Dr
Paul Atkinson
Profile overview
Dr Paul Atkinson teaches within the Academic and Professional Writing program at Monash University, Australia. He has published widely on a range of media, from cinema and animation to painting, music and comic books, in addition to his work on philosophy and aesthetics. He is particularly interested in the relationship between time and visual form in process philosophy, which is central to his monograph, Henri Bergson and Visual Culture: A Philosophy for a New Aesthetic (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is currently working on digital media, in particular the relationship between search algorithms and creative practice, as well as the aesthetics of video games.
Research topics
Collaboration information
Most of my research examines the aesthetic differences between visual mediums (cinema, television, comic books, animation, dance, painting, etc.). I mainly focus on patterns of movement and visual form, from the movement of a paintbrush to a dancer's body. Much of this analysis has been informed by process philosophy.
My current research investigates the relationship between creative practice and automated systems, from search algorithms to voice assistants. I am seeking to understand how creativity changes in response to the devices and computational systems we use. In addition, I am investigating video games, aesthetics, and the player's relationship to the visual world.