Dec 14 to Feb 15

Iris Andraschek/Hubert Lobnig

Cruising Around

-

For their exhibition project Iris Andraschek and Hubert Lobnig are cooperating with the Research Seminar for Transportation Informatics, part of the University Institute for Intelligent System Technologies that is located directly over the galleries of Kunstraum Lakeside. Transdisciplinary research has been carried out here for some time with the aim of developing a self-steered vehicle equipped with cameras and sensors that could soon show university staff the way across the campus and between the university and Lakeside Park as well as transporting campus mail. What is remarkable about its design is that the robot can evidently not only be seen as a product of technological euphoria or efficiency orientation, but that the developers have also ascribed various roles and functions to it that display almost human, identity-forming components:

“Our vision is to construct a mascot
for our university …
that is unique in Austria …
that can interact with all university members while cruising around the campus …
that guides you to lecture rooms …
that makes you laugh …“

Intelligent machines of this kind have always been both an object of fascination and a cause for anxiety. Andraschek/Lobnig react to the multiple meanings ascribed to the robot by deploying it in a way that both follows the intention of its designers and addresses the sense of unease that futuristic automatons so often elicit. In the artistic interpretation, the robot is equipped with a camera and films the university campus and technology park from a strange and continuous low angle. It can make contact with people as either a communication or observation vehicle (makes you laugh) or it can inspire fear; it monitors and transmits information—but to whom? Is the robot recording what it sees, or merely observing?

In their exhibition, Andraschek/Lobnig lend this device operating in the present and future a historic dimension by confronting the pictures recorded by the robot camera with older images of the university campus. They confront the technology-heavy concept of communication with a social variant in the form of these older pictures taken from an art project realized ten years ago at the university, which consisted of interventions that contradicted the architectonic functionalism of the university building and forced the concept of a lived space. Finally, Andraschek/Lobnig undermine the objectivism of the robot when they confront its “sensory organs” with staged scenes involving people from the university and Lakeside context. What comes to light here is a confrontation that is becoming increasingly relevant today between scientific/technical and artistic research and their respective guiding interests.

Iris Andraschek, born in 1963 in Horn (Lower Austria), lives and works in Vienna and Mödring. Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Member of the Wiener Secession and of Foto Fluss. Numerous exibitions in Austria and abroad, prizes and scholarships. Projects and artworks in public space.

Hubert Lobnig, born in 1962 in Völkermarkt (Carinthia), lives and works in Vienna and Mödring. Studied at the University of Applied Art in Vienna. Numerous exibitions in Austria and abroad. Austrian State Scholarship for photography. Funder of Tigerpark.