Christian Zöllner

The Sketching in Space project has been exhibited in my alma mater in Dresden during an exposition on the function of design in cooperative processes. Boscij Piatza and Alexander Müller, two students from the university redesigned the sketching tools and helped to set up the objects for the exhibition. Currently the both work intensively with the Fraunhofer Institute Berlin to advance the sketching application towards better integration in design processes! I will keep you updated on the progress! It feels good to leave the project a bit and handing it over gives me the opportunity to research more about the implementation of immersive 3D technologies in design processes. So I will do it. First step will be a talk at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel about the Sketching in Space Project in early July.

Boscij and Alex will also give a talk on the 2nd of July about their work on the project during another exhibtion on virtual realities in art contexte. Meanwhile, check the documentation they made of the last workshop!

After a long while of silence on this site, gently reminded by Mr Katz himself, I start to recover all the activities that happened to me and my projects the last months. Basicly, there is not much to say, because a lot of the projects are still pending and are not confirmed or finished yet. So I guess there will be one major rush in the next month with a lot of updates. I keep them secret, because they are very promising and outstanding, but if something fails shortly before the end… just sit tight and keep dropping by from time to time.

One major project of the current past is an extended spatial sketching workshop with product design, communication design and fine art students from the Muthesius College of the Arts. For one whole week they´ve been encouraged to create interieur objects in the CAVE of the Fraunhofer IPK institute in Berlin. This workshop was by far the best one I´ve ever made. All students have been so actively sketching and designing that the formal output was very impressing.

For the first time we scheduled three CAVE dates. The first one during the kick off meeting was meant to create the first and initial sketch for the whole week. This sketch, exported as .obj file had to be imported in a 3D - CAD program such as Rhino, Solid works or Alias. Because of the variing CAD skills of the students wa also offered to use 3D coat, an easy to learn voxel modeller I allready used to rework the scan meshes from the SMSlingshot redesign. The next CAVE date, after one whole day refining the sketch, was on wednesday to review the first reworked sketch. While this session the students had the opportunity to clearify the scale of their project sand add new spatial sketch bits to the modell, such as freehand strokes or volumes. With this 2.0 version of their sketch another day of CAD work was necassary to create the final object that was presented on the last day in the CAVE.

The final models will be 3D printed in the next weeks and be presented during the “Körpersichten Exhibtion” in Kiel this summer. Thewhole project would have never been realized with out the help of Sebastian Piatza and Alexander Müller who have been documenting and assisting me throughout the week. Thanks guys!

Friends. Time to pause for a while. Time to think about what all happened throughout the year. Remembering the new made friends, the new places here and beyond the oceans. Time to leave the focus on the future. Calming down, reflecting on the WHY and HOW. You see, somehow I like the last days of the year. Especially for saying thank you. There have been !again! so many people helping me with my projects, my ideas and weird plans concerning … whatever! Thank you, you know who you are. For all you guys I put some of my favourite songs of this year in the blender ranging from dub to step to skwee to experimental beats. The Mix is online here for listening and free download!I hope you enjoy it!

This was a week. I accompanied the SMSlingshot through europe, starting in Palma de Mallorcas Contemporary Art Museum, where we showcased our work and held a talk about our “Act on hybrid Estates”. The talk was extended with a short summary of the design process of the SMSlingshot. Pau Waelder held the introduction showing some very interesting, and some well known projects of digital art in public space. His resulting article can be seen here. The performance in the museum yard was a total success - no bugs, no breaks, no hassles. The people gave and explained the SMSlingshots each other during the evening.

After these two sunny days we left Palma and headed to Eindhovens STRP festival, to let the people explore our concept “reclaim the screens” there. This annual festival is absolutely stunning. We never been exhibited in so high class neighbourhood. WORM collective was there, Fur Art, Chris Cunningham, onedotzero and Lawrence Malstaff. Wow. We showcased for three nights in the entrance area and let the people give their comments on the Geert Wilders racist a**hole. This worked well and the idea of bringing the discussion back to the people worked really well. And, not without, we held a talk on the Pubic Art Panel, mainly speaking about the making and the background of the SMSlingshot.

After more than one year it´s done: the documentation of the Schwarmlabor / Swarmlab project from summer term 2009 is available.  The book features all the projects and workshops that took place during the whole term, including the processing and arduino workshop. It also contains an exclusive imprint of the talk given by Prof. Niels Werber about transnational swarms and essays by Prof. Axel Kufus, Prof. Gesche Joost and Prof. Dr. Ingo Rechenberg. The whole editorial and design work was done by me during the last year. Below you can flip through the pdf and if you like you can order the book here

Last week the VR/urban team was invited by Amnesty International to show the SMSlingshot at the Museumsquartier in Vienna. The occasion (Day of death penalty) was less delectable than the fact that a lot of people haved used their voice against capital punishment and death by right. We used background illustrations for the first time to better trigger a discourse in front of the facade and by this on the facade. There are also videos available: here and here.

I just briefly post this video, send to me by the °FACT Liverpool team. It covers partly the performance during the joint broadcasting performace while the mediafacades festival opening. Enjoy!