In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • In the Line of Sight
  • Daniel Sauter (bio) and Fabian Winkler (bio)

Click for larger view
View full resolution

In the Line of Sight.

© 2009 Daniel Sauter, Fabian Winkler

In the Line of Sight is a light installation that uses 100 computer-controlled tactical flashlights to project low-resolution video footage of suspicious human motion into the exhibition space. Each flashlight projects a light spot on the wall. All flashlights combined create a ten-by-ten matrix representation of the source footage, featured on a video monitor in an adjacent part of the gallery. In the Line of Sight is an artistic exploration of low-resolution video projections exploring electronic images not as simulations of reality but as objects anchored in the physical space.

Daniel Sauter's works are designed as open frameworks that require an active audience to complete the work. Sauter is interested in creating artworks that evolve over time, anticipating unpredictable and unexpected interactions between the work and the audience. This relationship focuses on unique experiences and engagement with the work. It questions the very nature of authorship and mastery by replacing finished work with open and ongoing processes. Fabian Winkler's work proposes new practices for looking at familiar objects and spaces around us. Using the expressive and aesthetic potential of new media technologies, he creates critical, surprising, and sometimes humorous interventions. By linking technologies with concepts and vice versa, four different media have become integral to Winkler's art practice: sound, light, robotics, and moving images. Winkler relates sound to the physical structures and the electronic components of his works and sees light's potential for abstraction to create new, artificial realities and to transform objects and environments visually and ideologically. Winkler treats robotic and kinetic systems as sculpture, installation, and environment, allowing audiences to experience the [End Page 410] work on different poly-sensorial levels. With moving images, the cinematic apparatus mediates audio-visual, tactile, and emotional experiences of synthesized realities. It presents the audience with (im)possible worlds—similar to Winkler's artworks.

Daniel Sauter is currently an assistant professor and program coordinator at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Art and Design. He creates interactive installations and site-specific interventions dealing with the cultural and social implications of emergent technologies. His work spans a variety of disciplines, including electronic art, performance art, robotic art, sound art, interactive sculpture, and software art. While technology plays an important role in his work, it is not foregrounded. He uses technology as artistic material, embedded in larger social and cultural contexts. Sauter's research is driven by a curiosity about the ways in which technologies shape and transform urban spaces, social relationships, and the human body. Sauter's collaborator, Fabian Winkler, is an assistant professor of Visual and Performing Arts and area head of the program in Electronic and Time-Based Art at Purdue University. In his interactive installations and video works, Winkler explores the aesthetic potential and the cultural implications of seemingly well-known artifacts through the use of new technologies. His art practice is trans-disciplinary, located at the intersections of the moving image, spatial structures, sound, and robotics. Conceptually, his works are often influenced by archeological research into the history of technology and observations of social processes.


Click for larger view
View full resolution

In the Line of Sight.

© 2009 Daniel Sauter, Fabian Winkler

[End Page 411]

Daniel Sauter

University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
USA
contact@daniel-sauter.com

Fabian Winkler

Department of Visual and Performing Arts
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
USA
fwinkler@purdue.edu

...

pdf

Share