Rigid Waves

Performing Data exhibition (April-June 2011) is a review of Fleischmann and Strauss´ body of work from Virtual Reality (Home of the Brain) up to Mixed Reality (Murmuring Fields or Energie-Passagen), from Fluid (Liquid Views) to Rigid (Rigid Waves) up to Floating Interface (Media Flow).

Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss from the Fraunhofer IAIS Research Institute show an intersection of the body and immaterial digital data. From Body Space (Virtual Striptease) to Knowledge Space (Semantic Map): Interactivity as an extension of touch is a central strategy of their work – interactivity with its complex relationship to reality, re-presentation and presence.

The body as interface and intersections to the disembodied digital information. Immersion in data flow causes productive moments of disturbance and suspension, and consequently – a feeling of real physical presence.

The exhibition Performing Data includes works from the early 1990s, when the artists/scientists were co-founders of the ART+COM collective in 1987 in Berlin. Since 1992 they developed their work as research artists at KHM and GMD – the German National Research Center for Information Technology, since 1997 as directors of the Media Art & Research Studies (MARS) department and since 2001 at Fraunhofer Society, in the Institute for Media Communication (IMK) and the Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems in Sankt Augustin, Germany.