summaery2025: Projects

Project information

submitted by
Alexander König

Co-Authors
Students of the Seminars Aesthetics of Macroworlds & Improvising with Machines

Mentors
Dr. Alexander König, Alessandro Volpato, Dr. Marcin Pietruszewski

Faculty:
Art and Design

Degree programme:
Media Art and Design - Study programme Media Art and Design (MAD) (english) (Master of Science (M.Sc.))

Type of project presentation
Performance

Semester
Sommersemester2025

• Bauhausstraße 9a - Digital Bauhaus Lab

12. Juli 18h

Project description

Macroscapes & Machine Scores is a collaborative live performance by students from two experimental seminars at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Blending real-time microscopy with generative sound environments, the event offers an immersive journey through biological landscapes and algorithmic ecologies.

From the seminar Aesthetics of Macroworlds (led by Dr.Alexander König and Alessandro Volpato), microscopes become live cameras. Students capture surreal imagery of microscopic life and transform it into immersive, projected environments using TouchDesigner. These macroworlds challenge our sense of scale and visibility, drawing on cinematic concepts like hors champ—the unseen beyond the frame—and turning scientific observation into a form of expanded cinema.

In dialogue with this, the seminar Improvising with Machines (led by Dr. Marcin Pietruszewski) presents responsive sonic systems built on Bela microcomputers. These semi-autonomous compositions—driven by motion, light, and touch sensors—create evolving, spatialized soundscapes where human improvisation and machine processes converge in real time.

Together, the two works form a shared audiovisual stage where perception, interaction, and emergence are explored at micro and macro scales. It is a space where machines listen, microbes perform, and the audience is invited to inhabit the fluid boundary between technology and nature.