'Transpoetics of Distance' explores the intersections of affect, media, and environment through the transmediation of light. Operating within a contemporary post-digital condition where ubiquitous technologies flatten spacetime into immediate presence, the research argues that what is at stake is a crisis in the perception of distance: an aesthetic and epistemic shift marked by the erosion of situated perspectives through which the world is experienced and understood across media.
To address the challenges this techno-mediated condition poses, the research proposes 'Transpoetics of Distance': an artistic transmedia methodology that works from within media to reappropriate the light-based technologies implicated in this condition. By shifting the operational paradigm from the 'tele-' (operating at a distance) to the 'trans-' (operating across it), the inquiry reclaims distance as a productive site of situated insight, performing it as a multiscalar magnitude across and beyond media. Through the interplay between media practice and autoethnographic writing, the project unfolds across three distinct transmedia ecologies, each articulating a different scale and operation of distance: the intimate, through the transduction of feeling; the interstitial, through the translation of trace; and the infrastructural, through the transposition of image.
Situated at the intersection of media art, media theory, philosophy, and artistic research, the research establishes a framework in which transmedia practice functions simultaneously as an artistic and a research practice. Ultimately, it demonstrates how distance is not merely a physical gap in spacetime overcome by contemporary media, but a fundamental aesthetic and epistemic magnitude that, when made perceptible through practice, enables new forms of relation and agency.
Luiz Zanotello (he/him) is a Brazilian artist, researcher, and educator based in Berlin. Working across machines, algorithmic systems, and kinetic installations, his practice examines how technology mediates time, distance, and environment. By translating imperceptible phenomena into tangible operations, he uses technical infrastructures as both material and subject to explore human perception during times of technological acceleration and ecological transformation.
His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, MAK Vienna, Kunstmuseum Karlsruhe, Silesian Museum Katowice, gnration Braga, FIBER Festival Amsterdam, and FILE São Paulo. Recognitions include selection for the Japan Media Arts Festival, the Petra and Dieter Frese Stiftung prize, and residencies at Akademie Schloss Solitude and the European Media Art Platform.
Zanotello holds an MA in Digital Media from HfK Bremen as a DAAD fellow. Formerly Assistant Professor for New Media at UdK Berlin (2017–2023), he currently teaches Digital Media at HfK Bremen, serves as Associate Editor of the Journal for Artistic Research, and is a member of the EU COST Action Artistic Intelligence.
In partnership with the University of the Arts Bremen's Binational Artistic PhD Program