Directly at the entrance of the Workshop space stood another interactive artwork titled ‘Knowledge’ by James Patten (US), comprising of a supermarket shelf stocked with items. The interactive challenge this time was to pick up one of the ‘Corporate Fallout Detectors’, a beige box device with a barcode reader, and leisurely scan each product. The device gave out a series of beeps when passed over certain products, and the louder the beep, the less ethical the manufacturer of the product was reputed to be. No more excuses then not to make informed decisions about the everyday items one intends to buy…

James Patten, Knowledge

Moving further into the dark corners of the Exhibition space and I discovered a wonderful piece called ‘Ornamental Bug Garden’ by UK based collective Boredom Research. Mounted on the wall at eye level, bordered by stainless steel and a thick glass plate mounted on top, the flat screen display was more like a window into a microscopic digital world than a computer screen. A myriad of insect-like shapes buzzed and whirled in a pixelated garden, triggering curious sounds as they moved. This computer-generated ecological system was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch, and caught my interest for quite a long time indeed.

Christian Ziegler, Turned

In the early evening performance program, I made sure to get in early and reserve a place for ‘Turned’, a multimedia dance performance in the House of World Cultures auditorium, conceived by Christian Ziegler (Germany). A female dancer’s movements were captured in real-time by a series of cameras and projected onto a large screen. Her movements were deconstructed and processed, and unsettlingly challenged her on-stage presence, as they shifted in space and time behind her.

Chillout Room

It was quite a task to get along to all of the performances and workshops taking place in the daytime program. One, which I was sad to have missed out on, was the ‘Analog robots’ workshop that gave participants the chance to build and construct their very own robots. Two of the robots from the workshop were displayed at the exhibition space, and although they hobbled about rather clumsily, where was something quite endearing about these electronic creatures as they bumped into one another and made loud whirring noises from a jumble of wires and computer parts.

All manner of different creatures, from nerds to ravers and everything in between, were to be found at nightfall, further east at Transmediale’s Club venue; ‘Maria Am Ufer‘. The Berlin rock and clubbing institution was transformed from a warehouse shell to a multi-purpose space flickering with video projections, including even a record store and an all-white chill-out area sandwiched between the two main performance areas.