SENSEFACTORY
you have never experienced

Wed 4 – Sun 8 September 2019
Muffatwerk
Munich, Germany

SENSEFACTORY – after Moholy-Nagy
A Work by
Erik Adigard, Sofian Audry, FM Einheit, Dietmar Lupfer, Chris Salter, Alex Schweder and Sissel Tolaas

SENSEFACTORY is a spectacular large scale performative installation combining architecture, sound, smell, light and AI technology into a immersive multi-sensorial experience. In the 1920s, László Moholy-Nagy with the Bauhaus imagined a new kind of a theater for the senses. In a “Mechanized Eccentric” as he called it machine and organism should be merged. 100 years later this utopian vision now can be experienced – in an up-to-date version that uses latest technological developments.

Created by an international team of artists, architects, designers and technologists, SENSEFACTORY sends visitors on an exhilarating sensory journey through a colossal, ever transforming pneumatic architectural environment that changes form and shape before your very eyes.

The Bauhaus sought a new relationship between humans and machines – a theater that would integrate the human spectator and actor into a new kind of rhythmic and dynamic media process. 100 years later, we are enveloped in these total environments of media that continually scan, surveil, record, monitor and transform us.

SENSEFACTORY reflects on our radical times – creating a compelling event that oscillates between intensive sensual experience and meditative reflection; physical euphoria and nervous unease.

SENSEFACTORY is a large-format installation (25 x 13 x 5 meters). It will have its world premiere from 04. - 08. September 2019 in the Muffathalle, Munich, Germany. Other places are planned.

The experience

SENSEFACTORY creates an intense and immersive sensory experience for the audience. It consists of a journey through an almost hallucinogenic, ever transforming environment of light, vibration, sound, smell, color and physically shifting architecture whose actions, patterns and rhythms are steered/controlled by artificial intelligence algorithms – what is called “machine learning”.

The audience first arrives at the site of the performance. As the visitors wait to enter the performance, they hear in the distance a shifting sonic landscape. Their anticipation builds of what will come next. They step into an environment that seems otherworldly, alien.

Bathed in the vibration, sounds and light, the visitors enter an area occupied with several large pneumatic forms. They seem to beckon the audience to interact with them. Structures that do not remain static but begin to move.

Immersion and transformation mark the overall experience for the visitors. In this ever-transforming environment, there is nothing to hang onto except one’s own perception and experience. Like Moholy-Nagy’s argument that “In today' s theater, STAGE AND SPECTATOR are too much separated, too obviously divided into active and passive, to be able to produce creative relationships and reciprocal tensions” (Bauhausbücher 4). This separation no longer exists in this performative installation - viewing the experience from outside becomes impossible

Moholy-Nagy’s “thousand-eyed NEW DIRECTOR, equipped with all the modern means of understanding and communication” orchestrates this sensorial spectacle. The actions of light, sound, image and other media are controlled by invisible forces - what in artificial intelligence research is called “machine learning.” Machine learning is what drives our contemporary world – from Google searches to Facebook profiling and Netflix preference algorithms. In SENSEFACTORY, however, we use the machine learning to not simply recognize existing patterns but to generate new ones creating compelling new theater that as Moholy-Nagy imagined will “produce a kind of stage activity which will no longer permit the masses to be silent spectators, which will not only excite them inwardly but will let them take hold and participate”.

The context

We take Moholy-Nagy’s vision of the “Theater of Totality” as expressed in his pioneering graphically depicted “Sketch for a Score for a Mechanized Eccentric – Synthesis of Form, Movement, Sound, Light (Color) and Smell” and “Theater, Circus, Variety” in Bauhausbücher 4, published 1925, as the basis for rethinking what such a performative action, an overwhelming sensory stage environment where the human actor/spectator is dissolved in a flurry of media, means today. With SENSEFACTORY, the physical and sensorial experience of space, vibration, smell, sound comes face to face with the digital apparatuses of our contemporary world: sensors, data streams and algorithms that increasingly shape our social and cultural experience. The autonomy that Moholy-Nagy sought in his visible machines, however, has now been carried over into the “smart” environments we inhabit and his vision of the theater as an organism has been transformed in the computationally-driven, invisible machineries of our time: pattern recognition, self-driving cars, drones, machine learning systems.

