The strategy “Artistic Transformation” is considered as a specific art practice which facilitates the interaction of different protagonists across disciplinary boundaries. A number of participating artists are organized into a sequence and asked to produce works that draw upon those of their predecessors. The gesture of give and take from one protagonist to another, as well as the process of translation from one work into the next, are the central momentums of this creative process – new works derive from another discipline and/or the work of another artist. It is a process of weaving different works into a fabric of associations, images and metaphors from which new ideas may arise,
For over ten years Margit Schild together with Elvira Hufschmid have been involved in the development of this innovative, interdisciplinary art and teaching practice. They have implemented this practice into numerous projects at various universities – nationally and internationally. In this area, Margit Schild held a collaborative guest professorship for “artistic transformation processes” at the Berlin University of the Arts from 2007 to 2009; In this constellation (the “Stille Post” team: 11 female artists and researchers, see below for participants) and subject matter, it is a globally unique, interdisciplinary and collaboration-oriented teaching model.
Publication
Artistic Transformation. Models of collective production of art and the dialogue between the arts, released by the Reimer Verlag Berlin in 2010 (in german). Publisher: Dagmar Jäger, Vera Franke, Margit Schild, et al.,
Projects
Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW) – Art & Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations
Ingrid Koenig, Randy Lee Cutler
Collaborators: Margit Schild, Elvira Hufschmid
Website: more
Vimeo: more
Leaning Out of Windows (LOoW) is a four-year SSHRCC funded interdisciplinary art and science project, involving four phases between 2016 to 2020. It involves co-designing, curating, testing, and analyzing models of collaboration for art and science. Participants include Emily Carr University’s faculty, art students, visiting artists + physicists, post-doctoral researchers and graduate students working at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre and accelerator-based science located at the University of British Columbia.
In Cooperation with
Emily Carr University of Art & Design; Vancouver,
TRIUMF Canadas National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Vancouver,
Fermilab Chicago, Anton Bruckner Universität Linz.
Funded by SSHRC- the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
RAW DATA – Artistic Transformation
Curated by Koenig, Schild and Hufschmid (Artists-in-Residence at TRIUMF), 2012
A project by Goethe-Institut Toronto, in Cooperation with TRIUMF, Canadas National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Vancouver, Emily Carr University and Revised Projects.
Concept:
The project »RAW DATA« initiates a process of translation between art and physics, providing for a collaboration between artists and physicists from Canada and Germany. By using the practice of »artistic transformation« a chain reaction of works is generated and hence a concrete problem from physics is translated to four basic aesthetic media – sound, body, language and image. In this way, diverse forms of artistic works are developed and „raw data“ is provided which in turn is to be re-translated into the scientific realm.
Artists: Dennis Burke, Randy Lee Cutler, David Khang, Ingrid Koenig, Sonnet L´Abbé, Ben Reeves, Stefan Smulovitz, Suzi Webster.
Physicists: Kendall Mahn, Anadi Canepa, Reda Tafirout, Ania Kwiatowski and Abhishek Kumar.
When the RAW DATA transformation process was launched in September 2012, four artists from different fields met physicists at TRIUMF.. Artists were informed about a specific quantum physics problem to which they responded with an artwork. In an all day workshop held at TRIUMF, artists Randy Lee Cutler, David Khang, Ben Reeves and Stefan Smulovitz were involved in an actual physics research project on “Neutrino Oscillation“ to gain knowledge on what is a current “hot spot” in the physics world. Within the following three weeks the artists each developed an artwork as a response to the specific problem and passed it on to the next round of artists who could not know what the original topic was: Dennis Burke, Ingrid Koenig, Sonnet L´Abbé and Suzi Webster. The presentation of this particular physics problem had set the pace for a spread of inspiration, leaping from one creative mind to the next, resulting in a net of artistic works, all referring (knowingly or blindly) to the same initial subject.
In a joint endeavour, the curators, physicists and artists met in a “translation hub“ workshop at the end of the process. A group of physicists who had been kept from knowing the original physics topic, viewed the art works in regards to their potential of carrying relevant information. Following their readings of the work, the original physicists who had presented the topic of “neutrino oscillations” reacted both to the artworks as well as to their “blind” peers’ readings.
The results of the transformation process were exhibited and discussed with physicists in a public event at ECUAD (Emily Carr University of Art and Design), Concourse Gallery, in the context of the AICAD – Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design conference in November 2012, at the „Remaking Research Symposium“ Nov 1-3, 2012.