Creators Project: Joachim Sauter’s interactive installations

Update: Watch the talk here:

With installations as far and wide as Tokyo and Berlin, there can’t be many figures as well-versed on the potential for immersive and reactive artistic experiences to affect spaces in a global way as Joachim Sauter.

His contention, that after 15 years staring at screens looking for information we’re ready to start exploring the potential for digital experiences in physical space, is one that’s borne out in the most literal sense by today’s event; everything here, from the shimmering monoliths of UVA’s Triptych to Karl Sadler’s artificial forest, Corridor, is an example of immersive and reactive art at its most engrossing.

His work covers everything from technologies including augmented reality, (dinosaurs in the Berlin’s Natural History Museum becoming digitally fleshed out through the use of cameras and 3D modelling software), to mixtures of digital and physical reactions; one of the most impressive of his examples was a Tokyo installation in which the footprints of participants go from ripples of LED lights to physical waves on a nearby water feature. Much of it has to be seen to be believed (perhaps proving his point), but the central argument of much of work is the same: that we’re in the midst of a digitally-enabled ‘renaissance of the space’, as the talk was titled.

You might recognise his work from recent BMW adverts which were based on one of his installations at the BMW museum in Munich: steel balls are raised and lowered to create physical shapes culminating in an outline of a car.

The potentials go beyond commercial tie-ins though, as his last example showed – the use of flash-detectors to super-impose images on tourist’s pictures by projecting figures invisible to the naked eye onto subjects for the split-second their photos were being taken.

The Creators Project, a collaborative project between VICE and Intel, is continuing it’s five-city tour in London today and features live music by Mark Ronson, Kele (Bloc Party), Filthy Dukes, Hudson Mohawke, and more. It also includes interactive art installations by UVA & Radical Friend, amongst many others. It will be followed by Sao Paolo (14 Aug), Seoul (28 Aug) and Beijing (17 – 19 Sept). See more at Creatorsproject.com

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