Wolfgang Strauss
Most Recent Affiliation(s):
ISEA Bio(s) Available:
ISEA2023
Monika Fleischmann (*1950 in Karlsruhe) and Wolfgang Strauss (*1951 near Nuremberg) are a German artist duo who have been working with digital media as a combination of art and technology since the mid-1980s. They founded their ARTWORK studio in 1987 and co-founded the ART+COM Institute for interdisciplinary research in Berlin; established the MARS – Media Art & Research Studies Lab at GMD Institute for Media Communication and Fraunhofer Institute for AI and Robotics. Their pioneering work began with “Berlin-Cyber City” (1989) and working with maps of the city as part of the research project “New Media in Urban Space” was the impetus for further ART+COM projects, that led to the dispute with Google Earth depicted (not entirely accurate) in the Netflix series “The Billion Dollar Code”. They have received numerous awards for their pioneering work, including the Golden Nica of Ars Electronica (1992) and the SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Award in Digital Art (2018). Their focus is on the “Virtual Denkraum” and the power of images in shaping our perception of the world, with a specific interest on ‘performative interface’ as a tool for knowledge discovery and creation through interactivity.
ISEA2022
Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss are pioneers of media art and virtual reality. In 1987, they were co-founders of ART + COM in Berlin (The Billion Dollar Code). In 1996 they founded the MARS – Exploratory Media Lab (Media Arts Research Studies), and in 2005 the eCulture Factory at the Fraunhofer Research Association. Their awards include patents, the Ars Electronica Golden Nica (1992) and the SIGGRAPH Lifetime Achievement Award in Digital Art (2018).
Early work includes “Berlin-Cyber City” (1989), in which Fleischmann and Strauss memorialize aspects of Berlin’s history while imagining the city’s possible futures, following the fall of the Berlin Wall. A subsequent cartographically informed project “Semantic Map” (2001-04) traces neural networks, foretelling a method of data analysis now standard in artificial intelligence. In “Home of the Brain” (1989-1991), participants are introduced to virtual reality, while the iconic “Liquid Views” (1992) anticipates the selfie moment.
ISEA1997
Wolfgang Strauss is an architect and media-artist in the field of Virtual Architecture and Interface Design. Founder of Virtual Worlds Studio in Briey, France, at the Centre de Recherche Corbusier, co-founder of Art+Com, Berlin. Currently he is a guest professor of interactive media studies at the School of Fine Arts Saarbrücken, Germany. His body of work – produced with Monika Fleischmann – includes Berlin-Cyber City, Responsive Workbench, Rigid Waves, Liquid Views, among other interactive environments. Strauss is a guest-researcher at the GMD Institute for Media Communication.
