Enabled through the financial support of the Stiftung Niedersachsen the Edith Russ Site for Media Art offers three works stipends for artists in the year 2007. The stipends have a duration of six months and are endowed with 10.000 Euro each. The international call was again answered by many applications (322). The awarded artists will present their works on Tuesday, 25 July at 7 p.m.

The Jury

Sabine Himmelsbach, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg
Björn Melhus, Berlin
Tom Holley, Huddersfield, Großbritannien
Christina Kubisch, Berlin

The decision of the Jury

Jens Brand (Germany) for the project The red psi donkey
Ellen Fellmann (Germany) for realizing an audiovisual string quartett
Eddo Stern (Israel / USA) for his project Darkgame.

The statements of the Jury

Jens Brand
In his project The red psi donkey Jens Brand plans to visualize sound. The static image of a red donkey is defined by sound wave-patterns and visualized through the use of an acoustic camera. The wave pattern, that looks like a red donkey only exists as long as the waves unfold uninterrupted within the empty exhibition space. As soon as a person enters the exhibition space, the wave pattern naturally changes. The image of the red donkey disappears. Jens Brand uses existing media technologies transforming them in a convincing fashion into individual tools, which often ironically subvert their originally intended function. Like a scientist he develops processes, which, however, playfully question science and scientific thinking. The red psi donkey is an enigmatic image whose dissolution demonstrates the impossibility of experiencing the world beyond our visible field of perception. Brand confronts us with the evidence of absence

Ellen Fellmann
Ellen Fellmann has developed a unique personal vocabulary for the transmission of “images in sounds and sounds in images”. She proposes an audio-visual concert and installation which analyses and translates the string quartets of Joseph Haydn. Her system of notation comprises 42 gestural terms, which are made visible and audible through a process of re-composition and collaborative performance. Her audio-visual instrument consists of a glass plate covered with black volcano sand, a light source, and video cameras. Images and sounds are generated in real-time and partially manipulated and transformed through software. The performance environment consists of multi-screen projections and a surround sound speaker system. Musical techniques are applied to images and filmic techniques are applied to music enabling a new audio visual composition to emerge. Fellmann explores if and how a musical language of the past can be still of actuality and importance for us by interpreting and transforming classical data into new media.

Eddo Stern
Eddo Stern receives the Edith Russ Site for Media Art stipend to develop his videogame installation Darkgame, in which the participants have to play under the experience of sensual deprivation. In Darkgame each of the participating players will wear one of three specially created masks / headsets / costumes, designed to isolate one of the three senses - touch, hearing and vision. The game itself will proceed through a series of narrative interactions that are each designed to offer advantages and disadvantages to the various states. Some areas will be dark but filled with sound sources, some will be lit and silent, and some will be visible and audible. In times where the entertainment industry tries to offer a maximum sensual experience, Stern's project Darkgame critical investigates the sensual experiences by sharpening our senses through deprivation. In the narrative structure of the game some of the advantages are turned into disadvantages and vice versa. He makes us aware of sensual disadvantages that are marginalized in our society and by facilitating this experience in his game we all suffer some disadvantage that might become an advantage in a different game environment. By using these forms of deprivation he creates a heightened awareness for all of our senses.