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Monika and Wolfgang Fleischmann-Strauss 22-08-2025
VIRTUAL STRIPTEASE : DISTRIBUTED VIRTUAL STUDIO BROADCAST 1995
For the International Video Art Award ceremony organized by ZKM Karlsruhe and Suedwestfunk Baden-Baden (SWF) in 1995, Fleischmann and Strauss conceive a broadcast with audience participation. With their teams they realize the performance and the corresponding digital set design for the virtual stage. For the live production of the show, the signals from the studio camera in Baden-Baden are connected via the high-speed network 300 km away with the virtual backdrops in the GMD computer pool in Sankt Augustin via a Telekom broadband transmission (ATM).
The entire huge TV studio in Baden Baden is set up as a Bluebox stage for 150 spectators. On the large screen opposite the stage, the audience watches the actors move through the virtual scenery. The moderator welcomes Heinrich Klotz, the founding director of the ZKM, and both sit on an invisible bench in a kind of wireframe backdrop. Klotz congratulates the individual ZKM award winners in different digital scenarios that refer to the respective award-winning work. Media artist Bill Seaman, who receives the main prize, finds his way around the stage and the virtual scenario after orienting himself on the large screen on the opposite wall, which shows the final image as for the TV viewer at home.
The audience sits on swivel chairs and has the choice of alternately watching the real action on the blue stage or the rendered TV image on the large projection opposite. One of the three performances is a Virtual Striptease. Two performers, wearing blue catsuits under their dresses, slowly disappear onto the blue stage and become one person as they shed their clothes. The entire performance is a great success. The audience is enthralled.
In the one-semester seminar "Ceremony Design" at the Media Lab of the HBK Saarbrücken, a dramaturgy in virtual backdrops was developed and designed. The design is based on the Black Theatre, in which scenery and scenes appear as if out of nowhere, slowly change to the next scene, and then disappear again into the void. Students from the GMD - German National IT Research Center, supported by the MARS Media Arts ReSearch Lab and the Virtual Studio, were responsible for the technical implementation. The production of Germany's first live broadcast from a distributed virtual TV studio was made possible by the support of Deutsche Telekom and Broadcaster SWR.
Remarkably, the groundbreaking event is not mentioned in the ZKM Video Art Prize 1995 online catalog. The remarkable statement by Heinrich Klotz, the founding director of the ZKM, immediately after the program "Today I saw the future" has also not been included on the corresponding website.
Monika and Wolfgang Fleischmann-Strauss: , 22-08-2025, in: Archive of Digital Art VIRTUAL STRIPTEASE : DISTRIBUTED VIRTUAL STUDIO BROADCAST 1995
For the International Video Art Award ceremony organized by ZKM Karlsruhe and Suedwestfunk Baden-Baden (SWF) in 1995, Fleischmann and Strauss conceive a broadcast with audience participation. With their teams they realize the performance and the corresponding digital set design for the virtual stage. For the live production of the show, the signals from the studio camera in Baden-Baden are connected via the high-speed network 300 km away with the virtual backdrops in the GMD computer pool in Sankt Augustin via a Telekom broadband transmission (ATM).
The entire huge TV studio in Baden Baden is set up as a Bluebox stage for 150 spectators. On the large screen opposite the stage, the audience watches the actors move through the virtual scenery. The moderator welcomes Heinrich Klotz, the founding director of the ZKM, and both sit on an invisible bench in a kind of wireframe backdrop. Klotz congratulates the individual ZKM award winners in different digital scenarios that refer to the respective award-winning work. Media artist Bill Seaman, who receives the main prize, finds his way around the stage and the virtual scenario after orienting himself on the large screen on the opposite wall, which shows the final image as for the TV viewer at home.
The audience sits on swivel chairs and has the choice of alternately watching the real action on the blue stage or the rendered TV image on the large projection opposite. One of the three performances is a Virtual Striptease. Two performers, wearing blue catsuits under their dresses, slowly disappear onto the blue stage and become one person as they shed their clothes. The entire performance is a great success. The audience is enthralled.
In the one-semester seminar "Ceremony Design" at the Media Lab of the HBK Saarbrücken, a dramaturgy in virtual backdrops was developed and designed. The design is based on the Black Theatre, in which scenery and scenes appear as if out of nowhere, slowly change to the next scene, and then disappear again into the void. Students from the GMD - German National IT Research Center, supported by the MARS Media Arts ReSearch Lab and the Virtual Studio, were responsible for the technical implementation. The production of Germany's first live broadcast from a distributed virtual TV studio was made possible by the support of Deutsche Telekom and Broadcaster SWR.
Remarkably, the groundbreaking event is not mentioned in the ZKM Video Art Prize 1995 online catalog. The remarkable statement by Heinrich Klotz, the founding director of the ZKM, immediately after the program "Today I saw the future" has also not been included on the corresponding website.
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