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DAVID SZAUDER

 

(b. 1976 in Hungary. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.)

 

Media artist and curator David Szauder (b. 1976 in Hungary) studied Art History at the Eötvös Loránd University and Intermedia at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest, and completed a Masters Fellowship at the School of Arts, Design and Architecture at the Aalto University in Helsinki. From 2009 to 2014 he worked as the curator at the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Berlin (.CHB). David Szauder is a visiting lecturer at the Film Academy, Potsdam, in addition to leading workshops on interactive media in Berlin and Budapest since 2010. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Buildingscape, an initiative to turn construction sites into venues for public art. Since 2019, he is the New Media Advisor for the Artistic Director of the VEB 2023 European Capital of Culture.

David Szauder has participated in a variety of international projects as artist and curator. In cooperation with MOMENTUM, previous projects include:
“MOMENTUM InsideOut: Lockdown Schmockdown” at CHB Collegium Hungaricum (Berlin, 2021); “Light Space Modulator” at MOMENTUM (Berlin, 2020); “Art Nomads: Made in the Emirates” at Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin, 2016);“Ganz Grosses Kino” KIK Eight at Kino International (Berlin, 2016); MOMENTUM InsideOut: Amir Fattal, “Atara” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2015); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “A Time for Dreams” & “Budapest Sketch”(Berlin Art Week, 2014); “PANDAMONIUM Preview // INTERPIXEL: Media Art from Shanghai and Budapest” (Berlin Gallery Weekend, 2014); “INTERSECTION”: Film and Video Art Panel Discussion for Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival, 2014); “THRESHOLDS”: Performance, Exhibition, Discussion (.CHB, Berlin Art Week, 2013); “THRESHOLDS” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013-2014); MOMENTUM InsideOut: “Mass & Mess” (TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Stettin, Poland, 2013).



 

LIGHT SPACE MATERIA

2020, HD Video, Digital Animation, 8 min 27 sec

 

 

David Szauder’s film Light Space Materia (2020) translates Bauhaus ideas on technology, new materials, and light into a digital context, upgrading an iconic work of the 1930’s into a 3D digital animation and algorithmically derived soundscape. Taking as his inspiration the kinetic light and sound sculpture Light Space Modulator (1930) by one of the founding fathers of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy, David Szauder re-created his own large-scale rendition of this iconic work – Light Space Modulator (2020). Szauder subsequently used this installation as the basis upon which to make a series of over 100 videos, digital animations, and soundscapes. David Szauder recontextualizes into digital media the driving principal of the Bauhaus, Moholy-Nagy’s aim to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world.

Szauder’s analysis of the Bauhaus-related kinetics of the original piece focuses on the fundamental question of how contemporary technology could change the formal expression of movement and capture the physicality of materials in a digital context. The Bauhaus always held an important pioneering position in the relationship of art to technology. This characteristic forms the essential basis of Szauder’s work, which applies computer code to create his animations and soundscapes derived from the ambient sound and kinetic movement of his Light Space Modulator sculpture using algorithms based on motion analysis. This soundscape accompanies Szauder’s film Light Space Materia, which commingles found footage related to the seminal ideas of the Bauhaus with digital 3D animations made by the artist to foreground the haptic qualities of the materiality of the image, along with film footage of the original Light Space Modulator and of Szauder’s reinvention of this work.



 
 

Works from the Digital Sketches Series:

 

In his ongoing series of Video Sketches, David Szauder hand draws animated collages incorporating family photos and found footage. In the artist’s words, “They are kinds of kinetic systems, structures, moving like the ‘perpetuum mobile’. In my case, the perpetuum mobile is the metaphor of the continually changing inner world of mine. There are a good number of nodes which are connected like impossible machines, and the movements of these nodes create an impossible hierarchy or dominations between the elements of the structure. Occasionally the system strives for completion, but these operations are just alibis, the real aim is to keep the movement endless, the structure closed and the hierarchy sustainable. Easy. Like these sketches.”

 
 
 

KINETIC STUDY NO.68

2020, Video, 4 min 21 sec

 

 
 
 

SUPPORTIVE STRUCTURES

2020, Video, 1 min 10 sec

Assemblage of Digital Sketches, including
Motivators , Hanging Around, Sunday Meditation, Kinetic Sunglasses Machine

 

 
 
 

KINETIC MOVEMENTS WITH SOUND

2020, Video, 5 min 32 sec

Assemblage of 6 Digital Sketches:
Kinetic Stability 1, Kinetic Stability 2, Pendulum, Vertical, Horizontal, Magnetic

 

 
 

Watch here the Spotlight interview with David Szauder