Exhibition

Obstruction

Gustav Hellberg

At irregular intervals, 24 car park gates either allow access or create barriers, blocking the way for visitors. The situation changes constantly, alternating between standstill and motion. Gustav Hellberg plays with the rules, visitors allow themselves to be entrapped, bowing to the apparatus’ requirements.

PHYSIOGNOMIC SCRUTINIZER

Marnix de Nijs

Before visitors are allowed to enter the exhibition, their biometric data (computer-based facial recognition) are recorded and matched with those of people in a database. Is she perhaps the glamour model with loads of facebook friends or the musician with a drugs problem? Is he, by any chance, a brutal gangster with a police record as long as your elbow, a world-famous philosopher or a celebrated Britpop artist? As is now often the case, the software makes the decisions about the population’s trustworthiness, potential for aggression or social status.

REVOLVE

Macular

“Revolve” is a massiv kinetic machine designed to scatter abstract light-patterns into its surrounding space. Hundreds of LEDs are mounted on a fast spinning rectangle and perform a generative composition consisting of stroboscopic pulses and lines of light.

ACTIVISTS

Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak

Activists is an installation composed of mobile robots with protest signs. The robots move freely in the exhibition space and respond to visitors and other displayed works. They occupy spaces and make different actions, fighting for a better society

Sisyphus Actions

Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak

The pneumatic video installation Sisyphus Actions presents a transitory, in-between position, state of being stuck in a surreal, absurd situation. It features Nika Oblak & Primoz Novak repeating monotonous, seemingly purposeless actions over and over. Sisyphus Actions evokes contemporary global way of life, where people work more and more, to be able to shop more. We are trapped by our daily routine and artificially produced consumerist needs.

! 

Anke Eckardt

A vertical line of loudspeakers plays a downward sliding tone which is followed by a heavy subbass punch on the ground.

The punch seems to trigger an 'eruption' in a tank, which is filled with black liquid. The liquid erupts in the form of a round wave, which disintegrates and splashes in all directions. Over the duration of the exhibition a black speckled, dirty image thus forms on the initially clean, white floor.

Hermes

A cell phone opera in four acts

Karl Heinz Jeron

“I’m on the train at the moment. Where are you?” Now that (nearly) everyone has a mobile phone, even the most private telephone conversations are held not only behind closed doors, but in public. For years, the artist Karl Heinz Jeron has been annoyed by the senseless phone calls made by his fellow-passengers. A few months ago, he decided to write down the conversations. He has already filled two notebooks. The texts are being digitised and performed by small, singing robots: four soloists and a choir. Karl Heinz Jeron is collaborating with a professional composer to set the work to music.

Hermes, the patron of oratory, lends his name to the piece. The conversations held over the mobile phone illustrate general human situations under the headings secret, sex, guilt and betrayal. In these four acts, the artist stages the transcribed conversations, transforming these everyday situations into an artistic act.

HERMES Performances:

At the Opening, Wed, 20:30 h and 22:30 h; Thu-Sun daily 14:30 h and 18:30 h

Simulation

Jörg Brinkmann

A speech about Love – extracted from a YouTube video – is projected back onto the body. In an almost motionless state, only the bottom lip is moving. It is moved by a small motor that reacts to the speech file fed into the system.

A project of the Media Campus

Trash Hits
Dumping, Searching and Finding. Cleaning.

Ulrike Gabriel

Unusual data acquisition on the state of poverty in Germany: for two years, Ulrike Gabriel has been exploring how often a litter bin in a city centre is used. Firstly, she counts how often the bin is rummaged through for useful items (food, deposit bottles); secondly, she determines how often items are discarded in it. Artistic data mining on the social situation in our society.

RETOUCHING MEMORY

Alexander Glandien

The installation deals experimentally with the process of remembering which, above all, is also a process of forgetting, suppressing and distorting. Memory retouches and reinterprets the past. The images in this installation, created automatically from water, are short-lived – they change constantly, they fade and disappear completely. The constant change is pierced by the recurrent automatic, almost Sisyphus-like, new production by the drawing machine.

Out of Nothing

Maria Vedder

A work exploring human error, existential cycles and butterfly effects. The nucleus of the video is a test arrangement for a visualisation of chaos research. At the same time, our dream of mobility is satirised. Chaos theory describes under which conditions a system loses control and how quickly it collapses in chaos.

