Ulf Langheinrich

Part of the Optofonica #1 series

Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. It seeks to shift the observer’s attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself.

With 'Drift' Ulf Langheinrich brings abstract images and sounds from both art and music into the cinematic space. A stream of abstract, deep and dense images and sounds evolves from a realistic image. The images are transparent, high in resolution and fine in detail. A process of multiple metamorphoses in several parallel spaces and time-layers constantly transforms their consistency, viscosity and transparency. The permeation, stacking and re-visualisation of such layers is almost symphonic, but does not separate areas of certain characteristics into chapters or movements.

«Reset» was created as an Austrian submission to the Venice Biennial 2001. The deliberate exclusion of a human likeness leads to an increasingly abstract, spatial and sound experience. The work concentrates on perceiving a vibrating, sound and light space whose inner coherence is no longer produced by a prearranged sound-image relation, but rather comes about through the consecutive synthesis of individual, independent samples. Ulf Langheinrich

Granular Synthesis are the new media, video art, and music duo Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich, who take their name from the practice of sampling "microsounds" (audio clips lasting 1 to 50 milliseconds) to create new compositions. Part of a series of video and installation pieces, "Sweetheart" features a single close-up of performer Akemi Takeya. It was produced for the Austrian T.V. network ORF.

MODELL 5 is a performance or installation in which the face of Japanese performer Akemi Takeya is subject to drastic time-based interventions that create in essence a cyborg-like hybrid, between human and machine. A roller coaster dramaturgy following the "life" of the four clones on screens. Using a technique derived from the principals of the sound design technique called "granular synthesis" but applied to the rather fat grains of single video frames (visual content and sound), Granular-Synthesis manages to evoke from a few expressions on the face of the performer Akemi Takeya, a frenzied exploration of the alter ego within touching distance.

The entrance to a men's toilet in an underground pedestrian passage in Vienna. Church bells are heard in the distance. In a merciless editing rhythm, anonymous men are brought ever closer to the opaque glass door, in rhythmic stanzas they are stucked ever deeper inside the room one can't see into. In between there are photos from a pornographic magazine, in which a tattooed Saviour is placed in a direct connection with the sexual intercourse between two men - all to the sounds of ghastly brass band music. Prince of Peace is written under the Redeemer's face.

A film about speech.