Talks + Lectures

ARTIST TALK 

Explorations: Light | Spaces | Experience
Jacqueline Hen
January 14th, 2025
10-11 AM
Location: Online via BBB
meeting.uni-weimar.de/b/mar-jlm-ohz-hgx

In everyday life, elementary phenomena are taken for granted while navigating the busyness of everyday life. When we pause and allow ourselves a moment of intensified observation, we wonder and might even raise questions about reality itself. This pursuit of uncertainty becomes alchemy, investigating the relationship between light and matter. The artworks trace the materiality of light and the ways in which – as energy always transforms – light inhabits a solid form.

Jacqueline Hen often uses spatial interventions to create places of social interaction and transformation. Performative elements meet installative arrangements. In her artistic practice, which encompasses both physical and virtual environments, she examines how natural phenomena and artificial technology affect social interaction.

BIO
Jacqueline Hen is an Artist and Spatial Designer working on large-scale performative installations. Her work investigates proprioception and contingency experiences in the intersection of physical and virtual habitats. Her work Light High was awarded the International Light Art Award. Since 2023, Jacqueline has been a Professor of artistic-experimental Design Basics at University of Applied Science Wiesbaden. She worked as an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne as well as a Research Assistant at Fraunhofer Berlin. Jacqueline studied Visual Communication at the University of the Arts Berlin and Art Center College of Design Los Angeles. Jacqueline lives and works in Cologne.

Hosted by the Interface Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as part of the project module:
Enacted photons - exploring light as an artistic medium

ARTIST TALK 
Machines that perform light
Alexandre Saunier 
December 17th, 2024
10-11 AM
Location: Online via BBB
https://meeting.uni-weimar.de/b/mar-jlm-ohz-hgx

How can we conceive of light as an active material that acts, plays, moves, and behaves as if it was alive? Throughout the twentieth century, artists invented technological machines to grant light expressive autonomy. It is a history deeply rooted in technoscientific artistic exploration, where artists boldly embraced electric, mechanical, electronic, and computational technologies ranging from the simplest incandescent bulb to the most complex machine learning algorithms.

Alexandre Saunier will explore artistic practices that bring light to life through real-time computation. Using concrete examples from his work that integrates light with sensing and neural network technologies, he will navigate the intersections of art, history, science, and engineering to discuss how light can become a lively and expressive performer. Alexandre Saunier (he/him) is an artist and professor in the Audiovisual department at LUCA School of Arts, KU Leuven. With a deep interest in the theory and history of media arts, cybernetics, and complex systems theory, his work merges artistic practice with academic research, focusing on the interactions between light, sound, autonomous systems, and sensory perception.

Alexandre holds a PhD from Concordia University (2023), where he studied the contemporary and historical practices of light as an artistic medium driven by real-time computational systems. His previous studies include mathematics and physics (CPGE, 2009), sound design and engineering (ENS Louis Lumière, 2012), and he was a fellow at ENSADLab, where he conducted research on behavioral robotics and interactive lighting (ENS Arts Décoratifs, 2015). Alexandre’s artistic and research work is regularly presented at major international venues, including Mutek Montreal, Elektra BIAN, Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Ars Electronica, ISEA, Impakt Festival, MuffatHalle, Bcn_llum, ALIFE Conference, Media Art History, and Nuit Blanche Toronto.

Hosted by the Interface Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as part of the project module: Enacted photons - exploring light as an artistic medium

ARTIST TALK 
Solar Power Art and Design in the Energy Transition
Alex Nathanson

April 30th, 2024
4 PM – 5 PM
Location: Online via BBB

His talk, Solar Power Art and Design in the Energy Transition, will look at a variety of ways that artists and designers can engage with the technology. He will give an overview of his art, design, and research practice and will discuss his design philosophy and pedagogical approach as it relates to renewable energy, which focuses on the relationship between affordances and poetics to facilitate play, accessibility, and localization. He will talk about some notable themes within the history of solar power art and design and will also contextualize this field within the energy transition more broadly and discuss the important and unique contributions of art and design in this space.

BIO
Alex Nathanson is a designer, technologist, artist, and educator based in New York City. His work is focused on exploring both the experimental and practical applications of sustainable energy technologies. He is the founder and lead designer of the education and art platform Solar Power for Artists and its partner studio, Energy Transition Design LLC. The mission of both organizations is to make sustainable energy accessible, tactile, and understandable. As a solar power designer, he has created interactive and educational projects for numerous cultural and educational institutions. In collaboration with Tega Brain and Bennedetta Piantella, he co-created the Solar Protocol project. His book A History of Solar Power Art and Design was published in 2021.