PHASE=ORDER

Macular

In this kinetic light installation, the artist duo Macular explores the beauty and elegance of large flocks. Based on organic choreography, 96 small glass areas move in the light, creating a play of shadows and reflection patterns that closely resemble natural flocking behaviour. Together with the movements of light, the sound of the tiny servomotors creates a multisensory space of experience.

Ser y Durar

Democracia

The aim of “Parkour” is to overcome architectonic obstacles with the power of one’s own body, using elegant, flowing movements, leading to a new creative experience of the urban environment. This urban sport emerged in the 1980s amongst the subcultures of the banlieus of Paris in an attempt to win back the city as a sphere of activity.

For “Ser Y Durar”, the artistic duo Democracia engaged a parkour group to perform in a Madrid cemetery where prominent personalities of modern Spain are buried. In this way, they explore the relationships and effects of various positions and cultures of present-day Spain.

THE GATHERING

Melanie Manchot

This new installation by Melanie Manchot brings together three of her current works for the first time. With special reference to the presentation space, the video movies of the trilogy explore collective experiences within orchestrated events: “Celebration (Cyprus Street)” is based on the rich history of street parties in London’s East End the tradition of group portraiture in historic newsreel footage and photographs recording these events. “Walk (Square)” explores movements of crowds, whether in processions, parades, street carnivals or protest marches. The work questions the extent to which the act of walking, crossing the public space, signifies a “form of public expression.” “Dance (All Night, Paris)”, on the other hand, brings together ten different kinds of dance into one room, from tango to hip-hop and rock, creating a wealth of rhythms and types of movement.

'Celebration (Cyprus Street)' is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and supported by Arts Council England. Project funded by Film London and the UK Film Council Digital Archive Film Fund and supported by the National Lottery.

Walk (Square) is commissioned by Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and K21 Hamburg with additional support from Film and Video Umbrella, London

Dance (All Night, Paris) is commissioned by Nuit Blanche 10 (2011) through the City of Paris.

Melanie Manchot, courtesy Galerie m, Bochum

Wall to Wall

Egill Sæbjörnsson & Karolin Tampere

The videos show two individual characters talking to each other about their lives and experiences as two walls in this space. They discuss what they see in the room: a Donald Judd sculpture hanging on the wall, a large poster of Harry Potter and a kid sitting at a table and relentlessly surfing the Internet. They also see the people coming into the room. As they talk about these topics, their appearances change. When they talk about Harry Potter, they change into Harry Potter. When they talk about Donald Judd, they start to look a bit like

the sculpture. They also talk about how in the past, only 25,000 years ago, Neanderthals still existed, and they discuss the Abominable Snowman. They wonder what the people in the room are doing, and they wonder if they themselves are real, or if they are just playing a role in a play written by a group of people.

ZERO1ZERO Walks

Notes from the abyss, or sketches of my daily walks through a tough neighborhood

Jürgen Trautwein

010 walks are a tribute to the disenfranchised, the poor and all those living on the edge of society.They are experimental, reductive, low resolution video mini documentaries of San Francisco's seedy neighborhood the Tenderloin, a hood of poverty, drug addiction mental disorder and a very high density of homelessness.The project is packaged as a mouse activated interactive net-project, which allows the viewer to move freely from one clip to another, while mentally blending them all to one gritty impression of though life on the streets of San Francisco.The videos are made on everyday non professional equipment like cell phone and pocket camera.

The Picture

Julia Willms

What kind of view does unclose a gallery space? The Picture deals with the position of the spectator relative to the work. The projected image combines a number of spaces, including the exhibitions space itself, into a constantly fluctuating, hybrid space. The traditionally male gaze associated with the viewer's position is playfully replaced by the female who features both as the viewer, the viewed and the one actively acting on the change of the status of the space.

Ciaccona di Paradiso e dell´Inferno

Tina Tonagel

A ballet acted out by five white and three black loo rolls interpret the dialogue between heaven and hell.

An Italian early baroque chaconne can be heard: when the woman’s voice sings about how beautiful it is in heaven, the white loo rolls move up and down. When the man’s voice sings about the agony of hell, the black loo rolls rotate slightly more violently at the opposite wall.

