In relation to the term metaverse, the prefix meta- describes the seamless transition between the analog and digital world.
Similar to how the metaverse presents a digitized version of a human character,
in the room installation „Meta“ we have attempted to create an analog representation of the digital world.
On the one hand, we use mirrors and projection to depict the visitor’s avatarisation, thus creating a Selfie-space. On the other hand, video and sound content describe the virtual character of the Metaverse in which we create a cosmos that is controlled in an inhuman way by data and algorithms.
In our work process, we have tried to avoid the subjectivity of our personal perception to emphasize our concern about this form of technical emulation and created content that is designed and animated according to randomized specifications and formulas.
This creates a strange but also fascinating emptiness that appears rational and objective, although there is absolutely no specific content.
For
Lux Helsinki 2024, we produced a videomapping for one of Helsinki’s most remarkable buildings, the Helsinki Cathedral.
With temperatures dropping below -20°, Helix was exhibited during the period of January 3rd to January 7th, 2024.
"Helix" explores the interplay between two contrasting worlds: a rational, digital perspective often associated with the future, and a human, intuitive and emotional viewpoint often regarded nostalgically.
The installation begins in an abstract digital setting of grids, lines, and patterns, which initially presents itself as a provider of clarity and meaning. However, as the piece progresses, small instabilities reveal themselves, causing the lines of the grid to bend. We recognise that the system is fallible and incomplete in capturing the nuances of human nature and we end up in a state of beautiful disorder.
„As artists active in the Digital Arts field, our intention is to highlight the ongoing conflict between trusting our personal perception of beauty and creation, and relying on formulas, numbers, programs, and the ever-expanding possibilities of technology.
In "Helix", we employ a dramaturgy that transitions from a purely abstract, digital, and rational perspective to a more tangible, more human and more magical form of experience.“
The Wind premiered on the 14th October 2021 at Signal Festival Prague and was experienced as a large-scale videoinstallation over the course of 4 days by about 300.000 viewers.
For Signal's 2021 Festival Topic "Plan C", Berlin-based Weltraumgrafik have conceived an abstract and hypnotic projection about the cycle of crisis, chaos, tragedy and future.
By abstractly translating certain scenes from film history and symbols from the origin of dramaturgy, "The Wind" tries to determine conflict as an inseparable part of every evolutionary process. We live the way we tell our stories.
Divided into two parts, the recent past and the near future, "The Wind" tries to provide a positive attitude towards change and transformation.
For the reopening of Altenstein Cave in Bad Liebenstein, Thuringia, we created five audiovisual installations that narrate the history of the cave over a timeline of 285 million years.
The episodes showcase the transformation from reef to cave, the life of the cave bear, the discovery and illumination of the cave by Georg I, and the performance of Echo concerts in the early 19th century.
Each installation offers a unique experience highlighting the significance of Altenstein Cave throughout its long history.
We utilized several different techniques for the production of these episodes, including classical narrative cartoon animation, generative AI content for the portrayal of extinct animals, Iosono Spatial 3D Audio, and we edited a 1.5 million point cloud scan of the cave into an animation.
When one of the first parts of former airport Tempelhof was renovated and reopened, we had the chance to contribute video content for two video walls in the location, that are shown there permanently. One is a visually narrative work about the Berlin Airlift, the other is a generative visual, involving Tempelhofs geometric style and its corporate colors.
Together with the Japanese video artists Flightgraf and the Hungarian studio
Eper, we created the videomapping for the main performance of Pokemon Go Fest in Yokohama.
The result is a 20min mapping on a 16K-Tandem-Projection, which was wirelessly synced to the dance performance of led-equipped dancers and Pikachus.
More than 19.000 visitors experienced the video installation, shown at Hangar 4 in Tempelhof Airport, in 70 meter widescreen format,
at the 70 years Berlin Airlift celebrations.
"So lange ein Atemzug in uns lebendig ist." Ernst Reuter
The panoramic 70 meter long video-installation features the emotional story about the 1948-1949 struggle of the Westberlin people during the Berlin Blockade and the immense logistic efforts achieved by the American and British allies during the Berlin Airlift.
The installation was produced by reworking a huge amount of historic original footage provided by almost every archive in and around Berlin.
Together with the soundartist Lukas Taido
and Barco Iosono, we planned and created a spatial installation using
a setup of 9 projectors and 36 speakers, transforming Funkhaus Berlin's Soundchamber into a place of immediate immersion.
Within this radiant path, “Techstura” exhumes the visionary creative sparks of the past, weaving them together with contemporary media landscapes.
Fueled by the force of illusion, Techstura’s time-travelling narrative guides the viewer on a captivating journey through avant-garde aesthetics and past idealistic trends. It prompts us to ponder the origins of creative depictions of reality, the intricate relationship between the artist and their artwork, and how architecture connects to collective memory and art history.
As the building gets broken down and liquefied by the play of light, its texture transitions through various states of matter. A new architectural language of figurative and abstract symbols materialises on the façade, eventually giving rise to a delightful display of primary pigments.
The narrative, split into seven chapters, draws inspiration from several creative practices, seamlessly transitioning from analogue to digital and vice versa. A comprehensive timeline monitors shifts in scenes and techniques in sync with the overall tempo of the piece. Visual and thematic references are arranged to reinforce a variety of scenarios tied to the timeline, eventually converging into a structure reminiscent of an enhanced “dope sheet.”
Phil Max Schöll, also known as Weltraumgrafik, is a Berlin-based motion designer and video artist. This flourishing collaboration is rooted in a shared pursuit of unconventional methods and fresh aesthetics within immersive media.
He played a crucial role in shaping and synthesising the leitmotif behind “Techstura”, by distilling the surface into a minimalist shadowplay. Inspired by early 20th-century arts and crafts movements, the opening sequence offers an abstract blend reminiscent of various aesthetic styles. From stained glass’s kaleidoscopic beauty to retro arcade games’ rhythmic motion, the projection embraces a reductionist perspective on space that harmonizes seamlessly with the soundtrack, transforming the entire experience into a choral piece.
During the projection of “Techstura”, the enduring structure of the 19th-century building underwent a kinetic transformation. The illusion created by the play of light had the power to rotate the building’s structure, turning it into a luminous maze and smoothly shifting it away from its original perimeter.
The Weimar Jakobsplan is an architecturally and ideologically functional building. Also by the legacy of the Bauhaus, an architecture was developed, whose function should stand above time-varying aesthetics. The result is gray and barren, nothing superfluous, no round shape forms a variance in the appearance of the facade.
The facade projection "Homage / Collage" uses in its approach exactly this functional and originally aesthetic background and accesses the base of this historic form language. The animation remains with the basic forms and resignes over long passages to any rounding. Also, by the high contrast, the functionality / the light power of the projector is used effectively.
Another cross-reference to the architecture is the plain style of the animation, which reflects on one of the basic ideas of the Bauhaus: the craft.
Therefore, the production refuses to use time-varying animation- and 3D-software tools, which often, but not always, seem to have predictable effects. All content is animated from scratch and designed almost frame-by-frame.
The approach is aesthetically similar to the method that has has influenced the design of Jakobsplan in the late sixties. Contrary however, with the method of the collage the arrangements of the elements, their temporarily overwhelming circulation and last, but not least, the music, something simultaneously delicate and highly vivid is developed.
