Monika Fleischmann is a research artist and the head of MARS - Media Art Research Studies at the GMD Institute for Media Communication in Sankt Augustin, Germany. In 1988 she was co-founder of Art + Com, Berlin, a research institute for computer-assisted media research. Her multidisciplinary background - fashion design, art and drama, computergraphics - made her an expert in the world of art, computer science and media technology. Her body of work includes "Home of the Brain" (Golden Nica of Ars Electronica, 1992); "Liquid Views"; "Rigid Waves"; "Murmuring Fields"; and others. Fleischmann´s work togehter with her partner Wolfgang Strauss has been exhibited widely throughout the world. Their work has been included in exhibitions or awarded at Ars Electronica - Linz, ZKM - Karlsruhe, Nagoya Science Museum, at SigGRAPH or presented at ICC - Tokyo, Imagina - Monte Carlo or ISEA.
Her artistic work deals with visualising the change of identity and perception in a digital media culture. Her research projects are based on interface design and new forms of communication. The design of interfaces as a tool, as space and as a situation is the basis of communicative action and motivation for their scientific exploration of mixed realities. Her interest is to bring poetry and an aesthetic of interactivity into media art. In opposition to the theory of the disappearing body, she uses digital interfaces as a playful interaction of bodies, art and technology. In this process, the new cross-cultural dynamic which interactive media brings can be examined.
"If we don't support digital art and media culture our cultural life will be lost through the dominance of the machines."
Projects
Monika Fleischmann
Head of MARS - Media Art Research Studies
Institute for Media Communication (IMK)
GMD Research Center for Information Technology