TIME OUT .12 opens at the Ars Electronica Center

Ars Electronica x University of Arts Linz

(Linz, November 22, 2023) Young media artists at the Ars Electronica Center: As of today (opening at 7 p.m.), 16 interactive works by 15 students from the “Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts” course at the University of Arts Linz can be seen as part of the TIME OUT .12 exhibition. The show was curated by Joachim Smetschka, course director and media artist, and Ars Electronica. It is the twelfth edition of the cooperation and series TIME OUT – Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts meets Ars Electronica.

Interdisciplinarity and diversity of content

While Ania Böhaker created nexus, a cube sculpture that breaks up pre-structured gaze patterns, Isabel Schulz uses all her creativity to compete against an imaging AI and Laurenz Vojka presents a video game that turns the complex dream worlds of strangers into an adventure. Daniel Haas, on the other hand, plays with sound, electronics, and light reflection in his installation dBlech, while in the foyer, Pat(ricia) Göckert questions taboos surrounding female sexuality. All 16 works from TIME OUT .12 fit into existing exhibitions at the Ars Electronica Center. From the idea, to the production of robust materials, to the adaptation to the needs of ongoing museum operations, the responsibility lies with the young artists.

Origin and orientation

TIME OUT was initiated in 2014 by Gerhard Funk, Head of the “Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts” course from 2006 to 2021, and Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director of Ars Electronica. The aim of the exhibition series is to provide students at the University of Arts Linz with a stage on which they can show their projects and put them up for discussion. The cooperation also offers young media artists the opportunity to enter the cultural scene, engage in an exchange with curators and practically integrate their own work into an exhibition in conversation with technicians. The results are impressive: sound, film, performances, programming and innovative interface technologies flow into one another at TIME OUT .12 and express thoughts, feelings and critical questions about current events.

TIME OUT .12 – 16 Projects at a glance

nexus / Ania Böhaker (AT)

With nexus, Ania Böhaker shows how a pre-structured field of vision influences one’s own feelings. nexus is a white cube measuring approximately 1.24 x 1.24 x 1.24 meters, which is surrounded by massive pipes. On each side of the cube there are three pipes that protrude out of or into the cube—and they are all connected to each other. Visitors take a look into the pipes and are surprised at where their own gaze is directed. In this way, nexus reveals a new perspective on the immediate environment and human interaction.

Klang Kontakt / Emilia Vogt (DE)

With Klang Kontakt (Sound Contact), Emilia Vogt has created a combination of sound installation and interactive performance. The artist transforms the physical and emotional closeness of people present into a harmonious sound experience, thereby creating a new form of expression of visual stimuli. Each touch triggers different sounds that vary in intensity and duration—just as human interactions develop.

DREAM WAVE GROUP / Laurenz Vojka (AT)

Dream Wave Group is a role-playing video game (RPG Lite) that allows you to immerse yourself in the dream worlds of different people. With his project, Laurenz Vojka turns strangers’ brains into an experience and lets players think about individual characters, their crazy desires and deep fears: This is how you find yourself in big city life, surfing or in the middle of spring cleaning. The flawed logic of the dream realm becomes a space of possibility—that needs to be explored.

Der schönste Ort der Welt (The most beautiful place in the world / Sofia Jüngling-Badia (AT)

Disorientation in daily life, in your own four walls, in conversations and time: Sofia Jüngling-Badia deals with the clinical picture of dementia on a personal level.
Analogue photographs that capture everyday life are linked to a narrative about life as the daughter of a father suffering from dementia who is increasingly changing. The narrative is regularly interrupted by sentences that people with dementia say in dialogues in order to regain their footing.

EMCP_One / Simon Lukas Haunschmid (AT)

The Electromechanical Cellphone (EMCP for short) is a design study that deals with constant technological progress. The starting point is a discarded cell phone — a symbol of the developments in telecommunications in the early 2000s. In the installation EMCP_One, an old chest of drawers becomes a carrier for outsourced functions of the telephone — and uses analogue/semi-digital means to demonstrate which applications are contained in just one device. The technological core is the circuit board of the disassembled cell phone.

Kreative Differenzen (Creative Differences) / Isabel Schulz (AT)

Isabel Schulz presents an installation that contrasts human creativity with image-generating AI. Both the artist and a specially trained AI are tasked with developing images based on assigned prompts. The result: divergent pairs of images despite the same starting point. The work encourages exchange about AI-generated art and its long-term impact on the cultural scene.

dBlech / Daniel Haas (AT) 

An audio signal is translated into electrical signals and causes four large metal plates to vibrate—and resound. With dBlech, Daniel Haas makes electrical vibrations usable and creates a sound characteristic that is fed by the interaction of different materials and impulses. In addition to the audio level, dBlech also provokes optical effects: If a spotlight is aimed at the surfaces, the waves of the incoming electrical signal can be observed in the light reflection.

Credits
Funding: Förderungsverein der Kunstuniversität Linz / Support: Joachim Smetschka, Holunder Heiß, Caroline Bobek, Cécile Bucher, Matthias Narzt, Enrique Tomas, Wolfgang Dorninger

Aberration / Tolga Karaaslan (AT)

A universal alphabet that manages to unite the world’s population in all its differences and conflicts—that is the idea of ​​the protagonist in a short film project by Tolga Karaaslan. It is the story of a graphic designer in a fictional authoritarian Europe who finds herself caught between protests and rebellion. With the new alphabet, hardened fronts are intended to enter into an exchange and find a common means of communication.
Aberration was conceived based on the mood and themes of the resulting film. The installation follows the protagonist’s thoughts and conveys an expression of initiative, upheaval, and processual restructuring.

