16.777.216
Permanent lighting installation on Raiffeisenplatz in Bludenz, since 2003

4 masts, 24 400 W / 230 V spotlights,
control system and touch panel.

Focussed light provided by 24 spotlights distributed on 4 masts strikes the ground, forming circles and areas of light. The title of the work "16,777,216" refers to the number of theoretically possible light settings. Each spotlight is connected to a control system, which constantly changes the lighting effect. The spots light up with "precision slowness" (Axel Jablonski), but they go out spontaneously. Larger and smaller illuminated spaces are created, then merge together and split apart. The result is a city square in a state of constant flux. A touch panel invites users to interrupt the lighting control system, which is programmed according to a randomisation principle, and to change the scene according to their own lighting choreography.

8.388.608
EnBW, Karlsruhe 2005

23 Thorn Mundial 2,000 W/380 V spotlights, control system.

The basic structure of the installation is formed by 23 spotlights attached at different heights to the 23 façade supports in front of the EnBW building in Karlsruhe. Like a computergenerated drama, the lights are switched on and off in variable combinations according to the "Monte Carlo" technique, that is to say, using a randomisation principle which is nevertheless calculable. The switching sequence of 23 luminaires can be combined 223 times. In the same way that music or language is composed of a finite number of elements, for example the 26 letters of the alphabet, these 23 spots compose lighting music based on random probability. The spotlights, which are directed downwards, also form a curtain of light. In wet weather or snow, this curtain is transformed into lighting cones by raindrops and snowflakes. The heat from the light beams dries the illuminated regions on the ground quickly so that the light leaves spatial traces of its travels.

114 kW
Kunsthalle Schirn, Frankfurt am Main, April 2006

57 Thorn Mundial 2000 W/380 V spotlights, TridonicAtco control gear, distributor box, 57 transformers, cabling.

57 spotlights transform the rotunda in the Kunsthalle Schirn into a brilliant, illuminated space visible from afar. On entering the installation, museum visitors and passers-by are exposed to the focussed radiant power from a total of 114 kW lighting energy. Beyond the purely visual impression of brightness, the materiality of the phenomenon of light can be experienced directly and physically. The visitor's attention is drawn to the artificiality of light through the deliberate presentation of technical equipment – one distributor box, 57 transformers and the associated 57 cables connected to the spots. The disproportionately powerful illumination of an unassuming area highlights the often irrational or simply unaesthetic use of artificial light to illuminate public spaces or façades, which contributes significantly to "light pollution" in our cities. Because it is perceived with varying intensity depending on the natural daylight, this installation changes constantly throughout its life. Throughout the installation at the Kunsthalle Schirn, the City of Frankfurt will be switching off the evening façade lighting of the Römer, the Paulskirche and the Cathedral.

>link: Kunsthalle Schirn

48 kW
ZKM, Karlsruhe 2005/06

24 Thorn Mundial 2000 W/380 V spotlights, 24 transformers, three distributor boxes, cabling on site

24 spotlights rated at 2000 W/380 V are arranged in three rows one above the other on a scaffold with 8 spotlights side by side in each row. Three distributor boxes, 24 transformers and 51 cables are positioned on the ground behind them. Power is supplied via three high-power cables to the distributor boxes, from which 24 cables lead to the transformers, where the current is transformed and connected via another 24 cables to the 24 spotlights. These shine from a distance of 4 metres onto an opposite wall. The total energy output is broken down into 4% invisible ultraviolet light, 43% visible light, 23% thermal radiation (infrared component), 30% loss (primarily heat). To illuminate a football field, the energy con-sumption required is approximately 240,000 W. The energy consumption required for lighting a 1-kilo-metre long urban street with street lights 33 metres apart and 150 W luminaires is around 5,000 W. However, with the addition of shop window lighting, energy consumption rises to 400,000 W. Illuminance of the spotlights is 10,000 lux at a distance of 18 to 20 metres. Illuminance of the installation at a distance of 4.5 metres from the spotlights is 360,000 lux. On a night with a new moon, illuminance is approximately 0.03 lux, compared with 2.00 lux on a night with a full moon. Illuminance of the sun on a cloudy summer day is 20,000 lux, compared with around 100,000 lux on a sunny summer day.

Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe >link: ZKM

spin text no. 0594
associations in scattered light

1) light-awareness: actually, bringing home the perception of scattered light, domes of light smog (a diffusion of moralizing speech suggests itself, reflexive environmentalist grumbling sprinkled all around).

2) the infinitely variable transitions of endlessly many luminosities: in which we cloak ourselves, that we incessantly transmit: the infinite array of hues of the near-darknesses we encounter as we send out light, which, by sending light, we invest with structure, align with rhythm.

3) or: the infinite number of light spaces in one single space of lightlessness, in the pre-big bang black box: photonic time smog, space smog, the expanding smog of the space-time continuity, the expanding big bang space-time continuum as a universal smog of completely spaceless, timeless, non-continuing nothingness.

4) continuous interaction:
the need for darkness/darknesses develops in interaction with the advancement of opportunities to satisfy the want of light, to react to the emerging needs for light with ever more new light.

5) what a light work by siegrun appelt brings to light.

6) brought in from the outside, boasting amplified and mood-brightening daylight quality, inside the cage, in self-protection of observers, who just might take it like a moth, floodlights illuminate buildings, the lighting technicians of architectural definitions of space, into the installation’s scattered-light barrel, create a scattered-light halo. the dense light and high brightness is tied up with metaphoric concentration: light metaphors heat up.

7)the exhibit of concentrated luminous efficiency and heating power of building floodlights creates awareness of electric currents and electrifying awareness: a current awareness: a current/light awareness of the ELECTRI CITY, as well as of THE BRIGHT LAND OF CURRENTS. urbanites hastening, sauntering through respectively light and de-light: ELECTRI CITOYENS; in the country and around cities, LIGHT FARMING takes flight, light strewing types of settlements. ELECTRI CITATONS from all architectural styles are reflected off daily night.

8) diffusiveness and compression of light engenders a desire for blackness, for respectively hatching into and out into lightlessness, into the both impenetrable and non-resisting blackness, where the two infinities of outer and inner black box fuse into one: a total see-through, perfect transparency.

9) satori: illumination without reflection

HERBERT J. WIMMER/VIENNA, JULY 28.-30. 2004
TRANSLATION: MATHIAS GOLDMANN, >link:Sonderzahl

38.028.797.018.963.968

The light installation discussed here, 38.028.797.018.963.968 in the Maag Areal in Zurich, is the second of now three comparable works by Siegrun
Appelt. The first piece, entitled 16.777.216, was produced in 2003 for the Raiffeisenplatz in Bludenz. 68.719.476.736 is planned for realization in the courtyard of the Museumsquartier in Vienna in October 2004. The choice of spotlights, as well as that of poles, differs according to place. In the case of the work on the Maag-Areal in Zurich, the spotlights were not mounted on poles, but rather on the roof-edges of different buildings. Identical in each installation is the means of circuitry by which the individual spotlights turn on and off. In each case, this is controlled by a random generator. The number of different combinations and possibilities provides the title for each light installation.

With the coming of night, the constantly changing combination of 55 2000 Watt spotlights is visible from a distance. Scattered over the rooftops of the buildings, they change the heterogeneous manifestation of the characteristically industrial Areal. The spaces between the buildings undergo a constant change in lighting. In the formerly production-limited, use-oriented infrastructure, come spotlight beams that cross over one another, change, and then abruptly disappear. The entire Areal, that the lighting more or less condenses, becomes a newly experienced object of contemplation in the changing light.

The Maag Areal, was, until recently, a working manufacturing plant that produced industrial metal objects, among others, for giant gears. It has, until now, barely changed its exterior appearance. A radical metamorphosis in the interior is, however, in full swing. An alternative place of production, archi- tecture and design companies, a dancing school, the largest youth church in Switzerland and much more has moved into the work spaces and offices; concert and event halls have also been established. This form of appropriation reflects, in a typically ideal way, the picture of a new service industry designed for flexibility. But the background for all this activity is, in all its fixed components, still the same. The powerful scenery of the Areal is even now a narrative space for a society in which forms of life develop more and more quickly. For the coming years, this is going to be visible both urbanistically as well as architecturally. This area was once only frequented by people taking part in production, and has now been opened for all possible new interests.

