Sensing the Future. Moholy-Nagy, Media and the Arts

Life in the digital economy of information and images enriches us but often induces a sense of being overwhelmed. "Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, Media and the Arts" considers the impact of technology by exploring ways it was addressed in the practice of the Hungarian polymath artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), a prominent professor at the Bauhaus and a key figure in the history of Modernism. Moholy-Nagy felt that people needed guidance to cope with the onslaught of sensory input in an increasingly technologized, mediatized, hyper-stimulating environment. His ideas informed media theorists such as Walter Benjamin, John Cage, Sigfried Giedion, and Marshall McLuhan, who anticipated digital culture as it emerged. Should we then regard Moholy-Nagy as a pioneer of the digital? His aesthetic engagement with the technology/body problematic broached the notions of immersion, interactivity and bodily participation, innately offering a critique of today's disembodiment.