyes in a dark room; in this example, touch is
cooperative and coextensive with sight.
The presentation, "Synesthesia: Music Video's Integral Aesthetic,"
explores the historical conception of synesthesia, the debate
concerning its reality and/or ideality, the "problem" of language, and
music video's contribution to aesthetic history. In the end, we will
dissolve the Cartesian dualism that plagues research concerning
synesthetic phenomena, and discuss an integral theory of synesthesia
grounded in Merleau-Ponty's communication theory--the circularity of
expression and perception. |
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