Guest of Honor: Mechthild Schmidt Feist
“My interest in digital and now generative media has always been to explore new forms of aesthetic expressions in digital media that has shaped the past 80 or certainly the past 40 years.
Despite or because of early imperfections I did not want to leave the visuals to people from other professions but to seek reciprocal inspiration and collaboration – and add a poetic and critical layer. With ‘Shadow generator under a Blue Moon. Light drawing- warm and cold‘ I hope to leave room for thought and dreams.
All new media from Photography to Generative Art have faced skepticism from prior art forms and practices, but those can be a welcome friction to solidify our conceptual thinking.
For me as a young woman, the then new field offered both chance and challenge. With a defiant ‘selective ignorance’ I had to block the attempts for secretarial duties – but the new medium also offered an unexplored, open playing field without pre-assigned roles and artistic conventions.
Aside of artistic interest, my historical background wants to go back to the roots and early connections between art and science. That is where the pioneering work and regular exchange with Herbert W. Franke has been an inspiration since we first met in the mid 1980-ies. I look forward to participate in many inspiring conversations at the Generative Art Conference and thank Susanne Paech from the Herbert W. Franke Foundation for the invitation.”
Biography
Mechthild Schmidt Feist is a media artist and faculty at New York University. Her series Engaged Media looks to inspire local solutions to the climate crisis. Her Media art ranges from video to installations and works on Google Earth. As a Fulbright Senior Scholar to India, one of her latest mapping works is Lalbagh TreeStory.
After Fine Arts and History degrees in Berlin, a DAAD graduate study grant and a Whitney Museum-ISP Fellowship brought Mechthild to New York in the 1980s and to first experiments with computer-generated imagery. In subsequent years she worked as an artist and designer in New York (Editel, HBO) and Munich (ARRI) – meeting computer art pioneers like Herbert Franke. Two of her works were the design of ‘Lola’, the awards statue for the “Deutscher Filmpreis” and her multimedia theater production of “Amphitryon”.
Upper right: Statement showing also a multimedia art work for COP 21, visuals inspired by digitized concept of “Stabtänze” of Bauhaus artist Kurt Schwitters as well as a multimedia work done with Google Earth.
Lower right: Stochastic Dance shown after the statement.