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Wolfgang Strauss
Wolfgang Strauss is an internationally renowned German artist and pioneer of interactive media art. Since the mid-1980s, together with Monika Fleischmann, he has been setting up art-science labs in research institutions to realise their dedicated work as an artist duo. In 1987 he co-founded ART + COM in Berlin. He later initiated MARS (Media Arts and Research Studies) and the eCulture Factory at major German research institutions such as GMD, the National Research Centre for Information Technology and the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication and Artificial Intelligence. His concept of the ‘performative interface’ challenges traditional paradigms of human-machine interaction, from ‘what you see is what you get’ to ‘what you get is what you haven’t seen yet’. The central theme of his projects is the motif of ‘thinking space’. It permeates their projects, prompting reflections on personal cognitive processes as a counter-design to the dehumanisation and isolation of digital environments. In 1992, he was awarded the Golden Nica for Interactive Art by the Prix Ars Electronica for Home of the Brain (1989), one of the first artistic virtual reality installations. In 2018, he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art, together with Monika Fleischmann.
Contact: ZKM Center for Art and Media, Lorenzstraße 19, D-76135 Karlsruhe, Germany.