At first glance, Siegrun Appelt’s work fits in in a both conciliatory and connected manner. The appearance of the spotlights is hardly different from the illumination used in the production of earlier times; that the Areal is lit up deep into the night by the light installation is also a reminder of times passed, when a nightshift continued production. Only the slow, sedate change of the staged lights can be irritating. Familiar light changes, fast and aggressive or playful and colorful, are not the main concern of the artist.

Rather, it is strict and cold, the audible technical noises, a clicking and a quick rustling, that accompanies the spotlights. One is encountered by the lights on the Areal, blended or illuminated directly by the spotlight’s beam, and then abruptly left standing in the dark. The position of the single spotlight does not change at all. One belongs to the production only in passing; the staged lights are enough in themselves. Factory lighting, theater lights, and floodlights like those used in stadiums and camps come to mind. The disappearance of light demands more attention than the spotlight itself. Once out of the light, building corners and asphalt, every place and person returns to their anonymity, and was made special through a brief period of illumination.

38.028.797.018.963.968 inserts itself discreetly, barely noticeable as art, taking an irritating measure in a situation that is as multifaceted as Siegrun Appelt’s work itself. She takes a subversive position to art in public space by initiating an irritation that leans toward the affirmative, and at the same time, she undermines the speed of trends with her own lassitude. The Maag-Areal is and was intended as a use-oriented space; now it is the picturesque background for trendy industries. To observe or to be observed, to belong or not to belong - all this depends on the atmosphere of the Maag Areal. It is planned for demolition in 2008 to make way for new city construction, yet it is an historical site for Zurich in the literal, and metaphorical, sense. A light installation that is open, inviting, promising and unromantic accompanies the disinterested, and well as interested, passersby. One can elude the installation on the Areal just as little as one can avoid coming changes.

AXEL JABLONSKI, >link: basis-Vienna

Compressed Light

Light’s intensity and strength proceed from a minimum perceptibility to an extreme, nearly painful concentration. On a cloudy day in summer, about 20,000 lux can be measured but, if the sun shines, the value rises to 100,000 lux. On a night with a full moon up to 2.0 lux can be determined, with a new moon at only 0.03 lux.

These prosaic facts evoke proportions, which are important for the understanding of Siegrun Appelt’s installation 72 kW at the A9 forum trans-europa. Within the context of this piece, which was conceived specifically for this space in the MuseumsQuartier Vienna, the artist uses 36 bright Thorn Mundial R outdoor lights with a luminous flux of 200,000 lumens per emitter and a total output of 72 kilowatts. In an inaccessible area, which is only slightly over forty square meters, viewable only through a latticed rolling gate are industrial lights, set on a stand, which illuminate the continuous white wall opposite. From a distance of approximately twenty meters, each light would emit a light density of 10.000 lux; the whole installation is at a distance of 3.5 meters from the facing wall emitting approximately 400,000 lux. Electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic alternating fields have no obligatory value limits, however, at present, the electromagnetic radiation of the installation starts at a distance of 20 cm from the lights under the recommended field strength value limit of 100 Microtesla, while the noise level of the transformers reaches 72 decibels.

For the lighting of an average 25-squaremeter office space about 500 Watts are required. For lighting a kilometer of highway —with the lampposts at a distance of fifty meters from each other and with each light at 150 Watts—about 3,000 Watts are required. In the city, the value rises to ap-proximately 5,000 Watts, since the lampposts are usually set closer together. In a commercial street, with lots of shop windows and house entrances, consumption can rise to over 400,000 Watts. The energy consumption of the installation— which is the 72 kilowatts that gives the exhibition its title—corresponds to a third of the energy consumed in lighting a football field during a game.

In Appelt’s installation, on the one hand the light sources are them- selves concentrated while, on the other hand, the reflective surface necessary for the light’s perception is over a very small area. Visitors to the exhibition are confronted with a compression of energy, which reaches painful limits. The most glaring light, the constantly running noises of the transformers, and the intense heat cause both physical and psychological uneasiness.

Appelt’s work is not about the release of light as an artistic medium or about the autonomy of light; the supply of the light source itself is a substantial component of the work. Only with this association the arti-
ficiality of the light becomes clarified, the customs of perception are put under scrutiny. Our everyday way of perceiving is not by any means a natural given. To a considerable degree it is culturally mediated, a cultural product formed over the process of humanity’s civilization, which is not naturally given.

