Neigungsgruppe Medienfassade

Curator: Dawid Liftinger (AT)

By approaching the facade of the Ars Electronica Center as an oversized (yet direct) stage towards the public sphere, the students of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne propose an analysis, exploration, and even revision of the façade’s role, meaning and functions. Through manifold site-specific interventions including interactive, political, expanded/animated, performative and art historical aspects, the façade serves as vector and container for individual artistic discourses to coexist.

exMedia is an academic group which shares the conviction that experimental aesthetic projects and socio-technical research lead to an expansion of scholarly and creative horizons that effectively address existential human conditions in the 21st century. exMedia integrates design, coding, sound and animation, and connects critical reflection with experimental approaches based on fundamental questions raised by individuals and society. exMedia works on the conditions of a technology-driven culture and addresses its future, including post-media perspectives.

Overview of projects

Tape

Kudo Mayuko (JP)

In Tape, the AEC is transformed into an oversized, sparkling ribbon-wrapped box. If you point an AR-app on it, the ribbon disengages and opens a gate that reveals the content: fleeing color dots, which slowly form figures that rise from an intangible, all-energy world into our reality.

Symmetry

Lee Sooyeun (KR)

An animation that considers the reflections of the media façade in the Danube. Simple shapes, sinus waves, mandala patterns that double in the water.

Overloading / Overloaded: Touch Me Softly

Yve Oh (CN)

The Ars Electronica Center itself is being expanded to include touch-sensitive sensors which will be transformed into an interactive installation. Several sensor-points placed on different positions on the façade invite visitors to touch, caress, scratch, strike and hit the building. Touch, in turn, creates wave animations that spread across the building. Overloading the sensors (eg. hard knocking) causes the whole façade to crash.

Nord Süd

Moritz Laumert (DE)

Nord Süd deals with two important non-representational painters: Josef Albers and Günther Fruhtrunk. Both have great art-historical relevance and are points of reference to consumer culture and design alike. Fruhtrunk designed the plastic bag for Aldi-Nord, which irrevocably connects him to the brand. Albers’ famous painting, “Homage to the Square,” has surprising parallels to the Aldi-Süd or Hofer logo. Both of the painting-inspired graphics are processed and animated on the façade.

Hyperscreen [Testpattern]

Dawid Liftinger (AT)

A search for the limit of the technical boundaries of the media façade at the threshold of human perception; redeeming their promise as fast, colorful pictures. Every “pixel” always changes every frame. Flicker, no pause, high-contrast: everything is always on. This is noise for the eyes.

DEFACING

Camilo Sandoval (CO)

I use AEC’s façade to visualize data showing a broad panorama of what was and is still going on in Colombia. The data come from several institutions and observers of the conflict and are meant to reflect the magnitude of the events through abstraction.

Body Public Space Visual Image

Bela Usabaev (DE)

From the public space around the AEC, impulses are transmitted through the body to the façade as part of an interactive performance. The completely free structure of public space meets the defined counterpart of the body in order to be mounted on the façade as if on a canvas.

Biography:

Dawid Liftinger (AT) was born in Austria in 1986 and is currently based in Cologne, Germany. His works explore sensory and synaesthetic states through hand-built electronics which harness the essential properties of light and sound in installations and performances. Since 2018, he has cooperated with the Neue Musik Ensemble ElectronicID as a light-sound artist. With Stefan Tiefengraber, he is also a co-founder of the curatorial soundart project radio433.