ZKM: Mensch-[in der]-Maschine

kII – the voicetopological interface is currently shown at the ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe (Germany). The exhibition Mensch-[in der]-Maschine started earlier in March this year at the Kunsthalle Budapest (Hungary) and can now be seen at one of Europe’s most interesting museums for (Interactive) Media Art and Technology.

Next to historical objects, drawings and machines of Wolfgang von Kempelen, who invented in the 18th century various automats – most famous for the chess-playing turk – the exhibition also shows present works of todays artists. Kempelen released detailed plans for his talking machines in his book “Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst Beschreibung einer sprechenden Maschine” (1791), so that others can rebuild and develop his work further. In contrast to Kempelen, who has built his machine to provide speech for the voiceless, my talking machine “kII” provides speech for the speechless. Plans and DIY-Instructions of “kII” can also be downloaded from this site.

Special thanks goes to Georg Winter; I had the great honor to work with him under the label “Phonetic Kemp Inc.” (see his excellent UKIYO CAMERA SYSTEMS development “mobile phone ‘harajuku'”). I was also very delighted to meet Martin Riches (builder of the marvellous ‘talking machine’), who can also be seen at Cybersonica’s SOUNDWAVES exhibition at Kinetica in London (see previous entries).

There are some really interesting pieces to be seen and experienced at this ZKM exhibition, also some new works that have not been shown in Budapest, for example two conversating computers from Jürg Lehni and “Zähler”, a subtle mechanical counting machine from Ralf Baecker, I was glad to meet.

Wolfgang von Kempelen.
Mensch-[in der]-Maschine
23.06.2007 – 19.08.2007
ZKM | Medienmuseum, Karlsruhe

Participating Artists:
Ralf Baecker, Zoe Beloff, Péter Forgács, Ken Feingold, Herbert Kitzel, Severin Hofmann / David Moises, György Jovánovics, Gergely Kovács / Bence Samu, Gergely László und Péter Rákosi, Jürg Lehni / Stephan Krass, M+M, János Major, Katrin von Maltzahn, Daria Martin, John Miller / Frank Lutz, Gyula Pauer, Wolf Pehlke, Simon Penny, Martin Riches, robotlab, Alexei Shulgin, Zoltán Szegedy-Maszák mit Róbert Langh, Márton Fernezelyi und Richard Aczel, Tamás Waliczky, Georg Winter und Michael Markert

Links:
· Related Articles on audiocommander.de
· Mensch-[in der]-Maschine (ZKM Exhibition website)
· Kempelen Exhibition in Budapest (article on audiocommander.de)
· Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen at de.wikipedia.org (there’s also an entry on en.wikipedia.org, but it contains less information).