Besides that, in different manifestations light provokes corresponding psychological reactions such as wellbeing, unease or alertness.

The human eye is a highly complex instrument of perception. It is well-known from physics that white light can be split into different colors that have different characteristics and instigate different perceptions in people. On the one hand, tiny photo-sensitive cones in the eye absorb all colors without really differentiating and thus permit, for example, black-and-white sight in the dark while, on the other hand, with sufficient light they make the perception of all individual colors possible. The limits for this perceptibility vary from person to person. And it is around the slight adjustments of these limits that Siegrun Appelt’s work revolves.

The installation described here is directly connected to the light installation 68.719.476.736 hosted by MUMOK and starting in October 2004 in the inner court of the MuseumsQuartier Vienna. In the framework of this larger installation, Appelt reused the lights for the 72 kW installation with another result. There is not a static, consolidated, clearly-defined light area produced in the yard; on the contrary, various continually changing light situations develop—organized on a purely unplanned and coincidental principle—which resume the work already begun in the installations 16.777.216 in the Raiffeisenplatz in Bludenz (2003) and 38.028.797.018.963.968 in the Maag-Areal of Zurich (2003).

For years, Siegrun Appelt’s work has revolved around the feature of human perception. In videos of train voyages she let the landscape flash by. Then in the last few years, her attention became focused on rooms in rest and became dedicated to the source and conditions of our perception, to the light itself. Her position regarding the causes and consequences of so-called light pollution began at the same time. It consequently concerns the light dome that emanates over cities and population centers, produced by the diffusion and reflection of artificial light systems.

We find a situation completely contrary to 72 kW in the Eybesfeld castle grounds in the Südsteiermark. Appelt developed a lighting system for a pedestrian path here. With a minimum of employed light—only 38-Watt lighting tubes are used—and with the prevention of unnecessary diffused light, the pedestrians are, to a certain extent, conveyed and accompanied by the light. Further more, a number of tests have shown that, with this minimal concentration of light, sufficient lighting is indeed possible. While a sharpening of the senses is achieved by this decrease in the light supply in Eybesfeld, through a sharp-ening of our attention the 72 kW installation makes us immediately aware of our uncontrolled use of energy.

STEFANIA PITSCHEIDER, >link: WochenKlausur

Music as permanent evolution

CONCERNING THE SOUND INSTALLATION OF MARTIN SIEWERT AND MARTIN BRANDLMAYR WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE URBAN ART PROJECT AT THE MAAG AREAL/ZURICH

Sound waves: gently vibrating, long drawn-out notes which float into the room, are reflected by the walls, are filtered in various ways and almost imperceptibly change their timbre in the process. Twisting up into an acoustic double helix, granular sound particles meander through the environment without aim or destination. Then again: sonic phenomena like the far-away echo of high chimes, finely graduated differences in intensity, subliminal acoustic phenomena at the periphery of perception, interrupted by an aggressively drilling buzz. This is not the performance of a musical drama, it is an evolutionary process: sounds emitted from different CD players combine in constantly changing mixtures, the asynchronicity of looped building blocks allows for permanent permutation.

While successfully retaining its aesthetic autonomy, the sound installation by Martin Siewert and Martin Brandlmayr for the “Urban“ multi-media art project on Zurich’s post-industrial Maag-Areal is not a solipsistic spectacle of exclusion and segregation. The clicking and clacking of shoes as passers-by cross the hall becomes an integral element of the assemblage: rhythmic punctuation, aleatoric disruptive action, the uncontrollable here and now of everyday life. Siegrun Appelt’s chiaroscuro light design – light-dark effects, gradual variations of luminosity, changing visual demarcations of different zones on the site – interacts subtly with the experience of sound. Sometimes it is as if a dieu caché flicked a switch and catapulted the fluctuating visual-sonic environment into another fold of existence, a different existential paradigm: unstable symmetry, signs punctuating the meta-linguistic space of irritating contingencies.

Often, Siewert/Brandlmayr’s sound installation seems to create tones, noises, abstract acoustic signifiers that appear familiar: the rumbling of heavy machinery in a factory workshop, the obscene hissing of a steam turbine, the white noise of overlapping sonic signals from the intestines of a machine world freed of its shackles. One almost believes one can hear a romantic reminiscence of a pre-digital age of chomping pistons and rattling engines.

