The Einstein project aimed to better understand the role of affects in literature and art and to open up new ways of analyzing them. The project consisted of two closely linked sub-projects. The first sub-project was primarily dedicated to the British avant-garde writer Ann Quin and the French author Claude Simon, whose experimental novels were examined in terms of their methods of intermedial affect modeling.
The second sub-project pursued an overarching theoretical and methodological goal. It aimed to critically relate the various approaches from the complex and multi-layered field of affect studies to phenomena of aesthetic experience and to develop a new "aesthetics of affect" from them. The reference to the concept of psychotechniques, proved to be of particular importance here, Its potential to specifically influence feelings, thoughts, imagination and motivation was elaborated in two basic volumes on the "Power of the Psychotechnical" (Campus Verlag).