Shift in progress has invited students at Swiss art schools to submit work from the digital arts field, which relates to the theme of this year’s festival, ‘record, record’. Daniel Baumann (curator) and Hanspeter Giuliani (Tweaklab) selected 16 projects from a total of 25 entries.

Shift in progress sees itself as a platform for projects by a new generation of artists and activists, who keep close track of current developments in the electronic media, comment on them, influence them and use them as they see fit. Shift in progress presents contributions by students of the following schools:

— University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, Academy of Art and Design (FHNW HGK): Institute for Media Art, Aarau; Art Institute, Basel
— Berne University of the Arts (HKB): Music and Media Art
— Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU): Videodepartment
— F&F School for Art and Media Design, Zurich
— Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK): Department of New Media

Freight Wagons and Containers, free entry

Denise Altermatt – Stefan Baltensperger – Fabienne Blanc – Fabian Chiquet – Bianca Dugaro – Kevin Graber – Luc Gut – Denis Handschin – Jeremias Holliger – Sonja Huonder – Denise Kratzer / Jan Hänni – Cyrill Lim – Timo Loosli / Daniel Werder – Eva Moline / Silvia Popp – David Siepert – Hannah Weinberger

DENISE ALTERMATT

(F&F Zürich)

PIECES OF CUTTING

(2008), Installation

Since time began people have tried to pin down the world on the most detailed maps possible. Today’s technology is pretty helpful in this respect for it allows us to create and save a picture of our present environment at any moment. For this project Denise Altermatt photographed her personal environment for the purpose of publicly displaying it elsewhere. ‘Pieces of Cutting’ turns into a gigantic image composed of c. 1000 individual pics that demonstrates just how obsessive attitudes to visual production can become today

STEFAN BALTENSPERGER

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT MEDIENKUNST)

MEDIALE ARTEFAKTE

(2008), Installation

In ‘Medial Artefacts’ a fictional story emerges from an aesthetic transcription of information that is shaped not by the artist but in real-time by a computer programme, the ‘reality generator’. This analyses news bulletins found on the Internet and compares them with the content of feature films. If the programme detects a correlation between a news bulletin and a sequence from the film archive, the sequence is projected in full-screen modus. The stories that ensue range from arbitrarily compiled footage through to narrative make-believe worlds.

FABIENNE BLANC

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT MEDIENKUNST)

MISTER HIT & THE ONE HIT WONDERS, SCRATCH YOURSELF, TURNTABLE-TABLE

(2008), Installation

Three record players are the centrepiece of this 3-part installation. An important factor here is the interplay of title, object and an interactive approach. The play on words in the title gives a clue to thematic links, for example in ‘ Scratch Yourself’: a record is on the turntable, scratch movements with the needle are recorded and transmitted to a computer that in turn sets in motion a backscratcher … with which one can ‘scratch’ oneself. The title of the second object ‘Turntable-Table’ is based on Duchamp’s ‘Bicycle Wheel’. In the third piece ‘Mister Hit & the One Hit Wonders’, the record player itself delivers the basis for the title. The name of this ‘Telefunken’ equipment produced in 1974 is ‘Mister Hit’ and, a mobile phone linked to the record player is playing one hit wonders from 1974.

FABIAN CHIQUET

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT KUNST)

MEIN TANZ

(2008), Installation

An unfailingly energetic young man throws light on a never-ending dance. Sound is taken care of by an Internet community that delivers the material for rhythmically intoned texts. Here we have web-forum commentaries on the aforementioned young man. At best this work addresses he popular culture of today, the matter of blatant exhibitionism, of exposing oneself to the public gaze. Otherwise, the young man does at least in his endeavours remain charming to look at.
www.fabianchiquet.net

BIANCA DUGARO

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT KUNST)

OVERFLOW

(2008), Installation

The installation conjures an ambiance in which the viewer is reflected, reflects, thereby apprehends and becomes irritated. The intention is to create an analogy with the digital world of visual information in which, as a body, one can move and stride through a projection in space. Projection, recording, repetition and duplication provoke in the viewer a feeling of being surrounded by information. His behaviour can control this in part, yet it too is overstretched by the quantity of input.

KEVIN GRABER

(HSLU VIDEODEPARTMENT)

VAGES TERRAIN

(2008), Installation

Two monitors show places that are familiar to us and yet appear nonetheless alien. They seem static and controllable, yet under closer inspection the image comes apart at the seams. These are ephemeral places, non-places caught in dynamic abeyance, which evade a fixed ascription of meaning. It takes time to withstand irritation and insecurity and really let these images take effect; and hence the associations they evoke are all the stronger, as is their intractable way of stroking our imagination and its bounds.

LUC GUT

(ZHDK MEDIALE KÜNSTE)

IMAGE RECORDED SOUND? SOUND RECORDED IMAGE?

