MAPPINGS

Exhibition: 22.11.2008 - 16.01.2009   

Preview: 21.11.2008, 7 - 9 pm /  Artist Talk - Marius Watz 7:30 pm

Marius Watz, NOR

        

Animation, Object, Print, Laser-Cut, Sound-Installation

Marius Watz has created software that interprets data sources, manipulating stock
market data and patterns from electronic music to evoke narratives of abstract form.
He uses simple geometric forms and rule-based compositions to visualize the
evolution of complex ideas.

The exhibition is open by appointment only from 22.12.2008 - 03.01.2009.

KLANGFARBEN 

Exhibition: 27.09 - 15.11.2008
Preview: 26.09, 7 pm - 9 pm

Manfred Mohr, D
winner of d.velop digital art award [ddaa] 2006

Installation: software, PC and LDC-screens, prints

        


This new work-phase entitled "klangfarben" (2006-07), is based on the 11-d hypercube. The work itself consists of two square LCD screens, a computer and my own custom software. The structure of the 11-d hypercube contains a graphic repertoire of an unimaginable 40 Billion possible "diagonal-paths". (A diagonal is the connection between two opposite points in the structure of a hypercube. "Diagonal-paths" are all the combinatorial possibilities of connecting two such opposite points through the network of the 11-d hypercube passing through each dimension once).

From this repertoire four sets of eleven diagonal-paths with three distinct line widths are chosen as basic elements for each work. Every time this screen work is switched on, one out of the four sets are randomly chosen. The right screen shows a graphic construct consisting of 2 to 10 diagonal paths rotating in slow motion and all colors change randomly every 10 seconds. Single diagonal-paths fade in or out during the color changes in a cyclic but random order so that the back most diagonal-path always moves to the front. The last image, before each color change, is sent from the right screen to the left screen and stays there until the following image is received 10 seconds later. The moving image on the right screen shows, so to speak, the making of a sign and the receiving left screen shows a fixed and therefore contemplative sign. Both screen-images should not be seen simultaneously but observed independently. The screens are therefore presented in a 90 degree angle to each other, so that the observer is encouraged to choose one or the other event.

The underlying logic of this work is similar to the rules of "serial music" in which each element of a series of elements has to appear at least once before the series can be repeated. The reference to "klangfarben", refers to a composition technique of playing one musical note but constantly changing the instrument which plays that note. A subtle sound modulation or "klangfarbemelodie" appears because of the inherent differences in upper and lower frequencies which create the character of each musical instrument. The random modulation of colors on each diagonal-path render exactly that subtle quality to my work.

Manfred Mohr, New York, 2007


THE REMOVAL FROM THINGS

Gerhard Mantz, D

Exhibition: 19.07. - 20.09.2008
Opening: 18.07.2008, 7 - 9 pm

(The gallery is closed for summer holidays from 29.07.2008 - 16.08.2008)

    

"Just as the images passing before a drowning man's eyes tell of the beauty of the world, or a swimmer finds himself in a treacherous medium that can be his pleasure as well as his death, so the cloud images tell of an ephemeral, beautiful and yet totally inhospitable world on the other side of the sea. A world that lies, if not on the other side of death, then on the other side of the tangible world, the other side
of things."
(Gerhard Mantz, July 2008, Abstract of the exhibition catalogue)
       
The first human being in this world or the last – the new works from Gerhard Mantz are gliding between these two perspectives. Some could represent the first glance from the first human being onto the earth in its primitive state with only water and the sky, a bird' s flight at a time, when human beings did not even exist. Others reflect the last glance of a drowing man on this world, in which the water already rises above him threatening and grey like a mountain formation.
They all evoke an impression of the Earth being an emotional landscape, mighty and of a merciless beauty, since without a place for human beings – there only is water or  air. An emotional game: we wish to experience the Earth like this knowing we would not be able to survive at such a place.

Artworks dealing with water and clouds are the main theme in the new exhibition of Gerhard Mantz. He therewith deepens a subject on which he has already been working few years ago. Concerning his new works a development is clearly visible: the approach is more free, more abstract in composition and colouring. There often is no horizon, no line on which your gaze is gripped. Gerhard Mantz suceeded in adding a very contemporary postion to the subject of landscape.

His artworks are characterized  by an extraordinary emotional density and a compositional skill. The pictures remind  of the paintings of the German Romanticists like Caspar David Friedrich, at the same time they dissociate with the feeling of nostalgia as well as the forming and the presence of human beings in nature.   

The scenaries which Gerhard Mantz presents on large-format prints on canvas, are again completely generated on the computer. Apart from the pictures we also show a new animation also dealing with clouds.

Gerhard Mantz lives and works in Berlin and New York. He studied Fine Arts at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe.

THE EARLY BEGINNINGS

plotter drawings from 1969 - 1990

Vera Molnar, F 
recipient of the d.velop digital art award [ddaa]2005
Exhibition: 31.5.-12.7.2008
Preview: Friday 30.5.2008, 7 PM – 9 PM

        

“Everything concrete though, is only itself” 
Max Bense, 1965

[DAM]Berlin shows early plottersketches in colour or black & white of the Grande Dame of Digital Art, a selection which was exhibited at the museum show: “monotonie, symétrie, surprise” at the Kunsthalle Bremen in 2006. In addition to the art works we present 2 rare short-films: one in which the artist demonstrates her working procedures on the beach and another which was shown on metropolis (Arte).

