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Birk Schmithüsen is a media artist based in Leipzig (DE). His work explores emerging technologies that affect our everyday lives. He is interested in the actual functionality hidden in a black box behind the simple user interface. In aesthetic experiments, Birk explores non-perceptible, abstract concepts such as Machine Learning (AI) and BigData as artistic media. The research results are staged in immersive new media installations. Between explanatory approaches through data visualization, abstract, aesthetic reuse of emerging technologies and speculative concepts, he opens up new perspectives on current topics of digitalization. Birk holds a diploma in fine art and got an EMAP/EMARE grant. His works were shown internationally at key media art festivals in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Germany, including re:public, Chaos Communication Congress, Ars Electronica and ZKM.
ArtesMobiles was founded by Nina Maria Stemberger (performance) and Birk Schmithüsen (media artist) and has been producing forward-looking performances since 2013. They are looking for ways to dissolve academic categories and break down the boundaries between conceptual art, theatre and technology. ArtesMobiles produces across genres and extends the performing arts with new media to create experiences, social experiments and performative installations.
In our research project during the fellowship we interpret the multimedia performance space as a life-like entity that interacts with the body, the movement and the location of the performers. The multimedia space itself becomes an actor that influences the action and interacts with the performers. We work with different sensors, which are put into correlative relation to moving heads, projections and sound by a machine learning system and thus create a complex interaction relationship.
We are also investigating how a choreography can be developed in virtual space and then implemented with many performers and the same number of moving heads and individual sound sources in the stage space. To do this, we create a collection of movements that we record with the help of a motion capture system and choreograph it in the 3D programme. We are researching how we can represent all performers as digital actors and simulate interaction with synthesizers and moving heads.