Robert Seidel (Jena)

Robert Seidel is a media artist based in Jena, Germany...

_grau | 10:01 min | d 2004 | HD premiere from Robert Seidel on Vimeo.
For the first time in HD: … _grau is a personal reflection on memories coming up during a car accident, where past events emerge, fuse, erode and finally vanish ethereally … various real sources where distorted, filtered and fitted into a sculptural structure to create not a plain abstract, but a very private snapshot of a whole life within its last seconds …
Media critic Matt Hanson, author of The End of Celluloid and founder of onedotzero festival says: "_grau appeals to me because it is organo-tech. it does not deliberately ape the abstract pioneers of abstract cinema, and it is worlds away from the motion graphic masturbation of many of those enamoured by digital animation. seidel's work is impressionistic, melding biological and emotional currents. out of amorphous shapes we make out bones, heads, a hand. a spirit leaving the body. at least, this is what i sense out of the chaos of galactic reconfigurations, neurological connections, and biological forms. this is a powerful piece of digital animation precisely because it does not feel like such, it feels emotional, epic. and once you release the background to the animation--communicating a 'coming to terms' with the aftermath of a car accident--you realise why."

vellum | slices of a virtual sculpture | seoul | 2009 from Robert Seidel on Vimeo.
vellum | d / sk 2009
slices of a virtual sculpture, dimension 100 x 125 x 80 meters
video artist, sound design: robert seidel
comission: art center nabi, seoul
In a time of complete virtualisation of knowledge, science and monetary flows the virtual sculpture “vellum” transfers the memory of one specific urban rhythm to another locality. The multiple LED screens of the COMO at SKT Tower (Seoul, South Korea) provide several thinly sliced views into this gigantic translucent formation, revealing time and space within the otherwise invisible as well as impossible structure.
The perceived interpenetration of skeletal architecture and unrolled landscapes reveal textures of the man-made restructuring of nature. Their different granular perspectives create a fibrous volume of possibilities fusing past, present and future. In their flatness the visible sculptural slices are reminiscent to our accelerated life, shifting into technology and transcending the physical body. The perceived transformation is based on the sculpture wandering through the building seen from a fixed point of view. In vellum motion is form and form is motion...
The seismic refraction of the cities Jena (Germany), the hometown of the artist and Seoul, the first appearance of “vellum” will create a multi-dimensional alloy that will migrate after the exhibition at Art Center Nabi to other places. All future exhibitions will continuously accumulate into a memorization foam of different cities, a quasi-crystalline representation of our flattened world which is accompanied by a mosaic of field recordings of the artist capturing the genius loci.
Premiered at Robert Seidel’s Solo Exhibition 02/20/2009 - 03/31/2009
COMO / Nabi Art Center (Seoul, South Korea)
Organized by Art Center Nabi and SK Telecom
Supported by Goethe-Institute Seoul
Sponsored by W Seoul-Walkerhill

Futures - Zero 7 feat. José González | 3:58 min | d 2006 from Robert Seidel on Vimeo.
In “Futures” you will see crushed things, completely abstracted … finding together and building up to something we all have seen before … Like our true wishes and desires they shape over time and get clearer … followed by the next longing … Innuendos, artifacts and the rough synchronization add subtle emotions to the uncertain process that build the morbid tableaux of all possible futures …