The project entitled the Laboratory of Interpretation is situated in the broadly understood space of multimodal Polish Studies, situating it between disciplines and fields of science, on the frontier between the humanities and arts, social sciences and technology, between philosophy, literary studies and the study of art – including film, theatre, photography, music or painting or, more broadly, visual art. It intertwines them in an interdisciplinary way, both in close and possible correspondence, but always situates the field of interest and work in close relation to other texts of culture. The paths or avenues of research thus lead from texts and images, including photography, painting, sculpture, performance art to metaverse. The Laboratory of Interpretation thus links the visual and the verbal aspects.
The dialogical nature of the research carried out has both a theoretical and a project dimension. In collaboration with various cultural and scientific institutions and young researchers (students and pupils), it leads to the grasping, definition and development of a new dimension of the reception of texts of culture, closely integrated with modern modes of participation and multisensory experience. In this respect, modern concepts and theories have inspired thinking about the interpretation process as an individual encounter with a text, artefact, object or exhibit. The Laboratory of Interpretation is thus a structure in which the individual, singular reading is realised in the foreground. Its overarching category, on the other hand, becomes attentiveness and the touching upon another’s experience. This personal perspective of viewing, however, is no less an essential element than the category of narrative, woven into the text of culture itself, as well as inscribed in the process of activating it in dialogue. In view of the above, the issue of receiving and understanding literature expands to include new ways of experiencing it. We are referring in particular to multimedia, multisensoriality and kinaesthetics, as well as participation focused on interactive activities.
The Laboratory of Interpretation includes meetings with artists (e.g. painters, photographers or poets), but also study visits to artists’ ateliers, research laboratories or museum space, as well as workshops on verbal and visual form research. All these activities have one main goal – to enrich the interpretative competences of the participants in the meetings. Before doing so, however, they place them in a situation of intimacy with the creative act. This is why the activities within the framework of the Laboratory of Interpretation are particularly focused on such an issue as empira, i.e. entering into the text and image and their technique, reaching into the depths of things and structures that make them up, as well as the ways in which they work. In this sense, the Laboratory of Interpretation is at the same time a laboratory of innovation, engagement and openness. Facing experience and the reflection that flows from it is indeed a necessary element on the way to exploring and reformulating the current language of the humanities. Consequently, in this journey of discovery, it becomes necessary to enter the space of immersion made possible by walking through and in the space of the works, as well as the interactive nature of experiencing them. Through exploration and a sense of agency, the viewer (participant) is all the more able to find out and ask about the meanings, form, technique of action and influence, as well as the craftsmanship of the work in order to, finally, discover him or herself.