But this is not about mimesis, it is about sonic approximation. The difference, minimal though it might be, that separates the synthesised acoustic particles from the analogue noises produced by an era of capitalism that already belongs to history, produces some disorientation, perhaps corresponding to the notion of the uncanny as defined by Freud, as “the type of fearfulness rooted in that which is well known and long familiar”.

Martin Siewert and Martin Brandlmayr are part of the generation of sound explorers who, since the 1990s, have been working on a new evaluation and weighting of acoustic parameters beyond the world of genres and stylistic dogma. Among the international group of undogmatic sound seekers, Austrians are not only remarkably numerous but also strong in terms of aesthetic impact, with ensembles such as Efzeg, Trapist, Radian and musicians such as trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, laptop player Christian Fennesz, bassist Werner Dafeldecker and turntable virtuoso Dieb 13. As Martin Siewert says, this is “about the advanced form of expression of instrumentally coded material”. This is about music that is no longer committed to the linearity and narratives of traditional compositions, but aspires to an aesthetic of layers, of psycho-acoustic stratification and the recognition patterns emerging in the loop. This is about sonic research that perceives tones no longer predominantly as modules with a function in an harmonic relationship, but leaves them a value of their own, lets them build up and ebb away in their own time. The elements of this analogue/digital combination music can be traced back to the random operations and sound manipulation techniques of John Cage, to the strategies of heightening the awareness of ensembles such as AMM, to the cellular-evolutive motif agglomerations of minimalists such as LaMonte Young and Terry Riley. But it is only in combination with digital processing techniques, granular and resampling features that it obtains the specific character which turns it into the aesthetic signature of an era in a dialectic conflict between real residues and virtual mirror worlds.

The music of Siewert, Brandlmayr & Co. is not subservient to any ideology which derives apodictic forecasts of future aesthetics from “material tendencies” (Adorno), but works in an undogmatic manner from within the abundance of present-day possibilities. It replaces the prognostics of historical philosophy by synchronicity, and aesthetic teleology by the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous. It is not bent on emphatically conquering the future, as so many projects in 20th century Modernism, but on penetrating the present in an unparalleled way, unabashedly making use of “socially worn” material (Adorno). The language of Dadaism, writes composer Bernhard Lang, was about “breaking up linearity, introducing synchronicity, reverting the flow of time and finding a new difference and intensity of expression.” Perhaps this programme will also incorporate some aspects of the art created by Siewert/Brandlmayr and, in a wider sense, of the global impro, glitch and laptop community. For the mysterious gates of the impossible will open only if musicians manage to abjure the illusion of progress and decipher the “acoustic markings on the body of things” (Toni Negri).

THOMAS MIEßGANG, >link: Kunsthalle Vienna

68.719.476.736
A light-installation for the MQ
 
14.10.2004 – 14.10. 2005

Together with Zumtobel Staff MUMOK presents its contribution to the concept for the MQ courtyard with the light installation 68.719.476.736 from Siegrun Appelt. Four light-pylons and a total of 36 computer directed spotlights dramatize the MQ`s architectural ensemble, transforming it into a kind of scenic stage for visitors and passers-by of the MuseumsQuartier.
 
Siegrun Appelt
 Through her photographs, videos and installations the Vienna-based artist Siegrun Appelt (born 1965 in Bludenz) displays and stages the variability, transition and motion against a background of heightent media- and technology relevance. Appelt`s thematic spectrum ranges from the subtly nuanced interplay of light and dark on textile drapery to atmospheric cloud formations, landscapes filmed “flying” past a moving train, or spaces and architecture exposed to varying light-effects and as such primarily addresses various forms of transition or relocation, together with the processes of change and differentiation.
 