Credits
Conception and realization: Tolga Karaaslan / Support in coding: Gerhard Funk

Alien Harmonies / Jakob Luckeneder (AT)

Extra-terrestrial. Jakob Luckeneder has designed an interactive audio sculpture in the shape of a cube, which is equipped with brass plates. Sounds arise as soon as the surface is touched. Instead of harmonious tones, distinctive artificial soundscapes can be expected. Alien Harmonies explores the limits and potential of collective creativity, because the audio results that arise from trying things out together are unique in this form.

es mucho tiempo  / Friederike Weber (DE) & Juliana Vargas Rodriguez (CO)

The video installation es mucho tiempo is the result of a collaboration between Friederike Weber and Juliana Vargas Rodriguez. The focus is on dealing with time—and the perception of waiting. The basis of the work is observations of how people bridge time. Typical movements and postures are imitated in the video work and projected onto kitchen roll. The overarching question: How do we define a beginning and an end?

Credits
Concept: Juliana Vargas Rodriguez & Friederike Weber / Dancer: Juliana Vargas Rodriguez / Camera: Friederike Weber / Editor: Friederike Weber / Sound Design: Max van der Meer

Krisenherd (Crisis hotspot / Lisa Studener (AT)

Krisenherd is a collection of digital illustrations that come to life using the Artivive app and gain mobility through frame-by-frame animations. The theme is the challenges and open questions of the Western world, presented in 12 pictures, each of which expresses a short story that makes you smile or think.

lust / Pat(ricia) Göckert (AT)

The room installation lust constructs a world in which female lust, desire and masturbation are not taboos. Interviews with people socialized as female express personal experiences that reveal problems with patriarchal structures and address how society deals with female sexual needs. Accompanying atmospheric images translate the narrative into the abstract.

Neinblicke (No looks) / Benjamin Ramsmaier (AT)

Benjamin Ramsmaier’s Neinblicke, an interactive sculpture in the shape of a cube, conceals an impenetrable mystery. Behind the wooden facade there is a secret, protected by an “evil and chaotic” algorithm that no one has ever seen through before. What is inside the wooden dice box remains unfathomable. The question to the visitors is: Can the calculations of the algorithm be outsmarted?

pars / Ania Böhaker (AT)

Diversity of opinions, shared perceptions and the resulting conflicts are the fields of reference for the video installation pars. A chess game is projected onto a wooden mural, showing the game from either a white or black perspective, depending on the viewing angle. The illusion of clarity of personal perception is demonstratively deconstructed.

RAS Awakening / Janik Valler (DE)

RAS Awakening is an audiovisual sculpture that creates a fictional future creature — an artistic vision of how life could emerge from microchips and electronic waste. In a choreography of sound and light, the sculpture produces sounds that only arise from the data in the electronic waste materials. RAS Awakening is Janik Valler’s concept of an artificial life form alternating between the waking and sleeping stages.

translucent reverie / Janik Valler (DE)

The light sculpture translucent reverie blurs the boundaries between physical and digital realities by unfolding a fascinating play of light, colors, and shapes. Digital motifs, when combined with physical materials, create a feeling of natural fluidity, which makes the space in between especially desirable.

Statements

“Promoting young artists in their creativity and skills holds great art and cultural potential for the city of Linz and generally a great opportunity for aspiring media artists. The exhibition series of the Ars Electronica Center together with the University of Arts Linz creates an annual discourse for interactive media art that is accessible to a broad public and an international audience.“

Klaus Luger, Mayor of the City of Linz

“The TIME OUT exhibition series underlines the impressive artistic quality and maturity of the students at the University of Arts Linz. Through the partnership with Ars Electronica, these young media artists have a unique opportunity to present their works. Visitors, for their part, have the chance to be inspired by unconventional and innovative perspectives that encourage them to think, and to think further.”

Doris Lang-Mayerhofer, City Councilor for Culture, Chair of Ars Electronica’s Supervisory Board

“The students’ works make it clear that human emotions are not only in harmony with the technological dynamics of our time, but can also find new forms of expression through them. The cooperation between the University of Arts Linz and Ars Electronica enables artists and visitors to have fascinating experiences and contributes significantly to the creative and intellectual climate of our city.”

Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director Ars Electronica

“Working with video, film and sound, media installations and productions as well as design with digital media including innovative program creation: This is what our Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts course of study under the direction of university professor Joachim Smetschka is all about. We are very pleased to be able to present for the twelfth time,  in cooperation with Ars Electronica, the resulting media art—this time a total of 16 works — in the exhibition series TIME OUT and would like to thank everyone involved for once again for making space available in the Ars Electronica Center to show the work of young artists to a broader public.”

Brigitte Hütter, Rector of the University of Arts Linz

“Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts, as a course of study at the University of Arts Linz, represents a wide variety of topics, content and expression possibilities in the field of media art. The 16 works by the young artists that are presented in the 12th edition of this series are just as diverse. TIME OUT is a special format, not only because we can once again work intensively with our most important cooperation partner. We can also take the works of art right into the exhibition rooms of the Ars Electronica Center and become a part of them. This creates a very valuable dialogue, not only between the institutions, but above all between the artists, their works and the visitors. In many of the works shown, this dialogue is the heart and main concern. Thanks to the great team at Ars Electronica for this opportunity and their hospitality!”

Joachim Smetschka, Head of Time-Based and Interactive Media Arts at the University of Arts Linz

DREAM WAVE GROUP / Laurenz Vojka (AT)

Credit: Laurenz Vojka

Aberration / Tolga Karaaslan (AT)

Credit: Tolga Karaaslan

RAS Awakening / Janik Valler (DE)

Credit: Janik Valler