Digital technologies and media have an impact on today’s world. They promote new forms of knowledge and action and change our ideas of living (together) in society. From an aesthetic point of view, digitality, and thus the manifold interactions between analogue and digital experience, is of particular interest. In collaboration with artists, game designers and experts of everyday life, we liked to explore these interactions and developed digital prototypes for more participation and co-determination in the museum. We experimented with digital technologies in both the real and virtual space of the GfZK. We wished to approach them with curiosity, but also with a critical eye – partly because we do not always understand how they work and what effect they have. We also wished to publicly reflect upon our working method as an art institution and expanded the artistic and social potential of the museum. In collaboration with everyone involved in the project, we strove to achieve an ecologically conscious and community-minded approach to digitality.
After, uhh... a long summer break, the Digital Megaherz Podcast is back. Today live via stream, Ulrike Uhlig with her book "How the internet really works". Together we go deeper into the physical dimension of the internet and discuss realities, utopias and alternatives.
In the project "Dig it? - Digital Prototypes in the Museum" project, the GfZK developed experimental mediation formats between analogue and digital experience for and above all with all interested people. You can access our multilingual guided tours via the Youtube link!
This time, we are guests of the art education team, who experiment with how daily office life can become more sustainable. In a digital self-experiment we also discuss the question of how these experiences could be transferred to other workplaces. Be inspired!
SPECIAL event in the big Dig it? summer festival. We are pleased to welcome the collective Hackers & Designers as guests on the podcast. Together we speak about current projects and how the collective was found and developed.
On this auditory walk, the outdoor area is explored from a first-person perspective and nature is listened to. Short meditation sessions repeatedly invite visitors to pause and listen more closely.
Our podcast revolves around the topic of sustainable digitalisation: What does that even mean? What does it have to do with the GfZK and how can a museum be a sustainable place?
The annual programme deals with transformation processes that should make it possible for the museum to be more digitally sustainable. From self-experiments in the team, to prototypes of alternative power generation as part of the exhibition visit, to questions of digital participation, a variety of projects are taking place that we want to talk about with staff and experts.
The podcast is an open format – questions to the museum and suggestions for future broadcasts are welcome via email to the following address: [digit@gfzk.de]
Idea and carrying out: Martin Haufe, Franziska Kinder & Tristan Schulze
The INFORM prize winner, the designer, theorist and project developer Yin Aiwen, is interested in public welfare. The aim of her speculative/artistic research projects is to create networks that facilitate self-determined and reliable relationships between people and (digital) systems. For Yin, design is thus first and foremost a way to (continually re)design the relationship between technology and society.
At the GfZK, she presents two important works from her artistic career to date. The "Massage is the Medium" (2013) is both a performance and an installation.
"Liquid Dependencies: what does a decentralized caring society look like?" (2021) is a game involving role play, in which relationships are built on the basis of mutual care. During the course of a game lasting four to five hours, the players simulate spending 20 to 30 years together, and deal with a series of private and social situations.
Together with the artists’ collective Elli Kuruş, Yin Aiwen has developed a version of the game especially for Leipzig at the GfZK.
In search of new digital approaches to art education, we started an experimental collaboration with Jacqueline Boom-Boom, a musician and performer represented in the exhibition Appointment X. This resulted in a radio show on Radio Blau where we talked about art, fun, love, encounters and interactions. It revolved around the question of who may be an artist and who may be part of an art institution. Since the medium of radio reaches so many different people, what better a space is there to talk about the exhibition? (the radio show is in German language)
Art Educators: Alexandra Ivanciu and Martin Moresco
Special Guest: Curator Julia Schäfer
Moderator: Jacqueline Boom-Boom
Walk through the exhibition, exchange ideas, reflect together, gather new impressions: In participatory workshops, we are developing audio tours for the current exhibitions in collaboration with various groups. The Auditours has got being created to accompany visitors through the exhibition “Vom Haben und Teilen – Wem gehört die Sammlung?” (On Having and Sharing – Who Owns the Collection?). Unlike classic audio guides, they enable visitors to perceive and get to know the exhibitions from different perspectives. The first audio tour is being created in collaboration with Leipzig youths from an assisted living group.
Conception: GfZK for You
In three Sound Walks, we will guide visitors with their ears across the grounds and into the two buildings of the GfZK. Short meditation sessions repeatedly invite visitors to pause and listen more closely.
On the tours, you can get to know previously unknown places and explore them with the help of your imagination – and join the Sound Walks from any imaginable place. In the first walk, the outdoor area is explored from a first-person perspective and nature is listened to. In the subsequent walks, the interiors of the GfZK will be explored.
Concept: Tania Kolbe
"Ask-the-Artist" is a mediation format that revolves exclusively around works from our collection. For this purpose, one work at a time is portrayed cinematically. The video portrait is then broadcast via social media channels and accompanied by an invitation to spontaneously comment on it: What does it remind you of? What would you like to know about this work from the artist?
Afterwards, we forwarded the collected reactions and questions to the artists. You can then find their answer as a video on our YouTube channel “GfZK – Dig it?”.
What is in the GfZK's collections? What stories can be gleaned from the art collection, the library, the archive, and what are they not revealing right now? What does this have to do with everyday life or the personal and shared realities of life today?
