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The Transfer
By Michael Schneider
The rapid sketch on a sheet of paper, the detailed drawing on primed hand-made paper, the 3D animation on a 3D screen, all of these transfer our idea into form. Without this transfer we would never be able to share the images of our thinking with others.
It is the transfer of insight about one thing onto another, the transfer of conception and ideas about one thing onto another, the transfer of concepts and ideas of one person onto another, the transfer onto many by means of printmaking that is to me a constituent element of human nature and the culture developed from it.
Transfer has become a central theme in my work.
The passage Johnstraße was for years part of my route to my Studio. With the competition for the design of the passage, my work has been transferred onto my route, and the way to my studio has become an integral part of my work.
Printmaking, my laboratory in which I investigate my own cognition and message, the nucleus of our culture defined by communication technology, the matrix of media art, and the only possibility to produce art with the intention of self-determined publication and with control over the productive means, is the first and central medium of transfer.
Printmaking is better suited than any other medium of the arts to trace the mechanism of transfers, to understand them and to turn them into images. In its invention, the transfer of qualities from one object onto another has been causal.
When an image is transferred onto a block, a transfer of our imagination into an image has already happened. Within the block are the traces of the tools used, which constitute the transfer of qualities from one object onto another.
When printing, a selected range of qualities is transferred onto the paper with ink as medium. Our imagination, now an image, transferred onto the most important medium of our culture, through all of these steps underwent permanent change.
We search for transfer without loss. The fascination with digital copies also stems from the hope for loss-free communication. Our search, lasting now for millennia, for a technical solution to our central problem in communication within human society, the »transfer loss«, has manifested itself within us just as the dream of flying did.
In the work transfer for the station Johnstraße of the subway line 3 of the Wiener Linien, it has been possible to unite the function of the subway with the thoughts guiding my work.
The subway, the network of lifelines of the city, enables the transfer of people from one place in the city to another, thereby enabling a complex field of action and interaction in the city. In the history of urban technology the subway is doing this so far the fastest. Technological developments regarding speed and level of loss reduction – be it in the area of transportation or in the area of communication – has accelerated our entire lives.
The time its speed, the speed its art.
The knowledge of our world that starts with our sensual experience has developed more and more into an indirect one. The foremost medium of our visual experience is printmaking and all its offspring.
This indirect experience has on one hand estranged us, while on the other hand it creates equidistance to the world that we experience through transfer and through which we can transfer ourselves.
Transfer, regardless of the medium, is never possible without loss and without change. The change that happens through transfer has the potential to develop something new. Especially in the repetitive and the serial nature of printmaking, change through the different steps of transfer is an essential element in the development of mankind.
Out of transfer, loss through transfer, change through transfer and the multiple repetition of this process we have created a culture machine. Paired with human nature which is defined by error and misunderstanding that leads to transformative reception, we have found the way to cultural evolution, without being conscious of it.
Transfer at the Johnstraße station aims to show this culture machine, to embed it in our understanding, to penetrate it into our sensual experience of the world, in order to fuse it with the indirectly experienced world.
The Artwork
The woodblock has been printed using traditional Japanese technique, the polymer plate in classical intaglio print style on Japanese paper. These prints were then photographed and the digital images exposed onto silk screens which were then printed on enamel panels; finally, these were fired in a special enamel oven at 800 degrees celsius.
The title transfer not only refers to the transfer of print technique and visual concepts from Japan to Vienna but also the technical and aesthetic transfer in working with photography, its integration into an aesthetic network and its fixing as an enamel panel in the subway station.
The artwork makes visible the function of the Subway as an urban artery and enables passers-by to explore the city from the station Johnstraße.
By Prof. Dr. Philipp Maurer
Michael Schneider’s frieze übertragung | transfer is an invitation to travel along the subway Line 3: photographs, aimed at the roofline of known and unknown buildings along the Line 3, are suggestive of the atmosphere of the city of Vienna. The images approach us as riddles, challenging us to solve them, to recognize the depicted buildings. They urge us to stroll through the city, its history and architecture, to aid our memory and to consciously experience the diversity of our city. The selection of the motives maintains a balance between the joy of recognition and the curiosity of discovery. Transfer, the title of the work in this case refers to the aim of transferring the images of the city into our daily lives and into our memory, and to embed them there. To produce the work, Michael Schneider has used numerous techniques. While the work passed through different stages, it was transferred in each individual step from one medium into another. The buildings were photographed digitally, the images reworked with a computer and then transferred onto a polymer plate. The photography was then enriched with Schneider’s art of wood block printed signs that are brought into a dialogue, thereby emphasizing formal qualities of the architecture.
The Idea
The continuous character of the work introduces a graphic timeline, which is well suited to create connections to places that are accessible from the Johnstraße station via the subway line 3.
The space should receive some articulation that should make it possible to perceive the cubic structure of the space, and to break up the monotony of the space without camouflaging the hall. Structured calmness should be generated and the station Johnstraße should gain significantly in recognizability.«
Excerpts from the project description:
»The idea for this project was born because on the way to my studio in the 16th Viennese district I pass through the station daily and experience the troublesome space; and because the format of some series of my work is almost 100 % identical to the format of the panels that cover the wall in the station; and because the frieze is effective as a design element in many of my works.
The interrupted frieze emphasizes the orientation of the space while at the same time sectioning it. The position of the design, placed vertically in the middle of the wall creates three segments (socle, frieze, and ceiling), which also makes the height of the space perceptible. The frieze does not conflict with the dimension of the hall but by the introduction of the segmentation, a connection is opened up to the human scale.
The parts which are omitted provide the viewer with the possibility to complete the work, to create an individual image.
TRANSFER
A Design for the Subway Line 3 at Johnstrasse, Vienna/Austria