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In past decades, the subject atmosphere and mood has gone beyond the physio-meteorological and psychological scopes and become a new direction of aesthetics which concerns two sides of the same phenomenon. As the primary sensuous reality constructed by both the perceiving subject and the perceived object, atmosphere and mood are neither a purely subjective state nor an objective thing. Atmosphere is essentially a quasi-object pervaded by a specific affective quality and a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our outer life experiences, while mood is a quasi-subject pervaded by specific objective quality and thus a ubiquitous phenomenon forming the foundation of our inner life experiences. A practical dimension is thereby, from the outset, embedded in the consideration of both concepts. This is mainly characterized by actions and, correspondingly, ethical aspects, which concern the design and creation of atmosphere and thus the triggering of mood through works of art. Here, on the one hand, the process of artistic formation, long neglected in the European tradition, is given prominence as an aesthetic practice, and on the other hand, an interactive dialogue is effectively established between the artist, the work and the viewer. Due to the fact that atmosphere and mood, both as in-between, emphasize the interaction of the perceiver and the perceived from two sides, here the decisive question is: in what kind of environment do we live or participate and in what way do we experience it? The focus of aesthetics is now not on the conventional issue whether the environment is beautiful or gives us a sense of beauty, but on how the environment influences our feeling of being there (Befinden) through our own sensuality. Such an approach would contribute to a critical transformation in aesthetic methodology, namely from the ontological and/or epistemological what to the phenomenological and anthropological how.

The tension between atmosphere and mood, as revealed here, opens up a large space for exploring a new understanding of aesthetics. On this basis the special issue pursued to diversify this discussion on an international level.

Atmosphere and Mood: Two Sides of the Same Phenomenon, edited by Martina Sauer & Zhuofei Wang, New York & São Paulo [Special Issue, Art Style 11, 07, 2023]

With a Call for Essays, the special issue Multimodality sought contributions that accept not only the material but also the body-bound dependence of media perception and understanding. To this end, contributions were included that shed light on both the structural and signifying potential of artistic works through multimodal analysis. Particular attention was paid to contributions that clarify how the structural features - the modes - of the arts, their perception, and their signifying potential in terms of content are interrelated and how they are to be understood in communicative and thus socioculturally relevant terms. Thus, in addition to neuroscientific contributions, those from cultural anthropology, art history, image and art studies, and literary studies were included.

Multimodality. The Sensually Organized Potential of Artistic Works, edited by Martina Sauer & Christiane Wagner, New York & São Paulo [Special Issue, Art Style 10, 01, 2022]

2021 statt 2020 hat der 16. internationale Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Semiotik zum Thema Transformationen stattgefunden. Bedingt durch die Corona-Pandemie wurde er schließlich nicht in Präsenz an der TU Chemnitz durchgeführt, sondern fand online statt: http://www.semiotik.eu/transformationen-2020. 11 Sektionen mit unterschiedlichen Schwerpunkten aus der Archäologie, der Architektur, dem Design, den Digital Humanities, zum Körper, aus dem Bereich Literatur & Jugend- und Subkulturen, Medien, Mode, Umwelt- und Karto/Atlassemiotik und Zeichenphilosophie schrieben dazu je gesondert ein Call for Paper aus.

Die Sektion Bild & Kulturwissenschaft wandte sich an die Forschungsgemeinschaft mit einem deutsch/englischen Call zu Bildern als Agenten kultureller Transformationsprozesse – Images as Agents of Cultural Transformation Processes. Gerade auch Bilder – mit dem Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaftler Aby M. Warburg – als Agenten zu verstehen und insofern nicht nur deren Erkenntnis-, sondern auch deren Wirkungspotential anzuerkennen und nachzuvollziehen, stand darin im Fokus. Als aktive Teile von Kultur, vermitteln sie diese nicht nur, sondern regen zugleich zu Handlungen an. Insofern lassen sich Bilder nicht nur als Dokumente und Zeugnisse der kollektiven Geschichte verstehen, sondern übernehmen als Träger und Speicher affektiv wirksamer Kommunikationselemente einen aktiven Part. Als Agenten kultureller Transformationsprozesse nehmen Bilder einen eigenen Status innerhalb des menschlichen Ausdrucks- und Wirkungsvermögens ein. Die Aufsätze in diesem Band legen davon ein beredtes Zeugnis ab.

Bilder als Agenten kultureller Transformationsprozesse, hg. v. Martina Sauer & Jacobus Bracker [Themenband, IMAGE 36, 08 2022]

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them.The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part of human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship.

As the articles of this special issue show, this approach is now gaining momentum in a broad range of image- and object-related disciplines. It may not surprise that the authors’ perspectives on images and objects vary widely within the issue. However, thanks to the use of affordances as a theoretical and/or methodological tool, they all contribute to fundamental questions of perceiving, receiving, understanding, as well as interpreting, and acting with sensuously present culture.

On The Material Image. Affordances as a New Approach to Visual Culture Studies, edited by Elisabeth Günther & Martina Sauer, New York & São Paulo: Special Issue, Art Style 7, 03, 2021

We live in the age of postmodernism. What does that mean? With a call for essays, we asked for proposals for a better understanding. At the same time, we were looking for posts that show how the arts have processed and are still processing the change from the modern to the postmodern selfconception of man, which has been described by philosophy since the 1950s to today. This special issue thus demonstrates how architects, designers and artists have reacted to the new socio-politically relevant concepts of postmodernism.

With contributions of Simone Kraft on architecture, Arianna Fantuzzi on self-portraits, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen on visual arts in the 1980s, Anna Kristensson on design, Iris Laner on postmodern theory and the work of Jeff Wall, Christiane Wagner on postmodern avatars and finally, I contributed with a text on the deconstruction of the familiar in postmodern theory and the work of Karin Kneffel.

On the Postmodern Age, edited by Martina Sauer, New York & São Paulo: Special Issue, Art Style 6, 09, 2020

Wie nehmen wir Welt wahr, wie Bilder? Auf der Annahme, dass wir Welt wie Bilder zunächst über unsere Empfindungen erschließen, mithin zwischen beidem ein unmittelbarer Zusammenhang besteht, baut das Buch auf. In der Diskussion von Faszination und Schrecken, wie sie die Deutschlandbilder Anselm Kiefers auslösen können, diskutiert die Autorin die Konsequenzen und Schlussfolgerungen daraus für unser kulturelles Selbstverständnis. Für die Forschung neu entwickelt die Autorin darauf aufbauend eine Bild- und Kulturtheorie, die den Sonderstatus der Kunst mit erläutert.

In erster Auflage ausgezeichnet im Rahmen des Hans-und-Lea-Grundig-Preis 2015 der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung  [Berlin, 26.11.2015]

Martina Sauer, Faszination - Schrecken.

Zur Handlungsrelevanz ästhetischer Erfahrung anhand Anselm Kiefers "Deutschlandbilder", 2. Aufl. Heidelberg 2018: arthistoricum.net 2018, Gebundenes Buch 36,90 €, Taschenbuch 26,90 €