Berlin 2022 Programme

Water tanks work as collectors that help to control water levels in times of extreme rainfall, ensuring the availability of this resource in future times of drought. The one in Madrid is one of the largest in the country. I was not aware of its existence until a few months ago when I heard about it on the radio. It was a feature about everything that could be found there along the years: a dead donkey, an rusty small car, chandeliers... What kind of memories do we throw away in the water of these places where they cannot be carried away by the current? Do we want to forget them? Or do we want just to keep them preserved under water? In this virtual reality experience, the water-collector is part of the subconscious. It is a place where childhood memories are encapsulated. We can revisit them in the virtual world, but probably they will drown us.

Born in Madrid (Spain) 1988. Nieves de la Fuente studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She finished her studies with an Erasmus Scholarship at the Kunsthochschule Kassel with Professor Norbert Radermacher. During her Posgradual Studies at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne, she worked as a 3D artist and improved her understanding of the 3D medium. The work in 3D, open her a different approach to sculpture and a way into immersive technologies. She uses these as a medium to deliver a message and keeps working as a conceptual artist. Her current line of work oscillates among the construction of memory and its experience in immersive processes and the investigation of non-human perception delivered through these technologies. She has shown her work in institutions and festivals around Germany, Spain, Canada, Taiwan and Croatia among others.

The VR film “Mutatis” by French artist Mali Arun explores a diffuse frontier between scientific and mythological pictures of organic and human landscapes. At night, strange men in white suits enter a botanical garden. Nature is abundant and fascinating. The site guard takes this group to the water lily pond. A young woman’s inanimate body is found there. The garden hides other bodies, buried, sunk in the deep flora. Then a strange light appears from the women’s bodies.

The Virtual Reality soundwalk Toter Winkel by media artist Leon Eckard (idea and implementation) and architect and sound artist Nathalie Brum (architecture) plays with spatial and acoustic paradoxes that reveal our – often deceptive – perception. The space and sound of the soundwalk are inspired by Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, English mathematician and theoretical physicist Roger Penrose and American cognitive scientist Roger Shepard. Its an ever ongoing cycle, which gives the illusion of a continuous tunnel, whereby the reflection about it reveals its paradox nature. The audiences for this VR work can move interactively through the virtual space and see whether they discover the blind spot. Deceptive perceptions can be found everywhere in human perception, and so Leon Eckard argues in his project that we should constantly question our own blind spot.

In a black cubic space of virtual reality based on panels of ATLAS MENOSYNE created by Aby Warburg, the user will be able to activate different fragments of a personal memory filmed in Super8mm, generating his own montage and relations between the sequences that are projected in the space. The exterior limit of the physical space is defined by the same films exposed in their original materiality. The project pretends to expand with time, adding images to an atlas in motion, that reports Nomadic life of the fragmented time-space and the no existence of digital borders. Programer: Lucian A. Meister. Sound design: Sonoscopia.

Inti Gallardo has a degree in Cinema (University of Córdoba), and a Master in Media Art (University of Chile / Polytechnic University of Valencia). It is part of the ANCORA AV work cooperative and the CEIS8 group (Experimentation in analog film formats). Her work is linked to the use of materialities, archives, memory and the crossing between analog and digital media in different aesthetic and political configurations.

The virtual installation undressing giants is a conglomerate of a shedding cycle’s remains. An abandoned shell of a past consciousness – an abstract organism of creation that is already left behind by its host. Visitors are the protagonists of the installation’s eerie space. They become players as they take a first-person point of view while cruising around the floating parts of this entropic, fragile yet solid, ultimately unknown body. Travelers, who – called by the sirens of this virtual landscape – are unable to resist the urge to seek action and look for treasures in the seductive, bottomless void of the installation’s reality.

T(n)C was founded in 2017 by Agnes Varnai and Tina Kult. They live and work in Vienna and experiment with a wide range of media, including virtual reality, 3D, installation and fashion. By combining the different disciplines, they are researching immersive experiences to connect the digital and physical levels of realities. T(n)C believes in the power of joint efforts. Their aim is to expand the practices of collective storytelling with a collaborative approach.

"The Fold" is a non-linear film and virtual reality-based art game involving rooms with doors containing a concept folding into other rooms with doors. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short story The Garden of Forking Paths, each room consists of an idea inspired by structuralist & surrealist literature, mathematics, the readymade virtual object, and more. This project is a virtual 'escape the room' concept where some rooms are puzzle experiences and others are more experiential. All rooms follow a similar visual monochromatic motif. To date, the project involves five rooms: the Doors, the Fold, the Grid, the Meridies, and the Cave. Subsequent rooms will be released as this project is a long-term episodic series. Chapter one is debuted at Berlin Recontres International.

