Fabian Winkler
 Artist Statement

Imagine a situation in which seemingly well-known objects and structures show us an unexpected face: printers start to read while printing; videos re-organize themselves each time they are being watched; personal robots create novel image/sound relationships and power lines respond to the electrical charges in persons approaching them.

In fact, these are a few examples of my artistic practice. I create interactive installations and video works that explore the aesthetic potential and the cultural implications of seemingly well-known artifacts through the use of new technologies. These works are manifestations of new possible structures - structures that emerge from explorations of existing but hidden dimensions behind the façade of the everyday. In these works, I often employ elements of surprise, critical investigation and subtle humor.

More specifically, the following five aspects contribute to the realization of my artworks. Here I will only discuss two of my projects to demonstrate how these principles relate to my work:
  1. Using the structures of emergent technologies as connecting networks.
    I am specifically interested in the artistic exploration of novel structures that can emerge with new technologies. I see these structures as networks that enable connections between issues in culture, society, history and technology. Furthermore, these structures allow the mixing and recombination of different media creating new contextual frameworks for existing objects and structures. For example, in my interactive installation DIELECTRIC I comment on various aspects of electricity's ambiguous nature. In its realization, sculptural elements, the technological system and historical context are all connected together, contributing equally to the installation's main idea. DIELECTRIC also illustrates another important facet of the use of new technologies in my works: technology is never put in the foreground, it is always embedded. Two-dimensional composition, three dimensional form, kinetic elements, sound and context are as important as real-time responsiveness or programmed behavior.

  2. Research: social phenomena and new media archeology.
    My art practice is informed by research into social phenomena and the history of new media. For me, these two fields are often interlinked. David E. Nye writes in his book Electrifying America: "A technology is not merely a system of machines with certain functions; it is part of a social world".1 I am interested in also turning this statement around, using technologies creatively to playfully shape social processes, building on Joseph Beuys' idea of the "social sculpture". For example, clink! is a project proposal based on shaping and visualizing social processes at a cocktail party with an embedded light design. In the process of clinking, the colors in two cocktail glasses mix in real-time as a visual indicator of the social ties between the party guests.

  3. The cinematic apparatus as a source of inspiration.
    The cinematic apparatus mediates audio-visual, tactile and emotional experiences of synthetically designed realities. It presents the audience with (im)possible worlds - similar to my artworks. Specifically, I use aspects of cinematography, cinematic special effects and set design as sources of inspiration for my work. Interestingly, I have always been fascinated with non-digital cinematic techniques, since transformed and applied to my works they offer a more tangible experience (e.g. using real-time generated high voltage arcing with qualities of light, sound and smell (ozone) instead of recorded sound in DIELECTRIC). My project clink! for example, was directly inspired by a key scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion". In order to make the glass of milk in Cary Grant's hand luminous, Hitchcock hid a light right inside the glass.2

  4. Audience participation.
    Joseph Kosuth's statement: "...an audience separate from the participants doesn't exist" as well as participatory experiments from 1960s Happening and FLUXUS art have influenced my own understanding of the relationship between work and audience in electronic media.3 From the onlooker to "participant" (Frank Popper) to "interactor" (David Rokeby), the role of the audience changes with the conceptual and technological component of a work.4 For example, it is true that there is no audience besides the participants for guests of a clink! cocktail party. In contrast, the role of the audience member in the DIELECTRIC installation shifts through a process of transformation: the interactor's body switches from an external trigger of the installation to a responsive part of the installation itself.

  5. Transdisciplinarity.
    Transdisciplinarity is a necessary input to my works. It is based on the free exchange of ideas and ideally leads to collaborations across disciplines. In these collaborations I am constantly presented with new challenging ideas, enabling me to further push my work into previously unknown territory. In past and present transdisciplinary settings I have collaborated with: other artists; musicians; product designers; architects; computer scientists; electrical engineers; systems designers; sociologists; anthropologists; filmmakers and art historians. These collaborations across disciplines have been invaluable to my artistic development. I actively try to create settings in which transdisciplinary exchange can happen. The SummerLakers series of events (1999, 2000, 2001, 2005), a weekend-long meeting of interested creators from across different disciplines, is just one example.
All the points mentioned above are essential to my art practice. They contribute to the creation of my works, which invite the audience to look beyond the obvious and the known. Not only does this process of exploration allow audiences to explore other, possible dimensions beyond the façade of the everyday, it also provides them with a "transforming mirror" (David Rokeby) in which to see themselves in novel ways.5

1 Nye, David E.: Electrifying America. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: The MIT Press, 1990.

2 Truffaut, Francois: Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967.

3 Kosuth, Joseph: Art After Philosophy and After - Collected Writings 1966-1990. Cambridge, Massachusetts/London, England: The MIT Press, 1991.

4 Popper, Frank: Art - action and participation. New York: New York University Press, 1975.

Rokeby, David: "Transforming Mirrors", in Critical Issues in Electronic Media. Edited by Simon Penny. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995.

5 Rokeby: "Transforming Mirrors"