ARTISTIC RESEARCH


Digital Media Art Pioneers 

Since 1987, Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss have explored the paradoxes of digital culture through interactive media. Their work spans new media art, architecture, sensory interfaces, and non‑linear narratives. As artists, they were the first to hold research fellowships at both the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne and the GMD – German National Research Center for Information Technology (1992/93).

They co‑founded influential art–science–technology institutions, including ART+COM [Link] (1987) in Berlin, La Première Rue [Link](1989) in Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Briey, and the MARS Exploratory Media Lab [Link] (1996) at GMD. Later, they established the eCulture Factory [Link] (2005) at the Fraunhofer Institute for AI. Their contributions to interactive art and media education include the knowledge platform netzspannung.org [Link] (1997–2010) and ECCO  [Link], their patented gesture‑driven interface for exhibitions and public spaces, with applications such as the MARS Bag [Link], Info‑Jukebox [Link], and PointScreen [Link].


I. ARTISTIC RESEARCH: ART+COM (1987–1992)

In 1987, urban planning professor Edouard Bannwart [Link] founded Artec in Berlin, while neighboring artists and architects Fleischmann and Strauss established ArtWork. Together, they initiated early research in art, architecture, and digital media.

That same year, ART+COM was established as Germany’s first independent research institute for art and digital technology. ART+COM e.V. was founded in 1988 after receiving approval from the Berlin Research Council for three long-term research projects.

  • New Media in Urban Planning, conceptualized by Edouard Bannwart [Link]
  • The Electronic House – Light and Acoustics as Comfort Criteria in Space, by Fleischmann and Strauss for the Hewlett‑Packard headquarters in Berlin (1988–91)
  • Visualization of Digital Medical Data [Link], led by physicist Wolfgang Krueger (formerly Mental Images) [Link]

These projects combined artistic and scientific approaches and were supported by companies such as Telekom‑Berkom, Hewlett‑Packard, Siemens, Silicon Graphics, and Sun. The association gained further fame through the Netflix film The Billion Dollar Code.


II. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH: VISWIZ - Visualization Wizards (1992-1994)

In 1992, Fleischmann and Strauss were appointed visiting scientists at GMD and fellows at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne. Within the newly founded VisWiz (Visualization Wizards) group, they advanced the artistic understanding of Mixed Reality, building on their earlier contributions to Virtual Reality.

Their guiding principle: technological research must be enriched — and sometimes disrupted — by cultural meaning.

VisWiz, later renamed VMSD (Visualization and Media Systems Design) [Link], focused on visualization and the design of interfaces that address haptic and tactile perception, expanding the sensory dimension of digital interaction.


III. ART & SCIENCE: MARS Media Art Research Lab (1995–2012)

Their achievements led to the creation of the MARS  [Link] Media Art Research Lab [Link], one of four departments of the new GMD Institute for Media Communication, later integrated into the Fraunhofer Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

Fleischmann and Strauss secured European and national funding for more than 25 researchers and initiated or contributed to projects such as:

  • eRENA – Electronic Arenas for Art, Culture, Society, developing tools for the art of tomorrow, including contactless interface technologies
  • SONG – Portals of the Next Generation, creating 3D prototypes for multi‑user environments
  • CAST – Communication of Art, Science & Technology, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
  • eCulture Factory, funded by the Bremen Senate with EU support

As part of eRENA, the lab created Murmuring Fields [Link] (1997–99), a sequel to Home of the Brain — this time as a walk‑in Mixed Reality sound stage where performers generated sound through movement using camera tracking. [Link]

The lab also developed electro‑field sensing, leading to the beeping Energy Meter, the sounding MARS Bag (1998), and the patented PointScreen [Link](1997–2002), enabling non‑contact body interaction through human electrostatic energy.


Energy Passages (2004)

Supported by the Munich Senate for Culture, Energy Passages [Link] used AI techniques to create a unique representation of public life. Sound researcher Holger Schulze described the experience as “news flowing through us,” while curator Christiane Paul emphasized how the installation connects two usually separate spheres of public life: information and the city. City dwellers inhabit both spaces, yet rarely perceive them as interconnected networks. Energy Passages rewrites these energy pathways onto the street, inviting passers‑by to “perform” the events of the day and their multiple semantic connections.



RESEARCH PROJECTS, PATENT & LITERATURE (selection)


History of Pen and Gesture Computing and the ECCO Patent [Link]
"Gesture-based input device for a user interface of a computer", Monika Fleischmann; Wolfgang Strauss; Yinlin Li; Christoph Groenegress, 2004. [Link] US Patent 7,312,788, December 25, 2007 [Link] Pointscreen - Minority Report HCI - Interface für berührungslose Navigation (2003). PointScreen – Interaktion ohne BerührungPointScreen - Interaktion (pdf).

Google Scholar: Monika Fleischmann, Wolfgang Strauss.

Urban Media  2014

 » Visualizing the hidden city - Make the inhabitants interests visible. Artistic research example: Energy-Passages 


Online Training  2013
 » Curating Media Arts with Scoop.it (2012-16) 

 » Philosophy & Practice. Testing a MOOC at Stanford University (2013)
»   Getting Older with the Flow with a MOOC on Design Thinking at Stanford University
 

Performing the Archive  2009-13

 » Narrative and semantic interfacesfor digital archives.

Wissenskünste 2004 - ongoing.

 » Staging information, data mapping, information visualisation, tools for knowledge discovery, digital information as aesthetic experience, knowledge arts.

 » Lecture: The Digital Archive as Find Machine - Staging the Knowledge Space, 2012 (Link ppt on slideshare)

 » Lecture: Interfacing the Archive - The Media Art Portal netzspannung.org on Possible Futures, São Paulo, Brazil 2012. Paper on ZKM Academia.


Research & Education  1997 - ongoing

 » CAT - Communication of Art and Technology 1997-2004. Research & development of netzspannung.org (online since 2001), community based online platform & archive for Media Arts Research & Education. History and development workshops.

Digital Sparks  2001 - 08.

 » Student contest in German speaking Europe. Long term researchon curated community generated content combined with monitoring media art education. Digital Sparks 2001-08, New Media Art & Music projects for teaching and learning.

 

eCulture Factory  2005.

 » eCulture Factory => Interview with invited guests to inaugurate the eCulture Factory at Bremen University of Applied Sciences. 

 » Media Arts Research Transfer Project into digital products: Virtual Book, Interactive Poster, Media Flow - and other Archive-Browser for exhibitions in Art, Science & Industry as well as Theremin-based Interfaces such as the PointScreen gesture based patented technology.

 » Theremin-Praktikumsarbeit von Donzelli-Goldschmidt-Hornischer-Nuber-Schulze-Wüst, Betreuer George, Universität Göttingen, 2010 (Image), (PR).

 

SONG - PortalS of Next Generation 1999-2001.

 » Applied Mixed Reality Multi-User environments and tangible interfaces, MPEG-4, Avatars and Agents.

 

Safira 1999-2001

 » Supporting affective interaction in real time applications.Providing computers with the ability to model and express human-likeemotions with usually impossible capabilities.

 

eRENA 1997-2000

 » Electronic aRENAs for Culture, Performance, Art & Entertainment. Digital Technologies for performative artistic production. Intro, Tools, Publication (link). Partner: KTH, ZKM, MiraLab, Nottingham, GMD.