Videograms documents Hannes Rickli's museum installation of videograms and explores how the original material was produced in the laboratory

In his work with video and audio recordings from scientific laboratories, the Swiss artist and artistic researcher Hannes Rickli (*1959) pioneered the use of videograms as an artistic medium.

Rickli began collecting and cataloging videograms in 1992 for his ongoing project, Spillover, for which he was awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture in 2004. Rickli also initiated a research program at the Institute of Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR) at the Zurich University of the Arts in which he worked closely with biologists and image scientists to develop a series of video installations that were first exhibited at the Helmhaus in Zürich in fall of 2010.

Complete with analytical essays from scholars and scientistsincluding Michael Guggenheim, Vinzenz Hediger, Christoph Hoffmann, Nicola Müllerschön, Christoph Schenker, and Yvonne Zimmerman, as well as one from the artist himselfVideograms documents the video installations and their display at the museum and explores how the original material was produced in the laboratory.

Autorentext

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.

Klappentext

Der Künstler und Theoretiker Hannes Rickli untersucht in seiner Arbeit Bruchstellen der Alltagsästhetik. Seit 1991 studiert er in seinem Forschungsprojekt Videogramme audiovisuelles Material aus dem wissenschaftlichen Kontext der Verhaltensforschung bei Insekten und Fischen. Die Videobilder und -töne liefern weitreichende Erkenntnisse über naturwissenschaftliche Experimentalsysteme. Im Schatten der Objektivität, sozusagen als nichtbeachtetes Beiwerk der Daten, wird erkennbar, dass die Herstellung wissenschaftlicher Tatsachen nicht einfach nach zuvor festgelegten Plänen erfolgt, sondern sich im physischen Widerstand zwischen menschlichen, technischen - und tierischen - Akteuren ereignet. Das vorliegende Buch trägt in Essays, Gesprächen, Analysen und Beschreibungen der Laborexperimente sowie in Hunderten Abbildungen die Ergebnisse dieses richtungsweisenden Projekts künstlerischer Forschung zusammen. Das aus dem Laborkontext gelöste Videomaterial und der Erkenntniswert von Ricklis Untersuchungen werden aus der Perspektive von Wissenschaftssoziologie und -geschichte, Kunst- und Medientheorie, Bild- und Filmwissenschaft reflektiert.