Electronic Zoo

Student Exhibition

Time: January 22nd at 6:00 pm (for one night only)
Location: Shanghai BizArt Art Center
Participating Artists: Students from the College of Media Art at Tongji University

Organized and Supervised by: Lothar Spree and Dirk Schulz

At the end of the 2004/2005 winter semester, students of the Film/TV Media Art Department of the College of Communication and Art worked for the first time in the field of audio visual installation and space related interaction. The college’s new Media Centre was inaugurated with an adventurous liberation of electronic media from keyboards and monitor screens.

Dealing with the human to computer interface through various forms of sensor devices, lead the students to the creation of The Electronic Zoo. Since they were creating a collection of precious and delicate digital beings, the result was a resort for these strange and rare entities, put on view for a curious audience. The one-week practical workshop merged basic concepts of artistic audiovisual installation with simple forms of user interaction. Unconventional user interfaces were developed to trigger events on the screen. This simple approach served as a future model for Media Art Education.