Friday, May 31, 2013

Opening: Synaesthesia/4 - Friday 31 May, 8PM

Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving
Eva-Maria Bolz, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Andy Holtin


Opening: 31.05.2013, 8 PM
Exhibition runs 1 June - 21 July, 2013
Open: Fri-Sun, 2-6 PM and by appointment

Synaesthesia / 4: Translating, Correcting, Archiving presents works by Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen (DK), Eva-Maria Bolz (D) and Andy Holtin (USA). The exhibition devotes itself to selected artistic strategies for decoding the phenomenon of synaesthesia. It is significant that all three artists experience different forms of synaesthetic perception.

Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, Why Is Green a Red Word?, video stills, 2003 - 2013


Since 2003, Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen, herself a synaesthete, has created an extensive video archive of interviews about the multi-sensory perception of synaesthesia that document the experiences of individuals and at the same time make the unbridgeable gap between this topic and the audience clear.

Her project Why Is Green a Red Word? is comprised of interviews with synaesthetes and scientists, but also includes conceptual video works such as What the Hell does Purgatory Look Like? and drawings depicting the spatial imagination of number forms by different synaesthetes. Contemporaneous with the exhibition opening will be the publication of Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen’s artist book Why is Green a Red Word? designed by Kenan Darwich.

 
Eva-Maria Bolz, Der Innere Monitor (The Rose and the Nightingale, Oscar Wilde), 2013, detail


 The work of the Berlin artist and grapheme synaesthete Eva-Maria Bolz is dedicated to an exploration of the relationship between colour, text and perception. In her individual form of synaesthesia she feels an unchanging association of colours to numbers, letters, as well as whole words. Perception becomes a filter through which letters, words – text in itself – are translated into colours and transformed from a set of well-known characters into a message that can be detected by means of a particular synaesthetic sensibility.
 
The project Der Innere Monitor, which Eva-Maria Bolz presents at Art Laboratory Berlin, follows her  perception that colours and letters form a specific code through which a text can be translated into blocks of colour. Each letter corresponds to a specific colour. When the artist deliberately uses texts that contain intense colour descriptions such as Oscar Wilde's The Rose and the Nightingale, she asks us not only to explore the perceived differences, but also to experience the text through the eyes of a synaesthete. In the exhibition Bolz will present five selected texts in the form of large colour plates. In addition to the colour plates, documentation is created in the form of an artist book.

Andy Holtin, Corrections, video still, 2009


Andy Holtin has grapheme synaesthesia, connected with a particular colour-number association. He sees numbers in specific colours, moreover, this is influenced by a partial red-green colour blindness, affecting certain nuances. In his video Corrections (2009) you can see how a hand colours in the numbers of different signs and nameplates in photographs. Corrections demonstrates the gap between the object and subjective sense perception as well as the personal impressions of the artist himself. By speeding up the video, the act of colouring in appears grotesque as the act of artist's hand achieves a form of slapstick. In his video Connections (2013) the artist examines the complications he experiences when objects share a colour with a particular number due to Holtin’s individual synaesthetic experience, creating an extended perceptual relationship.

During this final exhibition the synaesthesia series, Art Laboratory Berlin will host an international interdisciplinary conference "Synaesthesia. Discussing a Phenomenon in the Arts, Humanities and (Neuro-)science" (5 & 6 July, 2013, Glaskasten Theatre, Prinzenallee 33, next to Art Laboratory Berlin).
Regine Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)
rapp@artlaboratory-berlin.org
cdelutz@artlaboratory-berlin.org

 
Presse: Olga Shmakova
olga.shmakova@artlaboratory-berlin.org



With the generous support of:




Media partner:


The Synaesthesia series is supported in part by a generous gift from Michael Schröder.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Works from Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati in Synaesthesia/3: History of the Senses

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

Circus 8 Pietro Grossi & Sergio Maltagliati

The Italian composer Pietro Grossi (1917 - 2002) was one of the first programmers to contribute pioneering work in computer generated music. In 1964 he was among the first to introduce the experiments of John Cage to Italy. A year later he became the professor of electronic music at Konservatorum Luigi Cherubini in Florence. He also used his composing programs to develop early computer graphics. With the use of "QBasic" he developed the program "HomeArt".Sergio Maltagliati studied under Pietro Grossi in the 1980s and developed new methods of musical compositions, in which the score underwent a significant visualisation. Maltagliati has reworked the Grossi's original programs by adapting the programming code to create a generative program that simultaneously produces sound and abstract colours and shapes.

The work Circus 8 (1986/2008) consists of eight pieces and is based on Grossi's HomeArt programs, which automatically generated sound. Maltagliati has expanded Grossi's principle with software programs and added visual graphic variations. The visual data generated by the computer approximates the graphic score for a sound composition (cf. John Cage). Whilst the work Circus 8 adds a media historical dimension to Art Laboratory Berlin's Synaesthesia series, it also brings an important new component into the discussion: the computer as artificial brain with its own form of digital synaesthesia.


On exhibition through 12 May
(http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-30.htm)

Friday, May 03, 2013

Art Laboratory Berlin presents Rich Pell and CPNH at Synapse 2013 (at HKW)

All photos this entry copyright  2013 Richard Streitmatter-Tran
Regine Rapp and Christian de Lutz introduced Rich Pell from the Center for Postnatural History (Pittsburgh) - http://postnatural.org/  at the 2nd Synapse International Curators' Network on Art and Science (in context of the Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt)

Rich Pell presented the Center for Post Natural History, as well as talking about his current exhibition at the Berlin Natural History Museum