Vera Molnar is considered a progressive thinker and pioneer in the field of Digital Art. In 1959 she created the „Machine imaginaire“ to carry out algorithmic calculations at a time when computers did not even exist and concentrated early on the aesthetic possibilities of Digital Art. She mixed her constructivist approach with intentional interferences in the mathematic system and experimented on a often humorous way with the occurring irregularities („1% disorder“ she called one of her essays). Her admiration for Paul Klee is present in her artworks as well as in her essays concerning art. In 2005 Vera Molnar was awarded the first d.velop digital art award [ddaa] for her life's work and importance for Digital Art. The [ddaa] is presented by the Digital Art Museum[DAM] in Berlin. 

„Vera Molnar was born in Budapest in 1924 and there, she grew up as the only child of her parents in sheltered and intellectual, middle-class circumstances. Quite early, she was infected by the “virus of visual experimentation”. The artist remembers that, at the age of about ten, she drew the view from her parental home across the Lake Balaton to the opposing waterside every night for some time. Every time, she used the same five colors: Green for the meadow leading to the water, blue for the lake, brown for the mountain range at the opposing waterside, blue for the sky and orange for the sun-set. After a certain time, the approximately same picture did not satisfy Vera Molnar any more and she decided to use the respectively adjacent color in the paint box for every image area. Already at this early point in time, the first systematic investigation was conducted which was guided by principles that still impact the work of the artist: The analysis is followed by the systematic image-artistic experiment which generates image series and thus, variations.“

Excerpt from the essay by Barbara Nierhoff „Vera Molnar and the Computer“, Catalogue Vera
Molnar, „monotonie, symétrie, surprise“, Kunsthalle Bremen, 2006

SHE

Tapestries and more

Opening: Friday March 14th 7 – 9 PM
Exhibition: 15.3.-17.5.2008

Margret Eicher, D

  

Three large-format tapestries form the heart of the exhibition, which Margret Eicher has dedicated to different aspects of femininity. Whether she takes on the “Desperate Housewives” as icons of modern media culture, or ladies of luxury, wrapped in fur and heedless of the natural environment, as in the tapestry “Fauna and the Impostors”, or young bored couples – her works are always sensual, ironic and provocative. Margret Eicher skillfully holds up a mirror to our modern society with its media and consumerism phenomena and embeds this mirror image in the seemingly traditional medium of a woven tapestry. In the history of art this medium carries connotations of wealth, power and education. It is a medium whose representative appearance and repetitive design render it an ideal template for Margret Eicher’s intelligent digital collages, in which she compiles pictures with a political background from advertisement and lifestyle magazines into mature psychological studies: In which contexts do people present themselves and how do they appear? These depictions of the modern human being show prototypes and unveil structures of power just as the original tapestries did. Despite their toned down colours that remind us of faded historical pictures, Margret Eicher’s tapestries are refined industrial products, woven by a computer – the illusion of old manufactory work is perfect. The artist invites us to take a closer look, so as not to be tricked by traditional images and techniques, but to become aware of the fault lines, and she always does this with a wink.

Marget Eicher is a well-established artist. Her tapestries are of a high intellectual and aesthetic quality, and of a timeless beauty. By means of her characteristic combination of modern content, digital construction and the use of a historical medium Margret Eicher has created a very distinct style.

The artist was born in Viersen, Germany. From 1973-79 she studied Fine Arts at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf and won several scholarships and awards. She lives in Ladenburg, Germany.


BEYOND THE SCREEN


5. February - 8. March 2008
Opening: Saturday, February 2, 6 - 8 PM.

Commonwealth, US, Leander Herzog, CH, Jared Tarbell, US, Theverymany, US,
Marius Watz, NO and participants of the Generator.x 2.0 workshop. In cooperation with club transmediale and Marius Watz.

 

Digital fabrication technologies also called "fabbing" allow for the production of structures and surfaces exceeding the limits of conventional mass production. By using specific software to control these tools, artists and designers are able to realise unimaginable complex objects.


Digitally fabricated sculptures seem to be a contradiction in terms, still the computer is mainly a medium for a two-dimensional space.
The exhibition ”Beyond the screen“ reveals unexpected possibilities: sculptures that are created on a computer as three-dimensional CAD-files and are converted into real objects via a laser technique called “digital fabricator”. This kind of technique enables artists to translate precisely digitally constructed highly complex and fragile creations. The range of materials is wide - synthetic materials, cardboard, ceramic, plaster etc - and so are the different techniques: milling, building up, dismantling, forming. The workshop of Club transmediale is dedicated to this new highly interesting technique, already used in industry in the fields of medicine and design to develop individual and precise plastic forms of products and opens up huge potential possibilities for three-dimensional works in digital art.

The exhibition offers a forum to this art form and shows apart from the results of the workshop for “fabbing” – digital fabrication – art works created beforehand which are representative of that technique and mark established positions:
Works of Marius Watz, who has initiated and run the workshop of Club transmediale, and who has been working intensively on the possibilities offered through fabbing. The Norwegian artist is known for his colourful organic software art works and prints as well as for large projections and is very actively working on the field of Net Art. A contract work for the Norwegian government was shown for two years on their homepage. In 2005 he founded an Internet platform for digital art and design.

The design studios Commonwealth, New York, and Theverymany, France, already use fabbing in their daily work for custom orientated design solutions apart from mass productions. They have also realised exhibition projects on that subject f. e. in New York. Apart from architects also in the digital art scene well established artists such as Holger Lippmann are participating at the workshop attracted by the creative possibilities that this technology might offer in the future and voluntary prepared to experiment with a new medium. The results can be awaited full of suspense.