Videograms: The Pictorial Worlds of Biological Experimentation as an Object of Art and Theory

Description

In the work of artist and artistic researcher Hannes Rickli, video and audio recordings originating from research in scientific laboratories (videograms) play an important role. Videograms are a category of moving images produced in an operative context by measuring cameras and microphones. This kind of audio-visual commodity has so far been largely neglected by artists as well as by image scientists. For his work-in-progress Spillover Rickli has put together since 1992 vast collection of such audio-visual lab reports. Rickli has also initiated also a research program on this topic at Zurich University of the Arts. In close exchange with biologists and image scientists Rickli investigated the material to enhanced his understanding of and work with it for his artistic project. This resulted in a series of video-installations that were shown for the first time in an exhibition Zurich in autumn 2010. The book Videograms documents both, the video installations and their mise en scene at the museum, as well as the context in which the original material was produced in the laboratory. It also includes essays by scholars in image and cultural sciences and by scientists.

Hannes Rickli has been educated as a photographer and read theory of design at the former School of Art and Design Zurich (now part of Zurich University of the Arts). He has been working as an artist since 1991 and shown his work in solo and group exhibitions mainly in Switzerland and Germany. Michael Guggenheim is a scholar in sociology and head of Swiss National Science Foundation research projects at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Zurich. Vinzenz Hediger is professor for science of film at the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany. Christoph Hoffmann is professor for history of science at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. Nicola Mullerschon is doing her PhD degree at the Institute of Art History's Pro*Doc Art & Science post-graduate program at the University of Zurich. Christoph Schenker is professor of philosophy of art and head of the Institute of Contemporary Art Research at the Zurich University of the Arts. Yvonne Zimmermann is research assistant at the Institute for the science of film at the University of Zurich.