No Signal

NO SIGNAL, a video by Swiss artists Manuel Nicolas Schmalstieg, Boris Kish and Chloe Cramer as part of Video Wednesday at Gallery Espace. [dated February 2009]

Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council and Gallery Espace present NO SIGNAL a video by Swiss artists Manuel Nicolas Schmalstieg, Boris Kish and Chloe Cramer as part of Video Wednesday on 25 February at Gallery Espace16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi from 3:00pm - 7:00pm

NO SIGNAL is a series of short videos created for the electronic billboard of the main railway station in Geneva. The basic material was gathered from the surveillance cameras installed at various locations inside the station. This footage is mixed with short excerpts from fictional hollywood movies touching the subject of control through technology. The videos were screened inbetween the usual advertisements for more than a month, during July and August 2006, in the frame of the festival 50 JPG (50 jours pour la photographie).

Manuel Schmalstieg Born in 1976, Manuel Schmalstieg operates on the borderline between video, performance and software art. After experimentation in the fields of graphic novel, animation film and audio production that he carried out during his studies in Geneva (ESBA/atelier zero1) and Krakow (Academy of fine arts/animated film department), he turns at the end of the nineties towards realtime video. Through his performances and installations, he explores issues of surveillance, control and censorship, confronting the viewer with uncomfortable truths and concealed motivations. Since 2001, he operates as an undercover agent for the N3KROZOFT Ltd media group, an art collective mimicking the style and rhetorics of IT corporations and military think tanks.

Recent works: Aether9 (networked video performance, 2007-2009), BLACKBOX:GVA (video performance, Switzerland, 2006), BABEL PROJECT (new media workshop, in the frame of the 2nd Bucharest Biennale, Romania, 2006). NO SIGNAL (video surveillance piece for public screen, Geneva central station, 2006). LOL – laughing out loud (media performance, developed for the swiss digital arts foundation «sitemapping.ch». Presented in Paris (Galerie Les Voûtes), Belgrade (Galerie SKC), Basel (Plug.In), St-Gallen (Neue Kunst Halle). ).

N3krozoft Ltd N3krozoft is a collective of artists working in the field of electronic media and performance, in collaboration with researchers in cognitive sciences and artificial intelligences. The Geneva-based administrative headquarter links the autonomous cells which have been established in several emerging regions.
The website www.n3krozoft.com offers an overview of N3krozoft's activity in the domains of stage performance, artistic software, mixed media environments, film, video and audio production.