Other lecturers: Belcim Yavuz
Aesthetics of Macroworlds - An interdisciplinary journey into microscopic worlds using Touchdesigner
Overview:
The seminar uses Microscope to provide footage of surreal Microworlds from biological ecosystems as videofeed for Multimedia installations using the software touchdesigner. The aim is to do a large scale video installation in the Lernraum-Bauhaus and the Digital Bauhaus Lab. Can we see the Microscope as a camera, the scientist as a videographer and the projection of the examination as a form of expanded cinema? We also would like to engage in cooperations with sound-artists.
This seminar introduces students to thematization of the interaction between culture and nature. With the help of macro/micro photography and scientific approaches, both aesthetic and theoretic, the following essential artistic concepts will be taught:
Hors champ - The invisible in the picture
- The term ‘hors champ’ (outside the picture frame) indicates that the picture tells more than it shows. The term mainly refers to film. It directs the focus to what is not directly visible, but is hinted at by the picture frame and the composition.
- This becomes particularly interesting in the macro area: the micro world breaks the indexicality (the direct reference to reality), as the enlargement makes details visible that appear abstract. At the same time, the cadrage remains as a culturally formed organising principle and releases the image from its pure purposefulness
The result of the seminar will be a live performance accompanied by the seminar of Dr. Marcin Pietruszewski.
The seminar will be held in cooperation with Hybrides Lernatelier.
The dialectic of natural beauty
- The reference to natural beauty (Adorno, Hegel) as a projection surface for human ideas. Kitsch is primarily produced by generative methods such as AI, as NO macro world can be derived from the image data fed in. (Deepdream)
- The macro image enables a view of nature in which details, structures and interrelationships become visible that would otherwise remain invisible - without being symbolically overloaded.
The seminar calls for a critical dialectic between nature and culture: nature is neither understood as a romantic projection surface of an unspoilt paradise, nor is it subjected to purely instrumental reason.
- The exploration of science and ecology creates a link between aesthetic experience and awareness of global challenges.
Summary and practice
The seminar can create an exciting media overlap between art, science and philosophy. Simultaneously it will build on top of the student’s work of the previous semesters by using the pond and its ecosystem as target for the photography and videography experience.
- Aesthetically: macro/micro shots as abstract works of art, installations in the sense of expanded cinema.
- Theoretical: reflection on the nature-culture dialectic and deconstruction of instrumental reason.
- Ecological: Awareness of economic connections by making visible connections and patterns that would otherwise remain invisible. |