The installation
Based on the observation of urban public space, Appelt developed several light-installations that seek to transcend mere purpose of illumination. The light-pylons with 36 spotlights erected in the central courtyard of the MQ show a precise choreography of lights, appearing and disappearing in accordance with a computer-generated randomising principle. The mutability and modulation of the resulting light-show is somewhat reminiscent of stage lighting and, by association, seems to transform the MQ environment into a kind of scenic setting, with passers-by simultaneously functioning as actors and audience. The light blurs the physical boundaries of the courtyard and the architecture respectively fuses them into changing constellations of light and shadow.
By generating an incessant sequence of new angles of perception, the lighting reveals itself as a medium with the power to structure and alter reality. Under its spell, the spaces where art is exhibited – complete with their own refined lighting systems – are themselves put on display like so many well-lit objects. Owing to the underlying principle of constant modulation, light no longer functions as a mere means of illumination but is itself revealed as source and cause of what we see. It also demonstrates that the perception and even the visibility of one’s surroundings are dependent on technoid and media-related circumstances. Whereas the characteristic ubiquity of mediated images commonly obscures their causes and intentions, Appelt’s installation on the other hand highlights the media-dependent quality of the kind of images that we ourselves produce of the world and of our own relative position in it. 
 
Lighting in 68.719.476.736 variations
The title of the work 68.719.476.736 refers to the number of possible variations in which the different lighting sequences may interact. It is evident that a single human lifetime would not suffice to view or experience the entire spectrum of possibilities. As such, this installation not only addresses the fleeting nature of light but also the transitoriness of time and of our lives, a constantly changing continuum where chance and necessity generate each other.

288 kW

During the summer nights of 2005, the Vorarlberg artist Siegrun Appelt, born in 1965, will transform the Kunsthaus Bregenz into a brightly lit sculpture. With this work, the Kunsthaus Bregenz will be continuing its long artistic tradition of exploring the glass skin of the building as well as public space in Vorarlberg. Some recent examples have been works by James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Tony Oursler, Ruth Schnell, Tone Fink, and Jenny Holzer.
The project consists of three elements. The heart of the installation comprises 144 bright Thorn Mundial R outdoor floodlights with a luminous flux of 200,000 lumens per emitter and a total output of 288 kW. From the light well at the level of the first basement between the building and the façade, 36 floodlights on each of the four sides of the Kunsthaus will be directed upward at the sky. For the first fifteen minutes, all the floodlights will be turned on at once, consuming a total of 288 kW of electricity. After this initial phase, each side will be illuminated separately, the light wandering around the Kunsthaus “side by side” at a rate of approximately 30 minutes per rotation. Thus each side will be lit for approximately eight minutes before the illumination disappears around the corner.
At the core of this sculptural display is a sophisticated technical set-up consisting of switch and junction boxes,144 series connection units, and the network of a hundred meters of electrical cables that all come together at the first basement level of the KUB, where they connect to the 144 floodlights in between the building and its glass façade. Here visitors can view this cluster of wiring; thus the energy that lights up the nighttime sky over Bregenz is also visible during the day.
On the first basement level, photos and texts document the interlinking of the complex project, the external cooperating partners, and the artist’s intentions.
The enormous light intensity of the light sculpture at the Kunsthaus will have conceptual counterparts at different venues throughout Vorarlberg. Every evening between 10 and 10.15 p.m., the lights will be turned off at prominent points in Vorarlberg: the total amount of electricity that would otherwise be needed for the outdoor illumination of a number of public buildings, industrial
facilities, churches, monuments, private houses, historical buildings in Bregenz, Bludenz, Feldkirch, Dornbirn, Hohenems, Nenzing, Koblach as well as several other places will correspond to the 288 kW of electricity needed to power the installation at the Kunsthaus Bregenz.
For years, Siegrun Appelt’s work has revolved around the feature of human perception. In videos of train voyages she let the landscapes flash by. Then in the last few years, her attention focused on rooms in rest and became dedicated to the sources and conditions of our perception, to the light itself. Her position regarding the causes and consequences of so-called light pollution began at the same time: light for accentuating “important” buildings like churches, palaces, castles, as well as stores, private houses, and industrial facilities, which have thus been tagged by virtue of their spectacular illumination as sites of attraction although they are being used to
serve an entirely different purpose. It consequently concerns the light dome that emanates over cities and population centers produced by the diffusion and reflection of artificial light systems.
Extending the project and incorporating many towns throughout the state of Vorarlberg into the light sculpture at the Kunsthaus Bregenz creates a reflective link between the exhibition building and the sites of the illuminated or non-illuminated objects – a dialectic demonstration of the culturally coded exhibition value of light and the energy expenditure necessary for its generation

link: http://www.kunsthaus-bregenz.at/