Festival Center, Containers and Festival Area

Thu, 22.10. - Sun, 25.10.2009, free entry

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, ‘magic’. 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) Design and Art: Fine Arts
— Lucerne School of Art and Design (HSLU) Design and Art: Videodepartment, Art & Education
— Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK): Media Arts

Festival Center, Containers and Festival Area, free entry

Stefan Baltensperger – Kevin Graber – Sarah Graf/Sairah Rizvi/Peter Bichsel – Denis Handschin – Rahel Lenz – Renaud Loda/Sebastien Verdon – Martina Lussi/Jonathan Ruf – Hugo Ochoa – Philippe Reinau – Angelika Schori – U5

Stefan Baltensperger

(FHNW HGK MEDIA ARTS INSTITUTE)

F-12

(2009),  Interactive light sculpture
Festival Area

"F-12" is an interactive light sculpture in the form of a standard billboard. The art object takes a classic means of advertising and uses it as a stage. Instead of the usual printed message it is a shifting composition of 1,525 shining white points of light that attract attention. They dance, then flash and fade; forms and structures emerge, then disappear again only to re-emerge in a new constellation of light. If a curious observer draws close to the object the lights react, i.e. they interact with him – in a game of movement and light. 

Kevin Graber

(HSLU VIDEODEPARTEMENT)

DIE ANDERE SEITE

(2009), Documentary film 
Festival Center

Is there life after death? Kevin Graber's film "Die andere Seite" ("The other Side") asks the oldest question on earth. Willi Schnetzer, Davor Baggio and Wolfgang Eisenbeiss recount their experiences and insights. They have different backgrounds yet they share the same firm conviction: that life goes on after death. 

Camera: Severin Kuhn, David Röthlisberger; Sound: Loris Ciresa, Marco Theus; Edited by: Timothy Studer, Kevin Graber; Sound design: Benjamin Federer; Music: Wolfgang Eisenbeiss; Graphics: Ivan Weiss, Michael Kryenbühl. 

Sarah Graf / Sairah Rizvi /  Peter Bichsel

(FHNW HGK ART INSTITUTE, HKB FINE ARTS, FHNW HGK HYPERWERK INSTITUTE)

HOT SPOTS

(2009), Video projection
Festival Center

The work "Hot Spots" addresses the nature of human perception. The artists thereby discover that perception and interpretation of reality are extremely subjective matters. Four different plots are played out one after the other. Each respective plot is presented from the perspective of four different persons. By means of a subjective camera position the viewer is put in all four persons' shoes, to see things from their perspective. Viewers thus perceive four different, simultaneous and subjective realities.   

DENIS HANDSCHIN

(FHNW HGK ART INSTITUTE)

Orb

(2009), Installation / Objekt
Festival Area

Orbs are diffuse or luminous blotches that appear in photographic prints, mostly when a flash has been used. The stray light from a flash is bounced back by particles floating between the camera and the photographic subject. The most varied theories exist as to what orbs might be, from ball-shaped ghosts and extraterrestrials through to partial energies that store up earthly energies and transmit them to higher channels. In his installation "Orb", Denis Handschin represents the immaterial in the form of a tangible, static monument that poses the question as to its own existence as a real or fictional object. 

The project is generously supported by Vogt AG.

Rahel Lenz

(FHNW HGK ART INSTITUTE)

YOU SEARCH, BABE, AT ANY COST, BUT HOW LONG, BABE WILL YOU SEARCH FOR WHAT'S NOT LOST

(2009), Projection
Festival Area

The free floating figure, whose connection to the ground consists of nothing more than rays of light, stands for seeing through something, the permeability of the projection, and the interplay of perception and reality. It appears not only in the usual sense; it also takes on its own independently mobile form in the viewer. Several possibilities are open to the viewers in the moment they see how the figure moves: they believe they have seen something special; they believe their senses have played a trick on them; or they believe that the artist has built the espied apparition into the animation. This is therefore a question of faith or lack of faith, possibly in the religious sense, but equally with regard to faith in technology, in the artist, and in one's own power of judgement.
*from "I’ll Keep It With Mine" by Bob Dylan

Renaud Loda / Sebastien Verdon

(HKB MUSIC AND MEDIA ARTS)

ECTOPLASM

(2009), Video installation
Festival Center

"Ectoplasm" is the stuff that ghosts are made of. In the field of parapsychology the term described the gauze-like substance that allegedly flows out of a medium's orifices when s/he is in a trance. Ectoplasm is said to be sensitive to light and perceptible only in almost complete darkness. Renaud Loda and Sebastien Verdon allow ectoplasm to materialize point by point in the darkness of a void: a circle forms, hands, a brief flash – barely visible then no longer there. Are we merely letting ourselves be bewitched by a dubious spook or is this really a flash of something akin to transcendence? 

Martina Lussi / Jonathan Ruf

(HSLU ART & EDUCATION)

INSTALLATION L208

(2009), Audio installation
Container

In the "Installation L208" the audience finds itself in a completely darkened room. Four loudspeakers fill the room with regular vibrations. Two of the loudspeakers have been placed opposite one another and constitute an acoustic channel. The other pair of speakers has been set at a 45° angle to a wall, facing the room's centre. Depending on its position in the room, the audience experiences varying sounds and its sense of space alters. The theme of "Installation L208" is the expansion of sensory and spatial perception by means of sinus waves, which is what the audience experiences during the eight-minute long composition.   

HUGO OCHOA

(FHNW HGK MEDIA ARTS INSTITUTE)

I COMPUTER

(2009), Interactive video installation
Festival Center

On a plinth in a darkened room sits a typewriter that serves as an interface. Opposite it one can see a projected image, a figure. It represents a magician or shaman, who asks the user questions, whereby a dialogue ensues. The people questioned have the opportunity to use this question and answer game to create their own transmedial text. "I Computer" uses animation to consider the relationship between thought and material, change and permanence, interface and medium, and magic and technology.

 

Philippe Reinau

(FHNW HGK ART INSTITUTE)

Diorama

(2009), Installation
Festival Center

"Diorama", an aesthetically simple, cool and discreet looking white-painted box prompts images in the mind's eye by means of auditory perception. Images are suggested thereby that perhaps do not exist in reality. The work addresses imagination and suggestion and asks, to what extent can a thing imagined be manipulated and influenced? How real is the world that our senses register? Does a correlation actually exist between images in our mind's eye and reality? 

Angelika Schori

(FHNW HGK ART INSTITUTE)

DEAD MELODIES

(2009), Installation
Container

A cone made of cassette tape serves as a tunnel that visitors can dive into. They find themselves caught by the fleeting nature of media – and of human beings. What they can see appears to be only a pattern, a moiré. Or is it perhaps pure magic? Ghostly voices urge to be heard. Ghost hunters attempt to make contact with the dead via vacant radio frequencies. Was that just now white noise from the tape? Lights flicker, sounds rustle, questions buzz around one's head: How dead is a person, once s/he has died? As redundant as old cassette tapes? And then, why can one still hear them, these voices? Stop. Rewind. Play. 

U5 Künstlerkollektiv

(ZHDK MEDIA ARTS)

FASHION FORCE

(2009), Series of objects
Festival Center

"Fashion Force" is a combination of ornament and redundant technology. Since the Modernist era, what has counted in our society is abstraction and pure form. Yet recently the ornamental – and with that man's archaic need for adornment – has regained importance. Ornament in cultural terms is religious, decorative and serves a distinct purpose. All that man has ever honoured he also decorated: temples, costumes, Meissner porcelain. In the animal world it can be vital to survival. To embellish an object is itself an act of worship. And technology is a religion.