(2008), Installation

It’s possible! Thanks to technological progress and the media it’s now possible to ‘record’, edit and add sound to a video using inexpensive equipment in one’s own bedroom. That, in any case, is how these five pieces by Luc Gut came into being. All five clips deal with the synchronisation of electronic music and video – an experimental field that has long since fascinated Gut. The following questions remain decisive: how does sound influence an image? How can rhythm be visually illustrated? How can an image or motion make sound?
http://people.zhdk.ch/luc.gut

DENIS HANDSCHIN

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT KUNST)

ABSORPTIONCIRCLE

(2008), Installation

Spatial activity is transposed by means of a sensor to sound that generates waves in water, which are visualised in a projection. As soon as a person enters the room the ‘shadow emissions’ that s/he emits cause a change in the sound pressure level, which affects the vibration of the projected waves. Even when nobody is in the room, interaction between the light, sound and water occurs. What are senses inclined to register? To what extent is something autonomous? Based on the principle of the butterfly effect, this experiment with resonance is also a recording of an everyday phenomenon. It is intended to make manifest a small part of our world from a huge cycle of absorption processes.

JEREMIAS HOLLIGER

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT KUNST)

HYBRID - ZWISCHEN VIRTUALITÄT UND WIRKLICHKEIT

(2008), Installation

HYBRID’ is to be understood as a test-run on an open field. It oscillatesbetween the material and immaterial, questions the reality of the virtual and examines, what is virtual about reality. In developing this work, form was subjected to various procedures of translation and media transfers, in the course of which the two poles of the real and the virtual began increasingly to engage one another. The object itself explores a border situation at the interface of architecture, design and art, and the question of modelexistence is the recurring theme of this arrangement.

SONJA HUONDER

(ZHDK MEDIALE KÜNSTE)

DAS GEHEIMNIS

(2008), Installation

The visitor steps into a dark room and listens to the poem ‘My Datababy’ sung in rounds: ‘please don’t touch me / don’t destroy me / gently love me / go set me free / expand my memory / trust me bytely / help set me free / protect me / my datababy’. The path leads to three radio sets via which texts are broadcast about the secret and which partly use interference to encrypt the secret. Finally, the visitor reaches a cell phone display on which the poem is constantly randomly altered. The secret symbolises a private data collection and addresses attitudes to privacy, inclusion, exclusion and the encryption of everyday life. The secret is sung, spoken in encrypted texts and constantly changed on the screen. Despite data being recorded, saved and processed it remains a secret.

DENISE KRATZER/JAN HÄNNI

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT MEDIENKUNST)

KLANGCODE

(2007), Installation

‘Klangcode’ breaks language down into phonemes and transforms physical motion into a poetry of sounds. This installation draws on the origins of the alphabet as a cultural agent, and addresses language composed of sounds and notes. Nine loudspeakers are mounted at eye-level in a row on a wall. If a recipient steps up to a speaker, a phoneme resounds from within it and continues to echo for as long as the recipient remains there. The arrangement of speakers allows him to hear a sentence whilst walking past them.

CYRILL LIM

(HKB MUSIK UND MEDIENKUNST)

GÄNSEBLÜMCHENKETTE

(2008), Installation

Every transformation of sound, from digital to analogue and back, every building block in the chain of playback and recording, be it a microphone, an amp or a speaker, all of this intervenes in the original material and alters it. Excessively repetitive playback and recordings made with diverse equipment are used to add harmonic structures and noises to an initially pure tone, a tone with a sinusoidal waveshape. It is only by means of media that this initial pure tone can be shaped musically to become sound. The issues addressed here are those of how media distorts a copy and the selfreflection of the medium.

TIMO LOOSLI/DANIEL WERDER

(HKB MUSIK UND MEDIENKUNST)

THE LOOP

(2008), Installation

An almost extinct medium on which are stored countless terabytes of data and hours of audio material is the basis of this sound installation: magnetic tape. A gigantic loop is threaded across numerous recording and play buttons, which have been equipped with microphones and speakers. Recording heads register noises in the room; playback heads make them once again audible, with a slight time delay. Microphones in turn record this information, yet the tape, loudspeakers and the path serve to distort it. In this way sounds are recorded, distorted, re-recorded and overwritten

EVA MOLINE/SILVIA POPP

(F&F ZÜRICH)

SEV PROTECTED - SAFETY THROUGH RECORDING

(2008), Installation

Often without our knowledge and certainly always without our consent, surveillance cameras film us every day. Most of this recollected material trickles away unremarked. The idea behind such non-stop recordings is the illusion that a moment of recollection provides security, that an all-knowing memory can provide information and that the good and the bad are separated. For Shift 2008 an official instance of recollection will be instigated: it is called SEV, will set up surveillance equipment and lays claim to the authority of an official controller.

DAVID SIEPERT

(FHNW HGK INSTITUT KUNST)

ME VOY A DEMORAR

(2008), Installation

‘Me voy a demorar’ questions the recording medium. It unites the immediacy of analogue means with the storage and transformational potential of a digital recording. The visitor comes upon parquet flooring at a point of passage, on a threshold. If s/he steps onto it, microphones beneath the floor register the sounds of his/her steps. A programmed algorithm alters the sounds, which are then transmitted with a slight delay to speakers installed at ceiling level. Without noticing, visitors will be stepping into their predecessors’ acoustic footsteps

HANNAH WEINBERGER

(ZHDK MEDIALE KÜNSTE)

OHNE TITEL

(2008), Installation

The work consists of a selection of screen compositions that were saved as screenshots and printed on paper. The content is drawn exclusively from the Google search engine and other programmes financed by Google Inc. The goal is to use everything Google has to offer, from Google Map, language tools, Google Groups, Blogs and the entire range of services offered by Google Office.