Wolfgang Spahn

Wolfgang Spahn is an Austrian-German visual artist living in Berlin. His work includes interactive installations, miniature slide paintings and performances with light & sound. His art explores the field of analog and digital media, focusing on both their contradiction and correlation. Therefore, he also specializes in the reappropriation and reuse of electronic technologies.

In Spahn's immersive audiovisual performances, the technically different production of images and sounds merges. The data stream of a digital projector becomes audible, while the sound produced by electromagnetic fields of coils and motors is visualized.

Spahn is fascinated by patterns and structures, whether in graphics, photography, video or electronic technology. He seeks to bring out the beauty of disruption, subverting the perfect surface that the contemporary new media industry seeks to achieve.

For his creations, he explores the capabilities of hardware, constantly pushing its limits to put it at the service of his artistic concept. Recently, he has developed and uses analog synthesizers as well as analog computers and analog neural networks to create abstract light and sound sculptures.

Spahn is a faculty member of Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany.

Spahn has presented his work in national and international exhibitions and has also been featured in international media art festivals.

Patagonian Pattern, 2021

The work "Patagonian Pattern" by Wolfgang Spahn is an audiovisual exploration of the mathematical theory of chaos. The focus is on Benoit Mandelbrot's ideas of the self-similarity of fractal structures in nature. The sounds of analogue synthesizers and analogue neural networks complement the visual aspect of the self-similarity of Patagonia's nature, both on a large and macro/microscopic scale.

Electrical signals, for both audio and video, have been generated by analogue circuits based on Strange Attractors, Fibonacci series, chaotic oscillations and feedback loops. In addition, the work shows macroscopic and microscopic patterns, textures and structures of lichens, mosses and algae, superimposed on aerial shots from planes and with kites. The texture of lichen and moss was recorded with laser beams. These modulated waves were converted into sound and additionally used as colour information in video signals.

*Interesting Side Note.

The artwork consists of analog computers, synthesizers and media players that were then poured epoxy resin. There are only two cables, one power supply and one output. The artwork is designed so that you can no longer access the media player. There is no more access to the data. After you connect the artwork, it starts by itself and the video artwork is played. Ergo: A real existing token.

2021, Video art, media player, epoxy resin, monitor with audio speaker.

Patagonian Pattern 2021, Courtesy of the Art Claims Impulse

Echo State Network, 2019

Courtesy of the Artist

the sonification of the computing process in an analog neural network, 2019

The first song a computer intoned was in the 1970s when an IBM 704 at the Bell Labs sang‘ Daisy Bell’. The same song was sung by the artificial intelligence HAL-9000 in the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick. But why should an AI sang human songs?
Won’t they prefer their own beats and melodies?
The sonic structures produced by the eternal oscillation of analog neural networks is the more possible soundtrack when the technological singularity is reached and AI takes over. At that point in the future, when technology becomes uncontrollable - like the mathematischen John von Neumann predicted in the 1950s - the remains of the human civilization will probably listen to some kind of “Echo State Network”.

 Courtesy of the Artist

The installation raises the question: can one hear the firing of neurons? Does their action potential have pitch and timbre? How do patterns and structures of a neural network look and sound? And what will happen if the network listen to these sound and pattern, too - and feeds this information back into the network?

At the core of the sound installation “Echo State Network” by Wolfgang Spahn is an artificial analog neural network that generates sonic pattern and audible structures. The circuit of the neuron is an adaption of an early neural model originally designed by Japanese mathematician Shun'ichi Amari to explain the human heart beats. Thus the factor time and feedback are added to the network. Compared to Facebook and Google networks this neural systems is much more complex and manifold in its appearance. One can say this analog artificial network mirrors far more the chaotic human nature than the digital AI implementations.

 Courtesy of the Artist

As part of his Analog Computer Confetti the artist created an analogue electric circuit that mimic a model of a neuron. More than 150 of the Confetti Neurons will form an analogue version of a so called “Echo State Network”. And because the model for that neuron was developed to explain our heart beat this network will oscillate, pulse and create most complex pattern one can see and listen to.

