Document:Q9868

As a multi-dsciplinary media artist operating from Cologne (Germany), I've been working freelance since I finished my studies in 1979. In the beginning, I worked with 'traditional' media as painting. But I was always looking for new artistic challenges. One working phase dedicated to another medium followed. Later, I came consequently to the development of spatial installations including different media, as photography, multi-media and computer.
I would like to call the time of working until 1998 as the classical phase, since I was working with (meanwhile) classical media, even though it was always a kind of experimental work; I was always searching for the limits in using the media and in creating new contents. More than 100 individual exhibtions in cooperation with more than 70 museums throughout Europe were resulting from this phase.
At the end of 1998, came a break in my life which finished this very successful period and the connected artistic career.
It was in 2000, when I started a comeback as an artist, which meant to me a new life and a new artistic carreer since I was focussing now nearly my entire working on New Media and Internet, not or less in a commercial, but rather an artistic sense.
The basis formed my wide experience in nearly all visual media, but also other artistic media and disciplines as music (I played for over 15 year violine and studied classical singing once during several years), performance (I was a student in an actor's school for a certain periode, took lessons in classical dancing and pantomime) and an intellectual basis through studies of art history, journalism and dramatic arts, later came a profound knowledge of computer languages and new media technologies, so that I was predestined to create multi-media works and executing all disciplines in responsability of my own, and a certain talent for organizing and the eagerness to learn and to move on innovative fields.
This new environment of Internet gave me for the first time the chances to incorporate all my different talents into a variety of projects. On 01.01. 2000, I started the development of NewMediaArtProjectNetwork and its (currently) seven corporate member sites.
This project represents, on one hand, a gigantic art project which can be compared with the Universe and its galaxy systems, always changing and expanding. On the other hand, it represents the framework of the network and communication between the sites, participants and collaborating individuals, institutions of different kind and the active user. To him/her this art working is addressed, network as artworking.
The project as a whole is created in Flash, which represents an intuitive developing environment, offering all kind of representations and a high artistic freedom, if this can be stated at all, in this technology based environment.
A project, like NewMediaArtProjectNetwork, cannot be planned, and it was not planned, thus.
It developed from the creation and online publication of "A Virtual Memorial" www.a-virtual-memorial.org - a project which comes from the heart and is deeply connected with my personal history.
See also... http://www.a-virtual-memorial.org/artsites/a_virtual_memorial.htm and http://www.a-virtual-memorial.org/bubis/documentation.htm or conception for download as PDF http://www.a-virtual-memorial.org/downloads/pdf/pdf.htm
Since the first day online, the project took an unusual attraction and received an a non-expected interest particularly in English speaking countries.
In the beginning, I started bilingual (English and German), but since I became aware that my intensions where actually directed to a global community, I reduced the aspect of German (and thus, this locally limited) language and publish at present nearly exclusively in English, which is actually also the 'real' language of electronic writing.
The project has a typical Internet feature, it is ongoing. Each month a new project version is published showing new features, new subjects and new multi-media works connected to the subjects.
The project changes its appearance and design continuously. It is made for users who visit the site more than once, and at best frequently.
The success and the feedback on this project encouraged me to create new and different project environments, besides A Virtual Memorial