Here we would like to dig deeper. The intention is to create interactive online dossiers in which information and materials – interviews, texts, graphics, videos and images, link collections, etc. to the GfZK collections, which are compiled in such a way that collecting at the museum, how it is dealt with, and the contents of the collection can be viewed from different angles. As a first step, we will speak with developers from online platforms that have inspired us.
The conversations will be published on gfzk.de
Dealing with digital media is an integral part of our private and professional reality today. They are tools that can empower us in many ways, but they can also do us harm. It is therefore necessary that we question and train the use of our digital tools individually, collectively and in relation to our environment.
The e:robics programme includes various stages: starting with synaesthetic experiments on self-awareness, through the perception and effect of community within digital worlds, to the experimental design of the real-life world through digital interfaces.
The e:robics programme is modelled on the open source idea, which originated in software development. All training modules are shared openly and can be freely copied or transformed for your own ideas.
Idea and implementation: Tristan Schulze & Tania Kolbe
We ask ourselves the following questions: To what extent are we dependent on our electronic devices and digital applications? What influence do they have on our actions and those of our partners? What alternatives are worth integrating into everyday life? What attitude do we adopt – politically, psychologically and physically?
Our digital self-experiment will be artistically documented and made visible, the process will be continuously accompanied by our critical friends. We want to contribute to a more conscious approach to the digital footprint.
'Trotzdem Yeah!' was a local artists stream collaboration of CFM, Bea Wolf/Barcelona Leipzig and Tom Wagner/TixForGigs. Barcelona tapas bar became a temporary studio club during the lockdown. It followed the motto: Let us entertain you and support artists and art! Via a live and 48-hour video stream, the Wednesday Talk, the dance floor on Saturday and the Electronic Sunday were accessible online. For 'Appointment X', the dance floor evenings are being revived and are accessible in the exhibition. The Wednesday and Sunday events will once again be available to stream via TixforGigs.
Idea: CFM
As part of the 'Appointment X' exhibition, FAIL (Fine Arts Institute Leipzig) is taking contemporary art to a new level. In 2021, the institute is working with the community of Thallwitz near Wurzen. Together with the game developer “Defender1031”, they are bringing Thallwitz into a Super Mario level – and this level to where it belongs: in an exhibition space for contemporary art, namely the GfZK.
“In a time when virtual trolling is a real danger, this level is a happy surprise party for all those who dare to have fun,” says Manu Washaus.
Comparable to a classic art library, it provides borrowers with works of art from the GfZK collection free of charge for a period. The art-to-take is digitally documented and enriched with texts and testimonials. In this way, we deal with the question of how active participation in public property is possible and what role trust plays in dealing with the property of others. At the same time, the project aims to test the possibility of entering into a dialogue with art by means of a shared story.
Concept and carrying out: Julia Schäfer & Tuan Do Duc
A team of art educators has been developing digital formats that we stream live on Sundays via the GfZK's Instagram channel. The concept is to focus on one aspect of the current exhibition at a time.
Thus, from one time to the next, the team works its way in self-defined chapters through the exhibited works, which are not accessible due to the pandemic-related closure of the museum. In a split-screen camera image, one sees the person mediating on the one hand, and the works themselves on the other. The split screen makes the viewing lively and, above all, vivid.
Emojis are pictorial characters that we commonly use today to add emotion and the proper intonation to our written messages. Non-verbal communication makes up the majority of interpersonal interaction, thus emojis can be considered as small tools that enrich our digital, often purely text-based communication with non-verbal symbols.
Although there are around 3000 different emojis today – still missing from this visual vocabulary are those depicting terms such as hope, diversity, empathy or also symbols for recent terms such as filter bubble or hate speech. However, by combining existing emojis, these terms and topics can certainly be visually described.
The aim of the project is the development of an online editor, so that one can develop their own “emojigrams” with the simplest resources, e.g. with a smartphone.
Idea and implementation: Tristan Schulze
We are developing a game world for children from the age of 7 consisting of digital and analogue modules. The basis is a 16 by 16 pixel painting surface. This is where Dot Boss is created: the DNA that is the starting point for all further activities. Dot Boss can be a character, a QR code, a room, a wallpaper, a button to pin on. He travels through various input and output systems between the analogue and digital worlds.
Concept: Uwe Fischer, Tristan Schulze
Orthoses are splints that are normally used to relieve or stabilise joints. An energy harvesting orthosis, on the other hand, generates electricity when the knee is moved. So energy harvesting is a way of generating electricity from alternative sources, such as kinetic energy. And if one produces energy where it is needed, one does not have to store it unnecessarily.
We want to look specifically at the possibility of conserving resources in the museum. We are thinking about the use of audio guides and other electronic media. The project is an attempt to sensitise people to the conscious use of resources. The electricity required by the digital media in the exhibition must therefore be generated by the visitors themselves.
The basic idea for Orthoses was conceived during the Games for Future
semester project in the 2019 winter semester under the direction of
Prof. Jonas Hansen and Tristan Schulze at Burg Giebichenstein
University of Art and Design Halle.
Idea and carrying out: Franziska Kinder & Tristan Schulze
Thanks to: Statex Produktions- und Vertriebs GmbH.
Dig it? Prototypes for the Museum is being developed as part of "dive in. Programm für digitale Interaktionen" of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, funded by the commissioner of the Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM) in the NEUSTART KULTUR program