 Courtesy of the Artist

An Echo State Network is a particular kind of model of a recurrent neural network. At it‘s core is a complex, chaotic and back coupling neural network, similar to a Liquid-State Machine. At the networks input layer a couple of sensors will react to sound and light. Brightness and frequencies will be processed and fed back in the Echo State Network. A couple of firing neurons that oscillates in a audible frequency will form the output layer. Indicator LEDs shows the action in the network as well as 8 speakers make these activity hearable at 8 different nodes of the network. Thus the visitor can witness the activity in the neural network and can get an idea of the complexity of these processes.

The Artwork is avaible in the ACI-Shop.

Strange Attractors, 2019

Courtesy Art Claims Impulse

a Lorenz System controlled by an other Lorenz System, 2019

Ever since the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot geometrically described structures in nature as ‘self-similar systems’ in „How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension“ a paper published in 1967, fractal structures have remained a subject of artistic enquiry. Strange attractors in their quality of chaotic fractals constitute together with self-similar structures an important part of chaos research, and feature as core and lead theme of the installation.

Courtesy Art Claims Impulse

„Strange Attractors“ is about a generative system for sound and projections based on the analogue computer Confetti (developed by the artist) that calculates these Strange Attractors.

„Strange Attractors” rises the question if climate can be predicted, described by Julia Slingo, and Tim Palmer in Uncertainty in weather and climate prediction.

The title of the work refers to the mathematical term of the same name (David Ruelle / Floris Takens, 1971) borrowed from chaos theory which describes physical laws of chaotic behaviour in dynamic processes. Based on strange attractors it’s possible to for instance to mathematically describe turbulent currents of liquids or gases that cannot otherwise by analytically captured due to their complexity and level of randomness. In the installation two Lorenz Attractors are used to generate the sound as well as the visuals.

Courtesy Art Claims Impulse


The work raised the question of the artistic definition of boundaries in a space which in fact is determined by coincidence. Strange attractors are defined among others by the fact that they always establish a limiting framework or an according order within which the actual chaos can take place. This means that – at least from a mathematical perspective – haphazardness and chaos are enabled by a framework that creates an order, because without this framework any conceivable chaotic system would rise ad infinitum, and by doing so would escape observation and description. If this thought were transferred to art, it would mean that artistically created chaotic systems would not be visible or audible. Accordingly, the installation raises the question whether the artists themselves create the framework that creates the order, allowing the work to emerge ‘haphazardly’.

 Courtesy Art Claims Impulse

The work was show in the exhibition “Self-Similar and Strange” at Art Claims Impulse in Berlin, 2019.

 The Artwork is avaible in the ACI-Shop.

Its organic if you have a closer look, 2017.

Courtesy Art Claims Impulse

The audio-video installation It's Organic If You Look Close Enough by artist Wolfgang Spahn aims to deconstruct the so-called perfect surface created in the virtual sphere by contemporary digital technology. By exploring the surface of OLED monitors through macro film, the camera makes visible the frayed edges of the Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs). This creates images that would not be visible to the naked eye: The supposedly homogeneous perfect squares are actually uniquely shaped, frayed and uneven when approached with the macro lens.

A triptych of three OLED monitors, each equipped with a Raspberry Pi camera, shows patterns created and re-created by macro-films of the frayed pixels. Thus, each monitor is both source and display of the patterns generated in an endless feedback loop. These patterns are manifold, as macrofilms magnify their objects, performatively generating changes in terms of structure, color, and dimension of the images.

Courtesy of the Artist

In this respect, the installation speaks both to the organic structure of OLEDs and to the analog technology that is part of the digital interfaces. In doing so, it creates disillusionment: the purely digital surface can only exist as an abstract reality within the virtual sphere. The moment digital data is made accessible - whether through the use of monitors, cameras, or any technology that allows data to be stored, shared, or visualized - the pure digital surface is interrupted by the hardware of the interfaces, which always contains analog technology.

