Kurt Hentschläger








CURRENT PRODUCTIONS


Co-founder of GRANULAR-SYNTHESIS with Ulf Langheinrich in 1991, Kurt Hentschläger has been working on solo projects since 2003.



Performances



> PARADOX PARK — Active virtual environment and performance in constant commotion
© Kurt Hentschläger		PARADOX PARK is envisioned as a virtual sculpture park scenario populated by a number of trapped avatar protagonists, that seem to be stuck in a mire. Monumental human heads and whole body human avatars, 3D captured & animated, are set in a featureless void, glued onto a barren ground plane. It builds on Hentschläger's earlier works, such as *MODEL 5, 1994, CLUSTER, 2012, ORT, 2017, and STROM*, 2021. All of these used hyper-mediated human heads and bodies to express the psychological tensions of a civilization changing at a frighteningly rapid pace. • 03 November 2023 - 21 January 2024: a first sample at Telematic Media Arts gallery, San Francisco (CA, US)



> EKO (2019)
EKO © Kurt Hentschläger		*EKO* is the third audiovisual composition in the ongoing series staged in total darkness. Beginning with *SOL, the 2017 and initial installation, and SUB* the recently premiered 2019 follow up installation, *EKO* is a dedicated live performance. It builds on the blacking out of a given physical space, the ensuing loss of perceptual boundaries and generally the formation of what could be best described as a splendid void. Premiere: 14 November 2019, EMPAC / RPI Troy (NY, US).



> FEED.X (2018)
FEED.X © Kurt Hentschläger		FEED.X is a performance set in an artificial environment without human performers in the flesh. Its visceral in nature. The precursor, FEED, was conceived of in 2004, designed to convey a duality of the real and the rendered (processing) space. FEED.X, 14 years later, makes less of a sensual distinction between the real and the simulated, instead staging a more unified, though still hybrid reality, wherein boundaries continue to collapse. This is the new prosthetic hybrid real: physical yet still simulated, natural yet still constructed. FEED.X points to the limits of human perception, employing both sensory deprivation and sensory overload, to immerse its audience in a seemingly infinite, kaleidoscopic architecture, a realm of pure light and sound. Premiere: 30 May 2018, Halle G im MuseumsQuartier, Wiener Festwochen (AT).



> CLUSTER.X (2015) — Creation for the Ensemble intercontemporain, with Edmund Campion
CLUSTER.X © Quentin Chevrier		CLUSTER.X, a special edition of CLUSTER, is a hybrid media performance designed to be played by a group of virtual bodies and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Visually, it describes a meta-organism with a decidedly anti-individualistic character, yet still unmistakably human. Commissioned by Ensemble intercontemporain and Arcadi Île-de-France Co-production Arcadi Île-de-France, Ensemble intercontemporain, Philharmonie de Paris. Premiere: 9 October 2015, Turbulences numériques and Nemo - Digital Arts Biennial of Arcadi, Philarmonie 2 Paris (France)



> CLUSTER (2010)
CLUSTER © Kurt Hentschläger		CLUSTER, the next generation of Kurt Hentschläger's generative 3D and audio work, is moving the focus onto group behavior, -psychology and interaction-, particularly looking at swarm phenomena. A simple yet absurd setting is proposed - 3D human characters appear as a school of fish in otherwise impossible physical conditions. In the weightless choreography of “Cluster” humans appear mostly as anonymous particles, as a pulsing, amorphous mass, a cloud of blurry matter from body parts and light. The work is visually fluctuating between realistic and abstract forms. With Arcadi production support Premiere: 11 April 2010, Nemo - Digital Arts Festival of Arcadi, Le 104, Paris (France)



> FEED (2005)— Commissioned by the Venice Biennial 2005
FEED © Kurt Hentschläger		For many years Kurt Hentschlager's central interest has resided in the intimate relationship between human beings and their machine extensions. FEED is an autonomous digital system, an abstract spectacle composed of light, sound, fog and virtual human figures. Premiere: 20 September 2005, International Festival of Theatre, Venice Biennial, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale (IT).



Installations



> STROM (2021)
		After *MATTER, designed in 2012 for the SAT dome in Montreal, STROM* is a new immersive installation specially created for planetariums, which will be premiered under the 20m-diameter Zeiss Planetarium dome in Bochum. Generative in nature and thus taking on a life of its own, STROM emerges as a many faceted organism, in constant motion and interplay, without beginning or end. Premiere: 05 - 06 November 2021, curated by Tobias Wiethoff and Tobias Staab, DIVE Immersive Arts Festival, Zeiss Planetarium Bochum (DE)



> SUB (2019)
SUB © Bruno Klomfar		*SUB* builds on total darkness in a given architectural space and visitors' reliance on sonic perceptions and navigation. The absence of light is reset in intervals by bursts of animated light, emerging suddenly out of nowhere along a panoramic LED display. Returning back into darkness, ghostly retinal after-images linger, slowly fading until the next eruption of light. First presentation: 29 June 2019, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City (US).



