1. Salty, Smoky, Oily: Mold making for gourmets and beginners
The class is an introduction to mold making and casting with diverse materials for building both lost and re-usable molds.

2. Sticky, Tricky, Dodgy: Advanced mold making for the motivated and sophisticated
The course takes place in a project-oriented way and with consideration of the interests of the participating students. For participating in the course, a basic knowledge of mold making and casting is advantageous.

The seminar discusses interventions, works, monuments, Percent-for-art programs and public exhibition situations in Vienna. Typologies of passage to central squares of monuments as well as their implicit requirements but also the concrete everyday life beyond protected art spaces will be analysed. 

Holzarbeiten für Fortgeschrittene

Die LV ist als Fortsetzung des Grundkurses, oder für Studierende mit handwerklicher Vorbildung gedacht. In der LV soll das Umsetzen von Projekten im Bereich Holz möglich sein. Die LV wird geblockt im Anschluss an den Grundkurs abgehalten.
Base Angewandte
 

Foto: Nikolaus Fuchs

If this course was a Digital Arts Programme, #1 would be the Bachelor, #2 the Master, but since it is just a course within the curriculum of Ortsbezogene Kunst, the first hashtag covers the basics, the second explores the deeper layers of how to computer. Kind of: Pflicht vs. Kür. 

Unsound ecologies - performative assemblages:

We will discuss current theories & positions on the relation of nature and technology, of ecologies beyond biological systems and post-humanism. Employing methods of performative research and auditive settings, the course will play and enact a sound studio environment to trigger, record and process Frankenstein’s monsters as radio pieces. 

Franz Xaver Baier
Manfred Bergauer
Gabriele Edlbauer
Alice Gorman
Nikolaus Fuchs
Philipp Haupt
Katrin Hornek
Krassimira Kruschkova
Paul Petritsch
Karin Raith
Claudia Slanar

Das Seminar bietet die Möglichkeit, ein hochaktuelles Verständnis von Raum kennenzulernen und experimentell anzuwenden. Im Unterschied zu vielen Arten des Räumlichen geht es beim existenziellen Raum um den Raum, der man selbst ist und mit dem man es permanent zu tun hat. Da alles eine räumliche Wirkung hat ist dieser Raum auf vielfache Weise beeinflussbar. Daraus ergeben sich für die Kunst viele Möglichkeiten.

This course will be a journey through the material culture of outer space, from the surface of the Earth to the limits of the solar system. Space age artefacts include components of massive technological systems, such as satellites in Earth orbit and the terrestrial antennas which receive their signals, blast-corroded surfaces at launch pads and on the moon, and disposable cable ties which are manufactured and discarded in their millions.

An Observation on CERN.

Researchers at CERN use the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to reproduce the primordial soup that made up the universe a few billionth of a seconds after the Big Bang. After our excursion last December to the socio-technical machine CERN, where more than 100.000 researchers from over 100 nations are trying to find the building blocks of our universe, we have become pixel-recorders by ourselves.

This field trip is having the focus/center „Vienna“. We are walking.

The course deals with the phenomenon landscape and, most importantly, with the forces behind the visual appearance of individual landscapes. What exactly is “landscape”? How do landscapes evolve? What are the reasons why cultural landscapes exhibit certain characteristics – or in other words – why do they look like they look? Which are the natural conditions they are based on? Which economic, social and political circumstances and developments have shaped them?

Die LV setzt sich mit Choreografie- und Performancekonzepten auseinander. Fokussiert werden zeitgenössische Arbeitsweisen, die kritische Denkräume entwerfen und mit aktuellen ästhetischen und politischen Diskussionen korrespondieren.

Mold making for gourmets and beginners

The class is an introduction to mold making and casting with diverse materials (silicone, plaster, alginate, acrylic resin, concrete etc) for building both lost and re-usable molds. 

The aim of this class is twofold as the library of site-specificity does not only contain books about the topic, but at the same time is a reflection of its own concept. Designed for a special purpose and a specific location, will it be destroyed when removed (paraphrasing Richard Serra’s statement about the removal of his site-specific sculpture "Tilted Arc"  in 1981)? Isn’t a library, "this universe" (Jorge Luis Borges), always site-specific?

Künstlerische Herangehensweisen an das digitale Arbeiten:

The course continues to mimic a Digital Arts Minor Programme in a nutshell. It tries to convey audio/video/computer competencies through practical training as well as knowledge of various analog-digital conversion processes. The noble goal of this undertaking is nothing less than „understanding media“. 