Moholy-Nagy’s vision is not only virtual but also deeply physical and material. It talks about vibrations, the actions of light and sound, the movement of mechanical and electrical “bodies” in space and the production of new senses.

Thus, we update the “Theater of Totality” into what is called “mixed reality” – the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.

Moreover, by embodying the speed and dynamism of the time into new technologies, Moholy-Nagy radically sought to reimagine the human – to merge the spectator and the stage – a vision that was carried not only by the Bauhaus but by the avantgarde theater and performance pioneers of the time: Kiesler, El Lissitzky, Schwitters, Meyerhold, Piscator. The human sensorium is thus reconfigured by a stage environment that allows the audience to “fuse with the action of the stage at the peak of cathartic ecstasy” (Bauhausbücher 4).

The artists and their roles

SENSEFACTORY will be created by an international, interdisciplinary team of renowned artists and researchers from Germany, Canada, USA, Norway and France.

Each artist brings invaluable expertise to the project: new tools and ideas that have barely begun to enter the performance arena - graphic and interface design, haptics, olfactory research and art, sound and acoustic design, immersive environments, performance-based architectures, computer science especially the design of real time machine learning algorithms.

Chris Salter
(Concept/Artistic Director)
is an artist, Co-Director of the Hexagram network and Professor for Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. He studied philosophy and economics at Emory University and completed a PhD in directing/dramatic criticism at Stanford University where he also researched and studied at CCMRA. He collaborated with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Frankfurt Ballet. His work has been seen all over the world at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Chronus Art Center Shanghai, Wiener Festwochen, Barbican Centre, STRP Biennale, Berliner Festspiele, Muffathalle, Vitra Design Museum, HAU-Berlin, BIAN 2014 (Montreal), LABoral, Lille 3000, CTM, National Art Museum of China, Ars Electronica, Villette Numerique, Todays Art, Transmediale, EXIT Festival, among others. He is the author of Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making (MITP, 2015).
www.chrissalter.com

Dietmar Lupfer 
(Concept/Artistic Director) 
is co-founder and artistic director of the International Art and Culture Center Muffatwerk in Munich. He is responsible for an urban, future-oriented interdisciplinary program that brings together dance, performance, hybrid art and media art as well as work at the interface of art, technology and science. He conceives and curates art actions in public space, designs media art spaces and is interested in formats that have a performative and as well an installation-based context – what he calls “Moving Installations” as a kind of social sculpture. The visitor leaves his passive role and should be immersive and/or activist. The projects Crash Test Dummy and Urban Mutation are exemplary for this, among many other projects. The concept of the mobile studio cocobello, designed by architect Peter Haimerl and presented by Dietmar Lupfer as the client, was presented at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale. Together with Ulf Langheinrich, he designed a Hemisphere for the “Sparks To Pixel-Exhibition” at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau.
www.artinmove.org

Alex Schweder
(Architecture)
coined the term “Performance Architecture” in 2007 to encapsulate the understanding of architecture that it both gives cues for how we are to behave and offers itself as a prop for inhabitants to form and perform their identities. He explores the testing of spatial ideas not only by building them but also by performing them as well. His work along these lines has been exhibited and collected internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Britain, Performa 17, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. He is a fellow of the American Academy in Rome and currently lives and works in New York City.
www.alexschweder.com

Erik Adigard
(Graphic and Communication Design) 
is a founder of the design studio M-A-D, which is positioned at the intersection of communication design and multimedia arts. Adigard’s body of work includes numerous visual essays for Wired magazine, experimental websites such as LiveWired and Madscroll, branding campaigns for IBM and many exhibit commissions including the 2008 Venice Biennale (Architecture) with Chris Salter and the 2014 Venice Biennale (Architecture). Adigard’s creations have been shown at museums, biennales, film festivals and in publications world-wide. He received the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. Other art projects include commissions from the SFMOMA, the Saint-Etienne International Design Biennale, Villette Numérique in Paris and the Muffathalle in Munich. Adigard regularly lectures, teaches, juries, advises and/or writes on design and media. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and American Institute of Graphic Arts.
http://m-a-d.com