> SOL (2017)
SOL © Timo Ohler		*SOL* is the third work in an ongoing series, after the live performance FEED (2005) and the installation ZEE (2008). First presentation: 28 January - 19 February 2017, CTM Festival, Halle am Berghain, Berlin (DE).



> ZEE (2008-2015)
ZEE © Kurt Hentschläger		Based on the research and findings with FEED, the performance, *ZEE* is expanding on composing with multiple interfering strobe lights amidst fog and the effects those have on a human perception and decoding apparatus: the brain. First presentation: 30 May - 13 July 2008, Tiefenrausch, OK-Centre for Contemporary Art, Linz (AT).



> MEASURE (2014) — Commissioned by Audemars Piguet
MEASURE © Kurt Hentschläger		Kurt Hentschläger's panoramic audiovisual installation MEASURE is part of an emerging body of work which reflects on concepts of nature in the 21st century. As nature filtered through some form of media becomes a new norm, the boundaries blur between mediated and physical, direct experiences. The question Hentschläger therefore poses is what is nature, actually, today and whether or not an "original" can still culturally exist in the Anthropocene, in this age of human influence. What then is real, in the sense of the pure and the original, and what is constructed and artificial? The boundary has somehow shifted. MEASURE was commissioned by Audemars Piguet and presented in Art Basel in Hong Kong, Basel and Miami in 2014.



> CORE (2012)
CORE © Kurt Hentschläger		*CORE* is a generative 3D and audio work. *CORE* is best imagined as a sequence of windows onto a weightless world populated by discrete groups of humanoid figures. These figure or clones (they are all identical) interact sometimes instinctually, like a school of fish or a flock of birds, and other times like intricately choreographed modern ballet or synchronized swimmers. First presentation: 23 March - 30 September 2012, London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, The Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust Limited (UK).



> MATTER (2012) — Installation for the Sensorium dome of the SAT Montreal
MATTER © Kurt Hentschläger		In the weightless world of MATTER, corresponding to Kurt Hentschläger’s recent live show CLUSTER, human figures appear mostly as interconnected, dependant bodies, as a pulsing, tumbling, amorphous mass rather than individuals asserting their own will. Generative in nature and thus taking on a life of its own, MATTER emerges as a many faceted organism, in constant motion and interplay, without beginning or end. First presentation: 30 May - 16 June 2012, SAT de Montreal (CA).



> HIVE (2011)
		*HIVE* puts the visitor into a maelstrom of amorphous human figures, which are less prominent as individuals but appear as an interconnected meta-body or hive. Generative in nature, being a real-time computed construct, HIVE takes on a notion of artificial life and organism, in eternal motion and interplay, without a beginning or end. HIVE's loosely choreographed motion, light and sonic patterns create an immersive, highly dynamic landscape, a puIsing and swirling and enveloping audiovisual matter. The sound in HIVE is created by the events present- induding swarm motion and behavior as weil as changes in light and color. All visual appearances render a sonic expression. First presentation: 28 May - 25 September 2011, Madde-Işik 2 (curator: Richard Castelli), Borusan Music House, Istanbul (TK)



> RANGE (2008)
RANGE © Kurt Hentschläger		RANGE is a generative audiovisual installation fluctuating between abstract and realistic forms, with neither beginning nor end. First presentation: 03 Octobre - 31 December 2008, Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh (US).



> SCAPE (2008)
SCAPE © Kurt Hentschläger		*SCAPE* is a contemplative work, a video-landscape with surround sound in which time is the subject. Time contracts only to ultimately expand. A bare-bones minimalist tree in black and white moves in and out of focus in a slow pan evoking the scrolling of a Zen bamboo ink drawing, as the focus of attention slowly shifts and dissolves, at the edge of our perception. First presentation: 21 - 24 February 2008, The Cinematic Experience, Sonic Acts XII, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL).



> KARMA (2004 / 2005 / 2008)
KARMA/X © Kurt Hentschläger		KARMA is available on tour in three versions: KARMA/X (2008): what started as an adaptation turned out to become the next generation of the KARMA series, which further examines the patterns of interaction and regeneration in a closed system: the weightless cluster of a swarm of clones trapped in a 20m high virtual tank. First presentation: 18 - 31 December 2008, Dans la nuit des images (curator: Alain Fleischer), Le Grand Palais, Paris (FR). KARMA/cell (2005): for single screen The motions and actions of the 3D characters synthesize through an additional sound software, a dynamic sound-track composed on the fly. First presentation: 02 June - 09 July 2006, Panorama 7, Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing (FR). KARMA/cave (2004): designed for the CAVE, Ars Electronica Center, Linz (Austria) in 2004. KARMA/cave is a procedurally driven environment, where the user can interact with humanoid 3D characters by means of a very reduced set of actions: either by grabbing or dropping them. First presentation: 02 - 07 September 2004, Ars Electronica 2004: Timeshift, Ars Electronica Center, Linz (AT).



Permanent collections



> VIEW (2010)
VIEW © Kurt Hentschläger		A camera studiously yet magically pans 360 degrees around the entire grassy marsh and pond both in close up and a more distant view. The two are surreally composited together, slowly blurring time and space. Opened since the 1st May 2010 at Los Angeles airport - Tom Bradley International Terminal.