(course for Artscience, 2008/9)
taught together with Frans Evers

In the history of media art there is a long tradition of artists imagining an ideal architecture in which to present a new medium. Often these projects are visions of a futurist conception of a better life in which art is integrated into our everyday environment. When such projects have been partially realized, it has mostly been in the form of special pavillions at world fairs or events of a similar scale. The reality of everyday is that presentations of media arts are very rarely intrinsically integrated with the architecture of the exposition space, and seem to lag behind the progressive integration of technology into our daily life. These new art forms are often still presented in museums or galleries which were not designed for the purpose of presenting electronic art.
In this seminar a number of examples of architectural ideas for the presentation of the new media arts will be discussed and analyzed, including historic ones such as Wagner’s Festspielhaus (1876), Scriabin’s Mysterium (1914), Mondriaan’s Promenoire (1922), Schöffer’s Cybernetic City (1969) and E.A.T.’s Pepsi pavillion in Osaka (1970).
During this course the students will be asked to design and realize a model situation that demonstrates their conception for an ideal environment for the electronic arts.