25. März 2026, 17.00 Uhr Kunstuni Linz, Hauptplatz 8, 4020 Linz (Lecture Hall F - H8.05.03)
The Department of Cultural Studies invites you to a lecture series. with Tina Frank (Visual Communication, University of Arts Linz) and Alexis Dworsky (Media Design, University of Arts Linz).
How can a disappearing glacier be digitally archived and made virtually accessible? In our FWF-funded artistic research project “Beyond Glaciation,” we collect data in the high mountains, haul drones, hydrophones, and all kinds of bulky high-tech equipment up to an altitude of 3,000 meters, freeze our fingers, and get blisters on our feet. Here, “media art” is not only created on the computer, but especially in the physical confrontation with topography, weather, and material. The glacier is understood as a holobiont, a living archive of global environmental changes that stores far more than just frozen water. The lecture explores the translation processes between analog and digital, between physical and abstract sensory experiences—and asks what sensory hierarchies we need to shift in order to preserve the multisensory nature of the glacier for a post-glacial future. We show how the physical exertion of mountaineering, the plundering of containers for glacier debris, and the construction of bulky exhibition architectures become part of the supposedly incorporeal-digital media art process.
Alexis Dworsky is an artist, researcher, and professor of media design at the University of Art and Design Linz. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and wrote his doctoral thesis on the cultural history of dinosaurs. In his work, Dworsky intertwines physical space with the digital realm. He travels around the world with Google Street View and gives critical, performative travel lectures about it, uses generative artificial intelligence to be able to do skateboard tricks even when his knees no longer cooperate, and digitizes disappearing glaciers using photogrammetry, so that they can be experienced virtually, even if they will soon no longer exist in this form.
Tina Frank is an internationally active designer, artist, and professor of visual communication at the University of Art and Design Linz. Her work bridges the gap between data visualization and music visualization at the intersection of information design and visual arts. Her research focuses on translating complex information— from text and music to scientific data — into visual experiences. In her practice, she explores the performative qualities of images and how they convey knowledgein innovative ways. Tina Frank makes glacier data audible and visible, giving the reconstruction a temporal and sensory dimension.
All Dates of the lecture series “The Senses in Performance”:
11. März 2026
Introduction by OLFAC – Silke Felber, Freda Fiala and Julia Ostwald
25. März 2026
320 GB im Rucksack – der physische Aspekt digitaler Kunst über Gletscher
Tina Frank (Visual Communication, University of Arts Linz) &
Alexis Dworsky (Media Design, University of Arts Linz)
15. April 2026
Dis_sensual – A crip choreographer’s re-distribution of the sensible
Michael Turinsky (Artist, Vienna)
22. April 2026
Performing Snakes in Modernity and Today
Nicole Haitzinger (Dance Studies, University of Salzburg) &
Christina Gillinger (Tanzquartier Vienna TQW)
29. April 2026
Lingering with Bass (2024, Steve McQueen)
Ulrike Hanstein (VALIE EXPORT Center, University of Arts Linz)
6. Mai 2026
Sinn für Unlösbares
bankleer – Karin Kasböck & Christoph Maria Leitner
13. Mai 2026
Mimi o Sumasu – the Very Act of Listening
Mia Yoshida (Artistic Research and Head of the Zentrum Fokus Forschung, University of Applied Arts Vienna)
20. Mai 2026
Tasting skin. On chilis and chills
Karin Harrasser (Cultural Studies, University of Arts Linz and Director of
ifk – International Research Center for Cultural Studies)
27. Mai 2026
Olfactory Violence and the Freedom to Speak: Stink Bombs in Interwar Europe
William Tullett (Early Modern History, University of York)
3. Juni 2026
Sensing the Atmospheres of Painters’ Studios in Nineteenth-Century France
Erika Wicky (Olfactions, Université Grenoble Alpes)
10. Juni 2026
Hee-Hawing Democracy: Somatic Articulations Beyond the Logos - Inhalt folgt
Bettina Wuttig (University of Marburg)
17. Juni 2026
Greetings from the Swamp
Maria Nalbantova (Artist, Sofia)
24. Juni 2026
A loving ear – toward a poetic ecology of feeling
Brandon LaBelle (Independent Researcher, Berlin)