in the line of sight

source: danielsauter

My work spans a variety of disciplines, Electronic art, Performance art, Robotic art, Sound art, Interactive Sculpture and Software art. As a new media artist, I create interactive installations and site-specific interventions that examine the social and cultural implications of emergent technologies. While technology plays an important role in my work, it is not foregrounded. I consider technology as it is deployed and embedded in larger social and cultural contexts. The public performances, kinetic sculptures, and interactive installations I create facilitate audience participation through sensors and data networks (The Emergence Project). The works respond to the visitors’ presence in real-time (HeartBeat), initiating genuine interactions between artwork and audience. The pieces are designed as open frameworks that require an active audience to complete the work (Minotaur). I am interested in creating artworks that evolve over time (We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Program), fostering unpredictable and unique interactions between the work and the audience (In the Line of Sight).

My art practice is informed by research into the history of new media and how it is interlinked with social phenomena. I am particularly interested in the utopian and dystopian visions of technological advancements of the late 19th and 20th century. By juxtaposing recent phenomena in mass media and media technology, those “past imaginary futures” become pertinent sources with which to excavate recurring themes in media history (Light Attack).

My objective is to connect interactive systems with architectural spaces, creating responsive environments that alter and problematize people’s identification with public places (Burnham Centennial). My focus lies in creating artworks that conceptually challenge notions of site-specificity in interactive art, a) phenomenological aspects such as scale and topology, b) institutional and social critique, and c) discursive approaches to art-making employing social, economic, and political processes in the creation of the work.
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source: danielsauter

Daniel Sauter is an artist who creates interactive installations and site-specific interventions dealing with the cultural and social implications of emerging technologies. He uses technology as artistic material, embedded in larger social and cultural contexts. Sauter’s research is driven by a curiosity about the ways in which technologies shape and transform urban spaces, social relationships, and the human body. Sauter is an Associate Professor of New Media Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Art and Design. He is the founder of the Mobile Processing Conference, and the author of Rapid Android Development: Build Rich, Sensor-Based Applications with Processing (Pragmatic Programmers, 2013; eBook 08/21/12).

Sauter received an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, Design/Media Arts, in 2004, and a Diploma from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (Germany), in 2002. His work was recognized with an Honorary Mention in Interactive Arts at the Prix Ars Electronica in 2004 and 2009, and he received an Adjudicators’ Recommendation at the 8th Japan Media Arts Festival. He won the Nabi Special Honorary Mention for UNESCO Digital Arts Award in 2005, the Bernay Kurland Grayson Award for Creative Excellence in 2005, the Art In Motion Award in 2005, and the EUROPRIX Top Talent Award in 2001.

His works have been shown internationally, including the Ars Electronica Festival 04+09, Linz, Austria; ACM SIGGRAPH 06+10, Boston, MA, Los Angeles, CA; the 3rd Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition, Beijing, China; the 8th Japan Media Arts Festival at the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Japan; the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan; the Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 35th International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands; the Microwave International Media Art Festival, Hong Kong, China; the Art Center Nabi, Seoul, Korea; Luminale, Biennial for Light Culture, Frankfurt, Germany; the the MIXED MEDIA festival, Milan, Italy; the Beyond Media Festival 05, Florence, Italy; the Nano exhibition at LACMALab, Los Angeles, CA; the telic gallery, Los Angeles, CA; the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA;
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source: danielsauter

In collaboration with Fabian Winkler
Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2009

In the Line of Sight is a light installation that uses 100 computer-controlled tactical flashlights to project low-resolution video footage of suspicious human motion into the exhibition space. Each flashlight projects a light spot on the wall. All flashlights combined create a 10 x 10 matrix representations of the source footage, featured on a video monitor at the adjacent part of the gallery. In the Line of Sight is an artistic exploration of low-resolution video projections exploring electronic images not as simulations of reality but as objects anchored in the physical space.

Tactical flashlights are often used in situations where it is hard to see clearly, i.e. by law enforcement to aid low light target identification. The flashlight matrix projects images that are difficult to decipher, deliberately vague, making the audience wonder what exactly the person is doing. The projected images reference the elusiveness of visual representation delivered by: tactical images, surveillance images, and viral media. In the context of law enforcement and national intelligence, images taken under difficult circumstances (i.e. at night, from a distance, at low resolution, in passing), are constant subject to analysis, debate, and scrutiny to interpret their actual meaning. Misinterpretations can lead to severe consequences. Deciphering human motion at virtual border fences, or determining suspicious behaviour based on asymmetric helical patterns in human gait signatures are examples of automated surveillance technology that have strongly informed the work.

Connected through a strand of 100 cables, a heavy-duty control box serves as the pedestal for a video monitor, featuring a professional dance performer in an ongoing sequence of human motion studies, randomly culled from a database of short movie clips. The performer deliberately interrogates the relationship between suspicious and asymmetrical movement, while custom computer vision software continuously analyzes the body movements, visually highlighting significant features via red markers.

By walking between the light source and the projected images, the role of the visitor changes from observer to subject � with 100 flashlights pointed at them. Looking at the flashlights directly the visitors perceive the inherent power and dynamics of the exploded video image, continuously moving in waves across the 5 m wide flashlight sculpture.
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source: inthelineofsightorg

Fabian Winkler
Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Purdue University

Fabian Winkler is an Assistant Professor of Visual and Performing Arts at Purdue University. In his interactive installations and video works he explores the aesthetic potential and the cultural implications of seemingly well-known artifacts through the use of new technologies. Winkler’s art practice is transdisciplinary, located at the intersections of the moving image, spatial structures, sound and robotics. Conceptually, his works are often influenced by archeological research into the history of technology and observations of social processes.

Daniel Sauter
School of Art + Design, University of Illinois at Chicago

Daniel Sauter is an artist who creates interactive installations and site-specific interventions dealing with the cultural and social implications of emergent technologies. His work spans a variety of disciplines, Electronic art, Performance art, Robotic art, Sound art, Interactive Sculpture, and Software art. While technology plays an important role in his work, it is not foregrounded. He uses technology as artistic material, embedded in larger social and cultural contexts. Sauter’s research is driven by a curiosity about the ways in which technologies shape and transform urban spaces, social relationships, and the human body. His current projects focus on mobile interventions exploring the phenomenon of projection in urban spaces.