„Bauhaus Orbits - realisation project” will continue the free project from summer semester 2018. The project aims to realise a physical exhibition installation in scale 1:1 with software and interface application. The installation will be exhibited in April 2019 in the university library and in May 2019 in “Oberlichtsaal”, main university building. The project is funded by the “Freundeskreis der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar e.V.” and by the Ministry for Economy, Science and Digital Society.
In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as an absolute doctrine, let us face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Despite numerous effort to re-animate contemporary discourse around the historical pedagogy, methodology or masters´ oeuvre, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolutely Avant-Garde spirit. In the face of countless endeavours set around the centennial celebration, should we instead be asking: what counts as a “Bauhaus” topic today? What needs to be demystified? Which aspects of the Bauhaus allow us to rethink it in continuum? In which episteme are such topics and statements situated?
The project “Bauhaus Orbits” responds to these concerns by calling for a different epistemology in design discourse, where elements of discourse formation than that of artistic creation, as laid out by Moholy-Nagy in “Von Material zu Architektur”, are brought into processes of algorithmic systematisation.
The project benefits from a collaboration with the DFG-funded “Process-oriented Discourse Analysis” under the Chairs of Media Worlds and Web Technology and Information System, which fuses Discourse Analysis with Artificial Intelligence in creating a uniquely analytical search engine. Publications of the historical Bauhaus (“Von Material zu Architektur” by L. Moholy-Nagy) as well as their intellectual counterparts are then fed in a corpus text, wherein relations, comparisons, negations, affirmations will be classified and sorted. This immaterial world of discourse formation will be housed in a scenographic apparatus at the auditorium of the historical Bauhaus, Oberlichtsaal and in an exhibition at University library. Altogether this universe of discourses will be experienced through a skin of information- “Architecture as third skin”. It hence creates a mesmerising void with which one interacts through bodily gesture, as well as their voice and gaze which travel through and around it.
The project has been orchestrated by a transdisciplinary team of students from MediaArchitecture, civil engineering, media arts, electro-acoustic composition and computer science.
Target group: It is a call to find interested project participants from master in architecture, computer science and media art and design study programs. HCI-skills and knowledge in data science and data analytics are required to develop the interface with audio and gesture control. Architecture students need good experience to work in the workshop and to build-up the installation. |