Alex M. Lee is an artist who utilizes 3D animation, video game engines, virtual/augmented/immersive reality platforms, and the potential of simulation technologies in order to visualize and complicate our perception of time, space, image and light - culling from concepts within science, science fiction, physics, philosophy, and modernity. He received his BFA (2005) and MFA (2009) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Lee was raised in the USA and is associate professor in the Digital Arts & Sciences Program at Clarkson University located in Potsdam, NY - a private science and engineering university located north of the Adirondack Mountains where he divides his time between Potsdam and New York City. Lee has exhibited internationally in North America and Asia. Selected exhibitions include: Mio Photo, Osaka, Japan; Daegu Art Factory, Daegu, Korea; The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago, Illinois; Eyebeam: Center for Art & Technology, New York, NY; Gallery DOS, Seoul, Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, QC. His work has been published in articles covering art, science, and culture including: Metaverse Creativity, Canadian Art, and Routledge Press.

In the immersive experimental fiction Image Technology Echoes by Lauren Moffatt, we enter a quiet gallery inside a cavernous museum space. The gallery is empty, except for an older man and a younger woman. The pair are having a stilted conversation about the painting they are looking at: a large expressionist canvas depicting a stormy ocean. This odd exchange seems to circulate indefinitely… unless we step inside the body of one of the two figures and are transported to their mental space. Each interior is a messy room with its own life. In this place, the person’s doppelgänger homunculus is reciting their stream of consciousness that the artist generated with a neural network, and the painting appears very different from what we just saw in the gallery.

Lauren Moffatt is an Australian artist working between video, performance and immersive technologies. Her works, often presented in multiple forms, explore the paradoxical subjectivity of connected bodies and the friction at the frontiers between digital and organic life. Lauren's works usually take the form of speculative fictions and environments, which are conceived using a mixture of obsolete and pioneering technologies and often occupy both physical and virtual space. Lauren completed her studies at the College of Fine Arts (AU), Université Paris VIII (FR), and at Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains. Lauren's works have been screened and exhibited most recently at Le Centre Pompidou (FR), Le Grand Palais Éphémère (FR) Hartware MedienkunstVerein (DE) Palais de Tokyo (FR), Villa Medici (IT), UNSW Galleries (AU), Daegu Art Museum (KOR), Museum Dr. Guislain (BE), SAVVY Contemporary (DE), FACT Liverpool (UK) The Sundance Film Festival (US) ZKM (DE), Q21 Freiraum (AT) and at La Gaïté Lyrique (FR). She lives and works between Berlin (DE) and Valencia (ES).

“Still life” is an art-installation both physical - because it is composed of several AR sculptures made of ceramic, 3D printing, and other materials - and VR, because it is usable through oculus rift 3D viewer. “Still life” analyses the processes of nature by investigating the relation with it and what is represented in art nowadays as still life. The VR artwork puts in question what is really dead in nature and what is still alive in history of art, by speculating on landscapes, paintings and objects, and so creating through virtual reality an object-oriented space formed by a vibrant still-life environment designed all around the spectators. To design the vr artwork’s environment I used the techniques of photogrammetry and 3D scan objects, then I worked on manipulating the related maps/textures. The onlookers wearing the headset can touch the things ( i.e. food, flowers, fake dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, drinking glasses, books, vases, jewellery, coins, pipes, etc. ) in the still-life recreated by the real objects placed physically on situ. Audience can discover hidden senses by interacting with wired objects and new spaces of perception unfolding into diverse meanings. I make a sort of Duchampian détournement / decontextualization on the use of the vr medium itself, by designing immersive milieu in which, sometimes, the vr camera view angle is locked at 180°, 220°, or 310° instead of 360°. So, the onlooker is forced to peek/peep through the real space, into a reconstructed and resized immersive space sometimes semi-open or semi-closed, but made of wired geometric angles and futuristic views, playing with the concept of infinite including infinitely large, infinitely small, micro and macro dimensions, producing an unexpectable slide and shift of meaning. “Still life” is an experimental project, which challenges physical place to render it vibrant and participatory. It is through audience experience that “Still life” addresses us to the paradox of the modern space-time condition, even more diluted between physical and liquid space. “Still life” is part of a vr research project which I began in 2015 and which slots into my artistic journey since 1997, the fruit of a deep interest in space and how it is transformed and shaped “by” and “in” the language of informatics. In software and electronic devices, I find potential vehicles for the investigation and visualization of my research and theories. My “Still life” by investigating and analysing the ancient and fervid European Still Life art-practice, wants to keep alive its tradition across the magical ontology of the VR vision. In “Still life” I designed each piece to behave and move beyond its own functionality, according also to the Object Oriented Ontology philosophy.

