Aram Bartholl
Chat

In Chat expect to see people with ‘speech bubbles’ floating above their heads. These are projection screens on which short messages are displayed, so that they can have a comic-strip-like ‘chat’ across the street or in music venues. One of three projects by Bartholl in the exhibition that thematise the relationship of net data space and every day life.

Saturday 3 May
8 - 10pm

Academy 2, Oxford Road
Free

The Chat project is a mobile performance installation that can be played by two people at a time. Just like in World of Warcraft or Second Life, the two participants communicate with each other in the form of brief text messages input via keyboard. Immediately after they've been entered, the written communiqués appear in comic-strip-like dialogue balloons projected above the speaker's head. The projection surface in the form of the dialogue balloon is put in place by a technician positioned behind the speaker with the help of a telescoping pole featuring a built-in miniature projector. Thanks to a wireless keyboard set up in front of his body, the speaker can move about freely in interior and exterior spaces and concentrate on the written conversation.

www.datenform.de/chateng.html

Artist Biography:
Since 1995 Aram Bartholl lives and works in Berlin. In his art work he thematizes the relationship of net data space and every day life. In which form does this network-data-world manifest itself in our physical everyday-lifespace? What is being fed back into physical space from the 'cyberspace' into which data has been fed for so long now? How do these digital innovations influence our actions in everyday life?

For several years now, the artist Aram Bartholl has been working in the field of inquiry delineated by these topics and questions, and investigating the feedback effects of general digitization as an approach to gaining an understanding of the technological transformation of society. In the form of objects, installations, interventions, performances and workshops he takes the developments of recent years to the analogue phiscal space and attempts to get to the bottom of the issues inherent in them.

His art work has been shown on international media art festivals such as Ars Electronica 06/07 or Transmediale 07. Furthermore he participated in exhibitions at TENT Netherlandse, VOORUIT Belgiun, Eyebeam New York, Enemy Gallery Chicago, Trampoline Night Berlin and LABORAL Spain, among others. In more than 15 lectures and workshops Aram Bartholl presented his works.

www.datenform.de/

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