Dr Krisztian Hofstadter

Biography

Researcher, teacher and artist. These have been my main roles in the last 20 years. Currently, as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of York, I am working on the Enhancing Audio Description project. My primary task here is to help convey cinematography through film sound to visually impaired audiences. After three years teaching the Navigating the Digital World module at the University of Essex, I am now a visiting fellow there. In this capacity, I'm drafting a research grant application with the aim of continuing my biofeedback art research established during my PhD. Here’s a snippet from my research funding application draft: "The work aims to empower participants by enhancing their self-awareness through insights gained from altered states of consciousness (ASC), expressed artistically. Through a feedback loop where self-awareness amplifies artistic expression reciprocally, members will collaborate on developing personalized visual and auditory entrainment methods to induce and maintain ASC. We will use brain-computer interfaces to record data on the neural correlates of entrainment and ASC for real-time biofeedback and offline analysis. By recognizing our agency in addressing personal challenges, we can create a ripple effect of positive change, ultimately contributing to societal well-being through individual growth." As a freelancer and artist, I have been creating visual and sonic art, websites, while more recently experimenting with creative writing. My new website, krishofstadter.com, acts as my Ship of Theseus — a playground where I develop my philosophy and communication skills. By doing this publicly on the website, I hope to inspire others to do the same. By deleting everything from the site and slowly rebuilding it from scratch — tabula rasa — I reflect on the last 20 years spent as a creative technologist. In this process, I experiment with local LLMs to find the right balance between human creativity and machine capabilities, exploring nonlinear narratives through websites, coding, embedded media, and other tools.