Grafikdemo

Niklas Roy

Why should virtual reality convince you, if even reality itself is sometimes not convincing at all? Grafikdemo is a physical wireframe model of a teapot inside a Commodore CBM cabinet. The model can be rotated by pushing keys on the keyboard. Sophisticated lighting of the model makes it hard for the viewer to distinguish whether he sees a real digital model or a fake computer screen. Grafikdemo explores the transition between reality and representation in a playful way.

Chrono-Shredder

Susanna Hertrich 

The machine as performer. Chrono-Shredder is a poetic device that reminds us of the volatileness of the »now«.

A device with functions similar to those of a calendar and a clock, it continously shreds every single day—minute after minute, hour after hour. All that time that is irreversibly lost, obtains a tangible existence in the form of shredded paper. As time passes by, the tattered remains of the past pile up under the device.

Habitat

Rosemarie Weinlich

A number of luminous glass bulbs, filled with a nutritive solution and host plants, equipped with an LED light and closed air-tight - the interactions between natural and technical processes create a unique ecosystem. It appears to be a laboratory exploring life.

A project of the Media Campus

Zoentroid

Hardmood Beck

Mankind is enabled to interact with a hitherto unknown entity – the Zoanthroid. Kinetically moved tuning forks, arranged in a circle, simulate tentacle-like feelers that beckon the visitor with their organic movements, demanding the beholder’s admiration.

A project of the Media Campus

art·Sounds

Tanja Hemm

At the invitation of EMAF, sound artist Tanja Hemm developed two city walks and three quiet spots in Osnabrück for - or rather: "out of" - the city's public spaces. These location-specific sound art products, which create a surprising and equal coexistence between the place, the composition and the user, can be downloaded via the in app store of the art·sounds application. Other city walks and quiet spots have already been created for the cities of Nuremberg and Berlin. 

This is what happens on a city walk: a virtual sound spot is found at a real place via GPS, triggering a composition. A location-specific sound installation is created. Only there and then. Without any logistical or technical interventions to the location. Time and duration are controlled by the listener. The place chosen by the artist. With art·sounds, Tanja Hemm develops mobile location-specific sound installations that she positions independently and as she wishes. The art·sounds art project explores the term 'public space' in the context of increasing virtual entanglements and a shift between private and public spaces. 

Words - Films - Desires

Shelly Silver

New York born, Shelly Silver’s films deal both with the openness of the Big Apple and the closure of the individual as reaction to the surrounding worlds and often how human beings are connected and disconnected to other people, exploring the personal and societal relations that identify and restrict us; the indirect routes of pleasure and desire; the stories that we dream or fabricate about others, and the stories that we construct about ourselves.

Daily screenings from 11:00 to 18:30 h:

11:00 h

Meet the People - USA 1986 - 16:32

Former East/Former West - D/USA 1994 - 62:00

12:30 h

What I’m Looking For - USA 2004 - 15:00

in complete world - USA 2008 - 53:00

14:00 h

Small lies - Big Truth - USA 1999 - 18:48

37 Stories about Leaving Home - USA 1996 - Video - 52:00

15:30 h

Things I Forgot to Tell Myself - USA 1988 - 2:00

Suicide - USA 2003 - VHS - 70:00

17:00 h

The Houses that Are Left (full version) - USA 1990 - 50:00

5 lessons and 9 questions about Chinatown - USA 2009 - 10:00

NetWork

Christine Hoffmann

"NetWork" thematises the expanding process of networking in digital media. Playfully the installation connects acoustic, visual and moving elements. Hardware like ventilators or loudspeakers is connected and wired with every day objects: alarm clocks, stones, pencils, glass marbles, toys.

The absurdity of links is increased by the sprawling of elements in space. Whirring sound of ventilators and ticking of alarm clocks produce a technical, threatening tone.

Speaker Botz

Matteo Marangoni 

Speaker Botz are mobile robotic speakers, acoustic explorers of terrestrial space, artificial creatures whose purpose is to envelop listeners with patterns of echoes bouncing off the walls.

Performances: 19–22 April at 15:00 h and 18:00 h

A project of the Media Campus

Exhibition of Offenbach University of Art and Design

Electronic Media, Offenbach University of Art and Design Students of Offenbach University of Art and Design show poetic programmes, alternative displays and installations developed from their experimental artistic research in the subject area of Electronic Media, Professor Ulrike Gabriel.