FM Einheit 
(Sound Design)
developed his own musical language from 1980 to 1996 with the band Einstürzende Neubauten, which refused to accept the traditional understanding of music. In addition to numerous record releases u. a. with Palais Schaumburg, Downhill, Marianne Rosenberg, Rio Reiser, Diamanda Galás, Gry and Caspar Brötzmann, he has worked with many other art genres and created the atmospheric ground for text, stage, light and costume in more than 150 theater productions. Together with Andreas Ammer he revolutionized the radio play and freed it from a too narrow corset of literature. He was awarded the prestigious Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden in 1995 and 2002 and received the Günter Eich Prize in 2019. At the Fondation Gulbenkian Paris he realized the sound installation L’exposition d’un rêve in 2017, and he contributed the film music to Fatih Akin’s 2019 film The Golden Glove.
www.fmeinheit.org

Sissel Tolaas
(Olfactory Design)
is one of the world’s experts in smell research and the use of olfaction in art. Working between industry, science and art, Tolaas’ works have been shown internationally at major exhibitions (Documenta 13, Sao Paulo, Liverpool, Kochi, and Venice Biannales) and she has consulted for companies ranging from Henkel, Adidas, Sony, Statoil, the BBC and many others. Housing over 7000 smells and chemical molecules, Tolaas’ Berlin based lab is sponsored by IFF, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of artificial flavors and fragrances. With backgrounds in chemistry, mathematics, linguistics and art, Tolaas uses sophisticated chemical and electronic technologies to synthesize and exhibit never before experienced scents. While Moholy Nagy described scent as a key part of his Theater of Totality, he never articulated or described what he meant. It thus falls to Tolaas to rethink what scent means in the present.

Sofian Audry
(AI / Software Engineering)
is an artist and Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of Maine. His interdisciplinary practice and research is at the crossroad between artificial intelligence and contemporary new media art. Audry works to develop new artistic practices employing artificial agents and behaviors, to design new tools for new media creators, and to critically engage with the theoretical, and historical dimensions of AI. He holds a Ph. D. in Humanities from Concordia University (Montréal, 2011) as well as master degrees in both Computer Science (machine learning) (M.Sc., University of Montréal, 2003) and Communication (interactive media) (M.A., University of Quebec in Montréal, 2010). His work and research have been presented at multiple international events and venues such as Ars Electronica, Club Transmediale, Dutch Design Week, International Digital Arts Biennale, ISEA, La Gaîté Lyrique, Marrakech Biennale, Nuit Blanche Paris, SAT, V2, and the Vitra Design Museum.
http://sofianaudry.com

Alexandre Saunier 
light design
www.alexandresaunier.com

Alexandre is an artist and doctoral student at Concordia University in Montreal. He conceives of light as a dynamic and temporal medium that ecstatically transforms its environment and alters our perception. His interdisciplinary practice brings together light art and digital craft with a particular interest in the relation between digital processes and human senses. He holds a master in sound design and engineering from the ENS Louis Lumière (Paris, 2012) and engaged in research in design at the ENS Arts Coratifs (Paris). His work and research has been presented in various international venues such as Art Electronica, Torontos Nuit Blanche, Exit festival, Paris Design Week, Shadok, Eniarof.

For further reading

Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy, Farkas Molnár: Die Bühne im Bauhaus. (Bauhausbücher 4), München: Albert Langen Verlag 1925 (Reprint 2019, Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag);
also english edition: Gropius, W., Wensinger, A. S., Schlemmer, O., Moholy-Nagy, L., & Molnar, F.: The Theater of the Bauhaus. Wesleyan: Wesleyan University Press 1961 (Reprint 2016).

Oliver A. I. Botar: Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, die Medien und die Künste. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers 2014 (also english edition: Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, Media and the Arts)

Chris Salter: Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance. Cambridge (Massachusetts), London (England): MIT Press, 2010

Chris Salter: Alien Agency: Experimental Encounters with Art in the Making. Cambridge (Massachusetts), London (England): MIT Press, 2015

Credits

SENSEFACTORY is a production of the Muffatwerk München in close cooperation with the participating artists. The artistic direction is shared by Chris Salter and Dietmar Lupfer.

The project is funded and made possible by the Federal Cultural Foundation within the framework of the „Fonds Bauhaus heute.” Other support is provided by the Goethe-Institut Montreal.

Cooperation and development partners are the Moholy Nagy University of Applied Arts in Budapest and the Milieux Institute for the Art, Culture & Technology at Concordia University, Montreal.

Including these teaching facilities is important because a central element of the Bauhaus was the integration of art and design into teaching. Workshops with artists and students are an integral part of the project.

SENSEFACTORY
you have never experienced