Week 1. Library Research

Nils Völker is a media artist living and working in Berlin.

In 2004 he received a diploma from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Afterwards he moved to Berlin where he started working self employed as communication designer. Since 2010 Nils Völker creates artworks with the means of physical computing somewhere at the intersection of technology and art. During the past years he realized mostly large scale installations which have been exhibited in museums and art spaces all over the world.

In 2010 he realized an installation made from ordinary garbage bags, inflated and deflated in controlled rhythms. This work, called "One Hundred and Eight", has been exhibited several times and has been widely published online, in books and magazines.

It was the starting point for a whole series of installations based on inflating/deflating cushions made from different materials. The largest one was made from 252 large silver cushions for the exhibition "Captured – a Homage to Light and Air" followed by further site specific commissions like "Thirty Six" for Art Lab Gnesta, "Forty Eight" for the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, "Seventy Five" for Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei and "Eighty Eight" commissioned by the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. This installation has been adapted in 2013 as "Eighty Eight #2" for an exhibition at the Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains in Lausanne.

Besides from working on further variations of this series Nils Völker lately realized "64 CCFL", a light installation that is mainly made from so called cold cathode fluorescent lights and "Fountains" his first public artwork that is now in permanent collection in Xixi Wetland Park in Hangzhou, China.

Material - stone

With examples dating back to the enormous prehistoric statues of Easter Island, many types ofstone have been employed over the centuries in sculpture. Some of these stones yield more readily to the sculptor’s chisel (such as limestone, marble, and soapstone), while others, such as granite, are more difficult to carve but have proved more durable over time. 

Although seldom used to form entire structures, stone is greatly valued for its aesthetic appeal, durability, and ease of maintenance. The most popular types include granite, limestone, sandstone, marble, slate, gneiss, and serpentine. All natural stone used for structural support, curtain walls, veneer, floor tile, roofing, or strictly ornamental purposes is called building stone, and building...

Process - repitition

Saatchi Gallery-Coal Bags

Untitled 2013, Draped jute sacks wall installation created by Ibrahim Mhama, this installatin is the result of his investigations into the conditions of supply and demand in African markets. This piece was created by carefully arranging the sacks, which in their past lives have been imported by the Ghana Cocoa Board and are then reused by charcoal sellers. 

Mahama often display his appropriated sacks in outside spaces as public art, wrapping them around heaps of merchandise in a market place or embracing the contours of a museum's facade. exposing the mechanisms of trade which define the worlds's economy.