Hosted by the Interface Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as part of the project module:
Sustainable Futures - Interactive Objects

WORKSHOP
Transforming ideas into tangible creations with Shaper Origin
Christoph Noe

April 24th, 2024
9.30am–4.30pm
Marienstr. 7b, Room 002
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

This workshop is a journey of discovery into the world of custom manufacturing and the development of individually designed products using the Shaper Origin, a hand-held CNC tool.

Led by Christoph Noe, a designer who works in both digital product design and custom stringed instruments, this workshop offers an intensive exploration of the principles and practices of making custom objects, building blocks and jigs from various materials to realize a project idea.

From the foundational stages of ideation to the execution of prototypes, attendees will gain insight into the iterative processes inherent in custom manufacturing. Through hands-on experimentation, students will acquire a nuanced understanding of the relationship between digital design methodologies and fabrication techniques.

Bio:
Christoph Noe is a versatile designer whose interdisciplinary pursuits combine the fields of design theory, digital innovation and craftsmanship. With a background in digital product design, as a design lecturer at various universities and the art of guitar making, his career embodies a deep commitment to exploring the intersections between technology, creativity and materiality.

ARTIST TALK
Life In A Different Resolution by random-international
January 16th, 2024
time: 10.30 – 11.30 AM
UTC +1
Location: Zoom 

Experimental by nature, Random International’s practice is fuelled by research and scientific discovery. The group aims to broaden the question of what it is to be alive today by experimenting with how we connect — to different kinds of life, to different views of the world, and to one another.

Established in 2005, Random International is a postdigital art group exploring the impact of technological development on the human condition. Best known for their large-scale interactive installations, the group works across an array of media including sculpture, light, kinetics, video, print, and sound. Led by founders Hannes Koch (b.1975, Germany) and Florian Ortkrass (b.1975, Germany), the group has a studio in London and comprises a global team of complimentary talent.

Hosted by the Interface Design Group at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar as part of the project module: Enlightening Narratives - artistic approach to light, sound, perception and interaction

ARTIST TALK
Electronic-life-forms
Artificial Life in the Intersection of Technology, Art & Science
www.electronic-life-forms.com

Pascal Glissmann, Martina Höfflin
May 10th, 2023
New York 10-11am, Berlin 4-5pm
Location: Online via BBB

Electronic-life-forms inhabit the intersection of technology, art & science to explore the boundaries of natural and artificial life through digital and electronic craft. Initiated by Pascal Glissmann and Martina Höfflin at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne in 2004, the project developed from small experimental electronic circuits to significant commissioned work, including site-specific installations for the Miró Museum in Spain and the University of Oslo. In this artist talk, Martina and Pascal look back at the design process and exhibition practice, collaborations with festivals and curators, and share the experience of developing media art projects commissioned by institutions. 

Workshop
Ralf Schreiber
“WILD WEAK ELECTRONICS“
26.04.–28.04.2023

“WILD WEAK ELECTRONICS“
minimal-energy concepts & underpowered electronic circuits

A workshop using only the weakest energy sources based on light, motion, electromagnetism and electrochemistry. By this I mean: tiny-solar-cells, electromagnetic waves, piezo-electronic, DIY potato batteries..

All these low energy sources are hardly usable for our everyday devices, because they need quite high, constant and stabilized currents for their reliable operation. Nevertheless, the study of low energy circuit design is rewarding because it reveals the primal, wild and chaotic nature of electricity.

In this hands-on workshop, we will craft and solder minimal electronic modules and electro-mechanical objects. These work with the weakest energy sources and create sounds or movements with a unique natural flow. Everything you build yourself can be combined with each other and thus invites you to experiment.

The workshop is also a basic introduction to analog and digital electronics. In addition to elementary oscillator and charging circuits, simple µ-controller circuits (based on Arduino) can also be built.

Lecture by Daria Parkhomenko on »Methodology of artist-scientist collaborations. Laboratoria's experience«
23 January 2024, at 6.30 p.m.

Daria is an international curator, and pioneer in contemporary technological art in Russia. She is the founder of the »Laboratoria Art & Science Foundation«, which was the first independent research, exhibition and education center for art & science in Russia. It started in a Physical-chemistry research institute in 2008 and was granted a space in the New Tretyakov Gallery in 2019. She has created platforms which facilitated dozens of progressive research institutes and high-end labs to work with artists. These platforms provided the basis for the production of more than 50 new international artworks and multiple conferences and symposia. This also led her to developing the Know-How Methodology of the Integration of Artists and Scientists into each other’s Fields.

Her curatorial work consisted of more than 30 international exhibitions on topics such as AI, Quantum Physics, Climate Change, Big Data, Biochemistry.