A project of the Media Campus

Mach flott den Schrott

Delving into the box of electronic scrap brings about such things as a keyboard coat-hanger, a magnetic stirrer and a toilet paper printer.

The original results of the ‘c’t Hardware Hacks’ competition "Mach flott den Schrott" (Revamping scrap) range from useful or bizarre technical devices to unusual design objects. Some of the winning projects will be presented here, offering exciting and inspirational insights into the league of creative inventors.

In cooperation with Hardware Hacks.

PING! Augmented Pixel

Niklas Roy

In the decade where videogames were born, everything virtual looked like rectangular blocks. From today’s perspective, the representation of a tennis court in the earliest videogames is hard to distinguish from a soccer or a basketball field.

‘PING! – Augmented Pixel’ is a seventies style videogame, that adds a layer of digital information and oldschool aesthetics to a video signal: A classic rectangular video game ball moves across a video image. Whenever the ball hits something dark, it bounces off. The game itself has no rules and no goal. Like GTA, it provides a free environment in which anything is possible. And like Sony’s Eyetoy, it uses a video camera as game controller.

Electronic Instant Camera

Niklas Roy

‘Electronic Instant Camera’, is a combination of an analog b/w videocamera and a thermal receipt printer. The device is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. The camera doesn’t store the pictures on film or digital medium, but prints a photo directly on a roll of cheap receipt paper while it is taking it. As this all happens very slow, people have to stay still for about three minutes until a full portrait photo is taken.

Soundtology

“Soundtology” is an interactive project of the University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, created specially for EMAF. Visitors will be given the opportunity to compose their own melodies using tablet PCs and smartphones, which are also visualised by a smiley.

A project of the Media Campus

Lumenoise

Niklas Roy

Lumenoise is a light pen, which turns your old CRT-TV into an audiovisual synthesizer. You paint abstract geometric patterns and sounds directly onto the screen. It is a playful and performative device, as anything that you do will cause an instantaneous reflection in the gadget’s sonic and visual output.

EnTroPI

Jan Goldfuß 

An experimantal narration of algorithms. The spectator is confronted by a digital world that follows its own rules. It may seem partly familiar to him, yet partly alien. The interpretation should evoke both emotions, as well as thought.

A project of the Media Campus

WHAT IF GOOGLE MAPS WENT LIVE

public space as performative space

Roel Wouters

Director Roel Wouters makes the still images of a large collage photo of a public space in the making come alive by inserting video fragments. Small groups of people are dancing, playing and making music in the recently dumped sand, alongside the young plantings and across the new pavement. The photos and video were made from above. They call up the idea that it should be possible to experience Google Maps in real time: that you could see what is actually happening in the street directly on your computer screen. What if Google Maps went live... was recorded on the former Philips industrial site Strijp-S in Eindhoven, during the two-day event flux/S 3 SQUARE ONE. For this occasion, designer/artist Roel Wouters, choreographer Katja Heitmann and composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven had developed a number of concise art projects, which were executed by the participating audience.

Strijp-S is developing into the cultural hot spot of Eindhoven – at this moment the area is filling up quickly with new houses, with the industrial heritage being transformed into loft dwellings. Art festival flux/S is making proposals for the use of the public space in this new area. How could this public space be turned into something vital? How could people actively contribute to the creation of public space? flux/S 3 SQUARE ONE and What if Google Maps went live... together form an invitation to reclaim public space for use by the public; to redefine it as a performative space: a space where people can meet, share experiences and do their thing..

Director: Roel Wouters Commissioned and produced by: flux/S international arts festival – flux-s.nl

http://www.flux-s.nl

Foto Series Hommage / Julia

Bianca Patricia

The conceptual design of the photographic series entitled JULIA is based on faith as an identity-forming and manipulative instrument of society. The photos broach the issue of diverse processes of forging identity and the loss of identity. They portray the attempt to create a membrane between reality and the self, and constitute ambivalent projection surface.

Bianca Patricia shows a constant aspect of the fragile as a large-format photo piece of hundreds of porcelain casts of the male sexual organs – originally created for the HOMMAGE series. As relicts and homage to all of the cloaked, intimated, severed or non-anticipatory phalluses of the history of Western pictures and art. The shattered remains of the myth "man". A symbolic portrayal of the vulnerability of male potency. (Text fragments B. Patricia and T. Ghughunishvili-Brück)