Students put up their projects for discussion, which they have developed at Praterstern, at Wurstelprater and at Prater-Park. Starting materials are field recordings, interviews and soundscapes.

What will happen if we let a group of budding artists roam the perimeters of the world’s most advanced particle physics research facility? After a 4-day-longtrip to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, a clear-cut answer remains to be seen.

James Benning
Nikolaus Fuchs
Philipp Haupt
Krassimira Kruschkova
Gabriele Mackert
Ralo Mayer
Johanna Tinzl

A course on art as a project rooted in the seminal work of Group Material and Hollis Frampton’s Magellan Cycle and its influence on Benning's own project work: Two Cabins, 31 Friends, and Untitled Fragments.

Image: James Benning

How does the night sound in Prater? Does Praterstern trigger urban legends? Who is heard if you would stay approximately three hours at the same place? What is medially boosted? How do the marginalized interact? Who is an archive at Praterstern? How do you not get into a provocation at no point in time?

Bild: Nikolaus Fuchs

The course continues to convey basic audio/video/computer skills through practical training and theoretical examination. With its goal to encourage and support individual projects and ideas by using and understanding digital media, the focus will be on hands-on production, aesthetic articulation, critical thinking and experimentation.

Within the course, we will discuss ways of artistic storytelling between fact and fiction - in and across various languages and media.
As an introduction and primer to speculations past and present, participants are kindly asked to attend the Round Table „Propulsion: On Changing Futures“ at the Dept. of Site-Specific Art (Oct. 20th-22nd).

Raoul Bukor
Matt Edgeworth
Nikolaus Fuchs
Philipp Haupt
Nina Herlitschka
Katrin Hornek
Krassimira Kruschkova
Gabriele Mackert
Karin Raith
Claudia Slanar

Ausgehend von Satellitenaufnahmen und GIS-Daten gehen wir ins Format 1:1 - mit Maßband, Nivelliergerät und Distomat.

Artificial Islands

Our landing point for explorations will be several public fire pits on the Donauinsel. In BBQ meetings we will develop and discuss site-specific projects while thinking about our intimate interconnections with oily dinosaur bones, ice cream and Waluliso.

Künstlerische Herangehensweisen an das digitale Arbeiten im Medienverbund Audio, Video, Computer

What are the artistic issues involving digital technology today? What about the historical traditions of the „Aufschreibesysteme“ we work with?

Modernity is based on industrialisation and urbanisation, on faith in social and technological progress and the will to dominate nature. Yet, the most sensitive landscape paintings en plein air were produced in the early phase of Modernism.

Archaeological ways of seeing

Archaeologists have a distinctive way of seeing landscapes and cityscapes. The ground is more than just surface appearance. It has both actual and ontological depth to it.

1. „What to do with emotions?“ would be an alternative title to this seminar pointing to a problem in writing and talking about works of art: How to express or deal with an artwork that immediately affects us with a specific feeling, be it joy, anger, sadness or confusion? How can this affect be described without playing off the academic against the lyrical?

Körpererfahrung

In contrast to the church, the theater and the cinema, the art exhibition provides a format for individualized viewers who decide themselves how they move around, what they spend time on and when they leave.

Excursion from Nov. 2nd - 6th
Visiting the Biennale di Venezia, Val Canale, architecture by Carlo Scarpa, Trieste, Ilirska Bistrica, Ljubljana, Vitanje

Ideas of Landscape and Film

Landscape is a notoriously vague term but architect Carl Sauer’s description of the material landscape as „an iconographic index of the mind“ seems a good starting point in many respects: It defines landscape as an expression of ideas, ideologies, cultural values and actions inscribed in a place.

Der Weltraum als reale und spekulative Landschaft

The course will explore space (as in "outer") in relation to the exploration of its physcial reality, its impact on the public's imagination in popular culture and visual art, as well as rather earthly political, social and economic implications.

Oh, you are so full of references!

Through the lense of landscape and place we will explore various theoretic, essayistic and poetic texts  (among them Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari, Chris Kraus, Anna Mitgutsch, George Perec, Robert Smithson, Rebecca Solnit, etc. ...) and how they approach these contested topics.

Some places on earth obviously don't offer comfortable milieus to live in: the pole regions, deserts, windswept high plateaus and mountains, swamps etc. Nevertheless mankind has developed a large variety of strategies to cope even with the most unpleasant environments.