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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Superstars
Thomas Bayrle
Thomas Bayrle's "Superstars" shows the face of a person watching a video. A zoom program makes it possible to look inside the pores of the face which reflect scenes of the video.
My work is essentially based on graphics. Over the past 30 years, I have gone through nearly all the areas where graphic events take place. Starting with old techniques lithography, sketching, screen printing, I went on to offset, photo technique, photocopy all the way to computer generated elements. Working with graphics led to film/video beginning in 1980. "Superstars" deals with animated graphics, in other words with graphic images that are set in motion whether with film or in the form of a video.
"Superstars" is based on the premise that mass media is rapidly developing into a total voyeuristic system, in which everyone and everything is constantly observing everyone and everything else. In the "washing machine closed in on itself", the system is constantly reproducing itself. The faces of nine people were filmed as they watched film loops. These were short scenes taken from video or television. These same loops were later mapped on the faces of the viewers. A continous zoom program makes it possible to do close-ups on the faces, revealing the points/pores which are made up of the small images. Every individual portrait consists of up to 20,000 individual small images out of which the "Superface" emerges and is constantly changed.
Technical Background
HW: Silicon Graphics
SW: Artist’s Proprietary
My work is essentially based on graphics. Over the past 30 years, I have gone through nearly all the areas where graphic events take place. Starting with old techniques lithography, sketching, screen printing, I went on to offset, photo technique, photocopy all the way to computer generated elements. Working with graphics led to film/video beginning in 1980. "Superstars" deals with animated graphics, in other words with graphic images that are set in motion whether with film or in the form of a video.
"Superstars" is based on the premise that mass media is rapidly developing into a total voyeuristic system, in which everyone and everything is constantly observing everyone and everything else. In the "washing machine closed in on itself", the system is constantly reproducing itself. The faces of nine people were filmed as they watched film loops. These were short scenes taken from video or television. These same loops were later mapped on the faces of the viewers. A continous zoom program makes it possible to do close-ups on the faces, revealing the points/pores which are made up of the small images. Every individual portrait consists of up to 20,000 individual small images out of which the "Superface" emerges and is constantly changed.
Technical Background
HW: Silicon Graphics
SW: Artist’s Proprietary
Thomas Bayrle (D), born 1937, trained as a weaver; Werkkunstschule Offenbach; 1968 to 1970 Bayrle & Kellermann (The Makers of Display); teacher at the Städelschule, Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main since 1975, lives and works in Frankfurt am Main.