Motion Control MODELL 5
1994- 2024 / 30 years of Modell 5
Insane Audiovisual Performance and Installation
4-Channel Portrait Video, 9 Channel Audio
Featuring Performer Akemi Takeya
Motion Control - MODELL 5 by the group Granular=Synthesis, premiered 30 years ago in 1994 at the ICC London. It has been described as one of the most feverish experiments in bringing extreme digital video assemblies to a Iive audience.
Granular=Synthesis events were among the most concentrated, intense and sensual experiences throughout the global AV field, that emerged in the nineties. This is the story of the seminal collaboration between two visionary artists who in those years called themselves “operators” - Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich. They specialized in transforming the gestures and noises of disassociated human carriages: human heads isolated from their bodies, recombinant alien, screen-based creatures that move, expressing themselves through larger than life supra-human performances.
Modell 5 is one of the most powerful para-hinged works ever spawned in a ‘virtual character” mindset presented by the Recombinant Festival. For those unfamiliar with this spectacle, you owe it to yourselves to witness this signature masterwork of profound preponderance and sensory engulfment!
Granular Synthesis is a term derived from the word “grain” (also a term used in electro-acoustics) where the smallest possible particles or frames (in this case micro image/sound segments extracted from video material) are processed and recombined as independent portions or clusters at elevated pulse frequency and temporal re-sequencing. The adjoining, original video material inherent audio waves spill out layered, surround-amplified, multiplexed and infra-rich frequencies into an oscillating, pulsing ‘living’ sonic mass. The result of this postulated post human species uniquely reflects the essential characteristics of pre- 2000 machine-ness - speed, overpowering stimuli and unnatural levels of control. We witness the machine organism analyzing, reformulating, procrastinating and establishing a quasi human presence, disturbingly deconstructed to disintegrate the illusion of ‘real life”.. A totally anthropomorphized perpetual alien machine construct, uncannily in our sapient image.
GRANULAR~ SYNTHESIS: Kurt Hentschläger, born in Linz in 1960; Ulf Langheinrich, born in Wolfen, Anhalt-Saxony, in 1960,. They lived in Vienna. Both are co-founders of the artists' group "Pyramedia". An abridged version of this article appeared in the daily "Der Standard" on March 17, 1995, when MODELL 5 was shown at the Vienna MAK.
New York based Austrian artist Kurt Hentschläger creates large scale media installations and performances for both physical and virtual venues. Hentschläger’s works have characteristically been visceral and immersive, as in ZEE (2008), FEED (2004) & SOL (2017), SUB (2019), and EKO (2021), and are known for their perceptual effects. They challenge an audience psychologically but also offer a meditative respite from the day-to-day stress of digitally enhanced life. His representational body of work, like MEASURE (2014) and ORT (2017), suggests a semi-synthetic form of nature serving as a metaphor for life in the Anthropocene.
Selected presentations include the Venice Biennial, the Venice Theater Biennial, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, PS1 New York, MAC - Musée d'Art Contemporain Montreal, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, ZKM – Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, National Art Museum of China Beijing, National Museum for Contemporary Art Seoul, ICC Tokyo, Arte Alameda Mexico City, MONA – Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania, Sharjah Art, UAE, Power Station of Art, Shanghai, The Momentary, Bentonville.
Ulf Langheinrich has been producing large-scale solo projects, among others PERM (2005), WAVEFORM (2005-), HEMISPHERE (2006-2016), and LOST (2017), both designed for a hemispheric screen, or LAND, a stereoscopic installation commissioned by Liverpool Biennial 2008.
He exhibited among others, in Barcelona (MACBA 2011, SONAR 2018), Berlin (Martin-Gropius-Bau 2007-2008), Brussels (Halles de Schaerbeek 2016), Dresden (Hellerau EZK 2010, 2012 and 2016), Eindhoven (STRP Festival 2009), Gent (Film Festival 2008), Hong Kong (opening of Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre 2011, opening of ISEA Hong Kong 2016), Madrid (ARCO 2006), Melbourne (ACMI 2005), Montreal (Elektra Festival 2007, SAT 2012-2013 and 2018), Moscow (Red October 2011, Winzavod 2013), Perth (PICA 2007), Rome (Romaeuropa Festival: Palladium 2006, MACRO Testaccio - La Pelanda 2010, Palazzo delle Esposizioni 2017-2018), Rotterdam (DEAF 2004), San Francisco (Recombinant Festival 2016 and 2018), Seoul (Incheon Digital Arts Festival 2010) Shanghai (Zendai MoMA 2006, Shanghai Sculpture Space 2007, Science and Technology Museum 2008, Chronus Art Center 2014, Power Station of Art 2017, Ming Contemporary Art Museum 2018), Taipei (Taipei Fine Arts Museum 2013), Vienna (Wien Modern 2006 and Künstlerhaus 2010), Washington (Hirshhorn Museum and Air and Space Museum 2017).