Chiara Passa, visual artist (b. Rome 1973) working in media art since 1997. I graduated (M.F.A.) from the Fine Arts Academy of Rome, Master in audio-visual media at the Faculty of Modern Literature. After living in many different places I’m currently living and working around & in Rome. My artistic research analyses differences in virtual spaces through a variety of techniques technologies and devices - often using virtual reality and augmented reality technologies as an artistic medium to explore architecture as interface. I use VR and AR to comprise their intrinsic language and so on for shaking-up and challenging the static notion of architecture, by exploring the liminal duality between tangible and virtual place, achieving in art a strange oscillation between spaces. Yet, I work with animations, net-artworks, interactive and site-specific video-installations and AR / VR video-sculptures, sometimes made of Carrara marble, fresco technique, plexiglass, or 3D printing parts. Yet, I use VR medium in order to create site-specific video installations using a wide range of google cardboards. Typically, the 3D viewers are installed all over the real space, designing geometric shapes in liminal areas where onlookers can peek/peep thru 3D viewers over the wall, and so immerse themselves into a re-constructed/resized VR space made of wired geometric angles and futuristic views, sometimes semi-open or semi-closed at 180°, 220° or 360°, so highlighting the paradox of the modern space-time condition, which nowadays is even more diluted in between physical and liquid space. My work has been internationally exhibited from festivals, conferences, and institutions, including: 2019 «Object Oriented Space». Solo show at Museum MLAC Rome. «Virtual Natives – Sculpture», Roehrs & Boetsch gallery, Zurich (2019); «Oslo Night show», HEK Museum Basel (2018); «InSonic» immersive art show, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Museum, Karlsrhue (2017); «From live architecture: Dimensioning», solo show at Furtherfield gallery, London (2016); «Off Biennale Cairo» (2015-2016); «ISEA Disruption», Conference and exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery. (2015); «Morphos», Vortex Dome - immersion media, Los Angeles (2014); Media Art Histories IV - RENEW conference, Riga. (2013). FILE | Electronic Language International Festival, São Paulo. (2011); Electrofringe - festival of new media art, Newcastle, Australia. (2008); BizArtCenter, Shangai (2005); MACRO – Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Roma (2004), 11° Biennale of young artists of Europe and the Mediterranean countries: «Cosmos - a sea of art», Athens. (2003); 48a Biennale di Venezia (with Oreste group), Venezia (1999) e Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia (1999).

The Big Crash VR is a nonlinear immersive virtual reality artpiece based on data mined from real estate sites. The audience experience it either on an Oculus Quest headset within an exhibition context or online with a desktop browser or the one within a VR device. This piece is part of Malte Steiner's art project The Big Crash. The thematic departure point is the instability of the real estate market as a consequence of extreme gentrification. Something that is actively taking place in all bigger cities around the globe. There is a pending ‘big bubble crash’ awaiting as a consequence of this and the piece deals with the growing instability this movement creates and its effects on society. The VR world is build with graphical artifacts derived from real estate ads from Berlin with a custom software. Images from these ads are segmented into objects by a Machine Learning algorithm and used to create a surreal architecture in the 3D environment. Sound based on the data from the prices and square meters over a span of several months provides an additional layer.

Malte Steiner (born 1970) is a German media artist, electronic musician and composer, currently living in Aalborg in Denmark. Steiner started creating electronic music and visual art around 1983, developing his own vision of the interdisciplinary Gesamtkunstwerk, working with, and not limited to, film, theater, paintings, video games, interactive installations and sound. First exhibitions already in 1983. In 1986 Steiner took a course in electro-acoustic music in Lüneburg by H.W. Erdmann and gave his first live performances in the following years, e. g. in Germany, France and Belgium and started 1987 to release his music on cassette, later on vinyl, CD and online. Steiner was a co-founder of the Hörbar club for experimental music located in Hamburg (DE), which opened in 1991 and is still active today. In 1998 he started creating electronic art and installations and in 2003 additionally several netart projects including a collaborative visual networking environment, shown in the Java museum in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 2011 Steiner moved to Berlin, where he opened his own non-public media lab block 4. Besides diverse music projects Steiner is also involved in several open source projects and has done lectures, radio features and workshops. 2018 he relocated to Aalborg, Denmark.

This immersive experience includes three-dimensional scans combined with voice-memos, images, videos and WhatsApp messages which together form an assemblage of distant yet intimate encounters with friends and subjects. The viewer is able to walk through a personal and emotional digital landscape, creating their own non-linear narrative between dream and reality, a liminal space of longing.

Matthijs Vuijk (1995, NL) is an independent new media artist and filmmaker who has been studying photography at the Royal Academy of the Arts in Ghent, Belgium, from which he graduated with distinction. After doing an internship with Dutch filmmaker Lara Verheijden, Matthijs moved to Johannesburg, South Africa. There Matthijs finished a Bachelor Honours in Film & Television at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) with distinction and participated in a collaborative VR project between the Filmuniversität Babelsberg and WITS. Matthijs’ background in visual art, film and VR encompass his passion, which lies in the creation of captivating worlds through a strong visual atmosphere. He is formally and technically interested in different mediums while the important narrative factors within his work have a strong emphasis on emotions, intimacy and connection. His recent collaborative film What do I see when I see me with Sammie Straub has been selected at the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2021, while Matthijs’ newest immersive experience With the Whole World Crumbling, We Pick this Time to Fall in Love participates in the 2021 edition of the Fak’ugesi Digital Innovation Festival in Johannesburg, South Africa. His collaborative graduation film Sikelela Tapes was selected for the ‘Frontlight’ competition of the renowned International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and had its world premier at the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) in Tanzania. Matthijs is currently involved in different cultural initiatives in both Johannesburg and Amsterdam.