Nevertheless, the installation also includes virtual space. The VGA (Video Graphics Array) input signals of the OLED monitors are tracked and their audio amplified and streamed. In this respect, the imprecise sound resulting from the organic images will be publicly available in the virtual space. The sonification of the data can be understood as interference: organic material interferes with the perfect surface of the abstract virtual sphere.

Courtesy of the Artist

The Artwork is avaible in the ACI-Shop.

Entagled Pixels

Noctilucent

Bilder einer Ausstellung



Courtesy of the Artist

Courtesy of the Artist




eine Klang-Bild Installation
von Wolfgang Spahn, 2014

Entropie

von Wolfgang Spahn, 2014

160 slides, 2 Kodak carousels, 1 video projector, screen, sound and electromagnetic sensors, amplifier, loudspeaker, sync generator.

The installation pays tribute to the beginnings of media art, namely analog photography, through the use of slides. At the same time, it is a tribute to another dying medium, the tube screen, which in turn represents the beginnings of computer technology. In this respect, the installation symbolizes a kind of phantom pain that we feel towards media originally associated with a new dawn, which have now in turn become obsolete.

Since LCD displays and other flat screens have replaced CRT monitors, the old CRTs have been phased out. Since their purchase at the time was associated with considerable costs, many owners find it difficult to part with them. They put them on the street in the naive belief that someone might still need the once-valuable monitor, sometimes with a note saying, "Still works!" But since the need for old CRT monitors is obviously met, no one takes pity on the monitors, which begin to rot at the latest after the first rain. Some are cannibalized or even wantonly destroyed, so that only a mixture of cracked tubes and broken electronic innards remains.

The artist Wolfgang Spahn documented this phenomenon over a period of five years with a small analog Rollei. This resulted in one hundred and sixty 35mm slides of discarded monitors of all makes, dumped in the streets of Berlin at different times of the year.

The installation "Cemetery of Monitors" uses two Kodak carousels and a cross-fade unit to show the 160 images as a classic slide presentation on a slide presentation screen. At the same time, this presentation is superimposed with another projection, which overlays the original slides as noise images (white noise, brief final flare). The resulting palimpsest consists of an analog projection (slides) and a digital projection (interference).

In parallel, the mechanical and electromagnetic sounds of the slide projectors are recorded and amplified to function as a noise installation. This also forms the actual source of the visual disturbance, as it feeds the video projector as pseudo-color information of a hacked VGA signal.

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Collins Slide Show

CV

Solo Exhibitions

2019 “Self-Similar and Strange” Art Claims Impulse, Berlin, Germany
2018 „Maailmankaikkeus“ (with Antti Pussinen and Dominik Eggerman) Diskurs Berlin, Germany
2018 “Symbolic Grounding” (with Christian Faubel) Glasmoog KHM, Köln, Germany
2018 “Symbolic Grounding” (with Christian Faubel) Gallery Diskurs, Berlin, Germany
2013 “Directions“ IWALEWAHAUS, Bayreuth, Germany
2011 “Analog_ien“ Galerie Durynek und Kammler, Eichstätt, Germany
2009 “Asymmetische Systeme II: Eis Sprung” Galerie Ardes, Berlin, Germany
2005 “Klima - Wandler …und wo sind die Myzelien” Galerie 35, Berlin, Germany
2003 “Himmel und Hölle“, Galerie 35, Berlin, Germany
2002 “Wir bau´n uns einen Führerbunker“, Galerie 35, Berlin, Germany
2001 “buy.onic“, Hot Pixel Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2000 “Kinetische Lichtobjekte“, Kunstverein ACUD, Berlin, Germany
1998 “Malanggan und was von SERO sonst noch übrig blieb“ Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin, Germany
1996 „Wechselstrombildung“, Orange Age, Berlin, Germany

Group Exhibitions