Benjamin Heidersberger

Benjamin Heidersberger (born 1957 in Braunschweig, Germany) is a German media artist, journalist, entrepreneur and culture manager. He lives and works in Berlin and Wolfsburg.

Life and work

Heidersberger studied physics, biology and computer science at the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1978. From 1978 to 1984, he was part of the interdisciplinary artist group Head Resonance in Wolfsburg. Along with vocalist and percussionist Peter Elsner, they conducted research on the topic of how ideas become reality in the fields of architecture, music, performance and installation. In 1984, he moved to Hamburg to work for a PC-dealer. From 1988 onward, he was an editor of the Computer-Magazine MACup about hardware and software, and later about art, technology, and society. He also covered the development of a Macintosh-compatible PC from Taiwan.

In 1989, he co-founded the Ponton-Lab as an artist group and realised interactive media and TV-projects on Documenta- 8 and Documenta- IX, in Japan 1993 as well as on Ars Electronica 1986, 89, 90 and 96 under the name Van Gogh TV.

In 1992, the international project Piazza virtuale was realised, transmitting during the 100 days of Documenta daily 90 minutes of life-TV from 12 studios all over Europe and the former east-block.[1][2] The same year he curated the exhibition "Creative Software – On Men and Milestones" at Ars Electronica showing historically important software on original hardware.[3]

1993 and 1994 Heidersberger was teaching „Design of Electronic Media“ at Merz-Academy in Stuttgart. Ponton-Lab was formed into a full-service internet agency with up to 20 employees and realised the websites www.niedersachsen.de for the Lower Saxony State Government and www.deutschland.de for the Ferderal Press Office and later the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 1998 he launched Kulturserver, the online community for art and culture consisting of online-services for 20.000 artists similar to today's social media. The project was invited to a presentation at the international conference “Cultura y Desarrollo” in Havana.[4]

In 2002, he founded the Institute Heidersberger in the Wolfsburg Castle to archive and publish the work of his father, the photographer Heinrich Heidersberger with the support of the City of Wolfsburg. The Institute Heidersberger collaborates with contemporary artists to contextualise the work. In the same year he was curator for netart on the 4th Werkleitz Binnale.

From 2011 onwards, Heidersberger gave lectures at the Department of Media Studies and Musicology in Humboldt-University. In 2012, he curated and produced the concert of the Japanese composer Shinji Kanki, for the Alvar Aalto Festival in Wolfsburg. He also realised the algorithmic piano composition Pentatonic Permutations[5] in a series of concerts and sound installations, among others at Ars Electronica 2016.[6]

Since 2017, he has been curating the production-arts festival Drehmoment for the KulturRegion Stuttgart.[7]

Awards and Nominations

  • 1991 Smithsonian Award, Washington – Nominee
  • 1993 Siemens International Media Art award, by ZKM Karlsruhe
  • 1993 Prix Ars Electronica
  • 1994 Interactive Media Festival, Los Angeles – Nominee
  • 2000 Best of Business-to-Business Award, as CEO, category Multimedia
  • 2002 eMIL- Award, category User Interface
  • 2003 eMIL- Award, category Internet
  • 2004 WebFish award of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), category Innovation
  • 2008 WebFish of the EKD, category Internet

Bibliography

  • Heinrich Heidersberger: Wolfsburg – Bilder einer jungen Stadt. Herausgeber, with Bernd Rodrian, ISBN 3-89479-826-2.
  • Johannes Ehrhardt (Hg.): Netzwerk-Dimensionen. Kulturelle Konfigurationen und Managementperspektiven, Die virtuelle Piazza. 1992, ISBN 3-89238-045-7.

References

  1. ↑ Spiegel.de: Die imaginäre Pizza, 21. Mai 1992, retrieved July 10, 2018
  2. ↑ wired.com: The Media is the Mission, 5. Januar 1993, retrieved July 10, 2018
  3. ↑ Ars Electronica Archiv: Endo Nano - Die Welt von Innen, 1992, retrieved July 10, 2018
  4. ↑ The Guardian: Cuba faces the web revolution, July 22, 1995, retrieved August 8, 2018
  5. ↑ Pentatonic Permutations 20121216, retrieved 2018-09-28
  6. ↑ Ars Electronica Festival 2016 - Radical Atoms, retrieved July 10, 2018
  7. ↑ kulturregion-stuttgart.de: Benjamin Heidersberger wird künstlerischer Leiter für das Projekt 2018, 3. Februar 2017, retrieved Juli 16, 2018
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