Research Catalogue

"Schwärmen + Vernetzen" (swarming and networking) explores the possibilities of transdisciplinary work in art, realising them through forms of "movement profiles", retracing the vacating of individual viewpoints of the participating artists and the emergence of joint forms of movement. The project is a collaboration between writer Gertrude Grossegger, installation arts and trained molecular biologist Nayarí Castillo, and sound artist Hanns Holger Rutz. In order to make novel connections between text, visual elements and sounds possible, the three artists put themselves into an experimental arrangement, topically structured around dynamical systems of swarming and networking, originating from biology; we are interested in systems in which new organisms develop without dissolving their partial structures, individual media, and individual scopes of work. Stages of the project are a series of encounters of the artists, the outcome of each of which is a further development of materials, an intensive retreat over several days, a publication in a literature journal, an exhibition at Akademie Graz, a symposium, and a printed catalog.

Acoustical surveys of the city. An experimental radio piece. The spatial design of a city seems to dictate who moves around in it and how. Mäanderungen (“meanderings”) is an acoustic suggestion for developing alternative forms—in real, physical space; in electronic, radiophonic space; and in the imagination. Meanders are created by friction, by the sensing of irregularities, between depth and surface, in motion. The exploratory process developed by the temporary production collective corresponds to a form of walking, being and moving in the city that arises in the here and now, free from purpose, and that is individual, subjective, and inquiring. Peculiar views of the urban space are made possible—unusual, temporary units of measurement introduced. Part of the material created is based upon an interpretation of different spatial realities such as facades or gaps. They are photographed, drawn, captured by sensors or pressure and combined with text fragments to create a composition that manifests both as a radio drama and in the form of a spatial installation. The translation process is driven mainly by an algorithmic generator that is constantly allowing new coincidences. Mäanderungen was the winning project of the lime_lab 3 prize for experimental radio play. lime_lab is a cooperation of Akademie Graz, Forum Stadtpark, Literaturhaus Graz, ORF Steiermark, and steirischer herbst.

Art project in public space, connecting Mexico city and Graz.

The iterative nature of algorithms, their provisions of repetition and the possibility to rerun them, lead to a straight concept of algorithmic space, as the breadth and organisation of all the forms they are able to produce. Data and algorithms are not only operating machines but they increasingly influence our thoughts and actions, and consequently art and science. The departure point for the course Space Material Detail are algorithmic elements, created within the development of the project Algorithms that Matter that provides an open source for inspiration, exploration and manipulation. Some elements of software, sound and graphics can be translated into models to the (physical) three-dimensional space in order to create an installative expierence of space(s).

Work-in-progress for the development of a sensorial piece, first explored during the workshop Augmented Attention Lab.

Development of an installation piece with sound, space, light, sensors, fabric with ALMAT @ MAST at esc media art lab 2020. Further development of in|fibrillae, a sound poem for personal computer.

Segmentation is a core principle of analysis in many different disciplines, such as biology (literally to disassemble organisms, but also the sequencing of DNA), in music and phonology (to structure the stream of sound), or in informatics (to formulate and implement an algorithm). It is also an artistic operation, ranging from film cut to the sampling of sounds and other existing smaterials. What we are interested in this project is to understand the segmentary, not as an expression of isolation or fragmentation, but on the contrary, as a decentralised surface of "fitting pieces" whose meaning emerges through assembly by the audience.

A work-in-progress artistic research project. Initiated by Hanns Holger Rutz and Nayarí Castillo in autumn 2021, it develops into multiple intermedia objects that involve collaboration between different artists, objects that engage in sensorial exchange among themselves and with humans. This exposition is very much in flux, trying to capture the meanderings of the process.

Swap Space is a pilot project at KUG Graz that focuses on novel forms of collaborative artistic research in which otherness, difference and distance between the participants are central and are brought into a cohesive form via the concept of the spatial. Selected questions and previously sketched procedures are an important part of Swap Space and will be tested for their validity and feasibility in a time-limited experiment among six artists-researchers as a proof-of-concept. Thus, on the one hand, the pilot project provides important data and preliminary results, sets the course and ensures that the future project design is viable. On the other hand, Swap Space takes up new decisive impulses for thought - such as the concept of contact - the elaboration of which aims to determine the form of a multi-year research project.

Today's situation can be characterised as the result of growing entanglement, simultaneity and proximity within a networked world. At the same time, global instabilities demand new practices of sharing responsibilities. While the data economy stresses the need to interface, to connect, to make compatible, as artists-researchers we look for a new mode of working-together and thinking-with that resists becoming compatible. Individuals should take a respectful and careful distance to one another, and develop a common movement that results in artefacts and propositions that reflect this work process and can coexist in a simultaneous aesthetic experience. The idea of simultaneously relaying as the foundation of a new type of collaborative practice in artistic research for us is captured by the combination of a transformative practice of relaying as described by Isabelle Stengers, and a singularly plural conception of being devised by Jean-Luc Nancy. Relaying then is not seen as a succession of states, as a temporal transition from one to the other, but as suspended in a space of simultaneity, as an ongoing circulation. Presented at SAR Conference 2021.