Michael Reisch

Michael Reisch  (*1964) studied at Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, currently teaching as a professor for Photography and Digital Media at Alanus-Hochschule, Bonn-Alfter, Germany. He has won several prizes and grants, amongst others Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Stiftung Kunst und Kultur des Landes NRW. His work has been exhibited widely at, amongst others, Hypo-Kunsthalle Munich, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Residenzgalerie Salzburg, Fotomuseum Munich, Scheublein + Bak, Zuerich, Bischoff/Weiss, London, Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chongqing, Museum of Contemporary Art Shenzhen, Photo Bejing, Shanghai International Photofestival, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Fotomuseum Winterthur. His works are part of collections worldwide at amongst others Kunstmuseum Bonn, LACMA Los Angeles, Fotomuseum Winterthur, National Galleries, Edinburgh.
Michael Reisch is initiator of international artist group
darktaxa-project. He lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.

 

 

Link: www.michaelreisch.com

 

 

Michael Reisch: „MURRAY; DONDIE; REBECCA - trust in those who supposedly know”, Video-Installation, 14 AI-generated video-loops on recycled tablets, aluminum rack, chargers, cables, 200 x 10cm x 10cm each, 2023

 

Michael Reisch: „MURRAY; DONDIE; REBECCA - trust in those who supposedly know”, Video-Installation, 14 AI-generated video-loops on recycled tablets, aluminum rack, chargers, cables, 200 x 10cm x 10cm each, 2023, Detail

 

 

Michael Reisch: „MURRAY; DONDIE; REBECCA - trust in those who supposedly know”, Video-Installation, 14 AI-generated video-loops on recycled tablets, aluminum rack, chargers, cables, 200 x 10cm x 10cm each, 2023, Detail

 

Michael Reisch: „MURRAY; DONDIE; REBECCA - trust in those who supposedly know”, Video-Installation, 14 AI-generated video-loops on recycled tablets, aluminum rack, chargers, cables, 200 x 10cm x 10cm each, 2023, Detail

 

 

„MURRAY; DONDIE; REBECCA - trust in those who supposedly know”, working process, 11-2023

Michael Reisch's works in the work group „Murray, Dondie, Rebecca - trust in those who supposedly know” are created in multi-layered work processes through generative use of image editing software, 3D software, 3D printing, digital photography and current AI tools such as diffusion models and digital tools for image synthesis (text-to-image, text-to-video, image-to-image, image-to-video, video-to-video tools). Reisch starts from the results of his own previous work processes, the outputs generated there are fed into new AI tools and subjectively influenced with the help of text prompting and other regulation possibilities, the outputs obtained in this way are in turn fed into further, other AI tools, and so on. In this controlled-automatic way, large quantities of digital image and video files are created, which Reisch curates, compiles, edits and combines with the help of video editing programmes. At the end point of the process are video loops that are realised as digital-physical installations (phygitals). This also includes "quasi-photographic", AI-generated images that are printed and mounted as inkjet prints in various sizes, as well as sculptural objects. The starting point of the entire work process is non-representational-abstract, the forms generated first (which are in themselves part of numerous transformation processes) inscribe themselves as a kind of formal stamp in the now realistic, quasi-photographic images and thus also in the various "prompted" fields of meaning (for example, in each start frame of the video loops, the digital source form can be recognised as an embossed stamp). Through text prompting, Reisch creates or addresses different, subjectively chosen clusters of meaning, e.g. nature/anthropocene, media worlds/fiction, art, consumption/advertising. To create the meaning cluster politics/ideology, prompts such as "war-memorial ...", "socialist realism, monument, ..." etc. are used in different variations. In the final video installation, all clusters of meaning appear without hierarchy and simultaneously next to each other. For the creation of the image titles, parts of scientific texts available on the internet on the post-truth topic environment are fed into a generative text AI (GPT-2: a rudimentary, imperfect predecessor of the current GPT4 version, here Reisch is interested, among other things, in the content errors and endless loops produced by the outdated GPT version). Reisch gets the AI to generate glitched scripts for screenplays and short fictional text passages on the basis of the scientific texts fed in, from which he in turn subjectively selects, cuts together and combines. (Text: Michael Reisch, 11-2023)

 

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 17/021, 75x60cm UV-Direct-Print on Dilite 2018

 

In a camera-less process, Michael Reisch first generates black and white lines and curves from within a chosen computer software programme. Optical illusions occur so that images become recognisable as things – with a layered, stratified or folded character, for example. These generated „entities“ (which in the true sense are illusions) are then “materialized“ - i.e. recreated using computer-aided design (CAD) programs and 3D-printed as „real objects“. Finally they are photographed in the photo studio. Reisch takes photographs of „motifs“ that in some way do exist - since they are 3D-printed and exist in material form - and that in turn “do not exist“ - since they are based on optical illusion and have no starting point in the „real world“. In doing so, he reverses the conventional direction of „photography“, which normally passes from existing facts to information and data (photos). In Reisch‘s works, immaterial data and algorithms are generated to factual and thus „photographable“ objects and again „transformed“ into data (photos) and images, whereby amongst others questions about the relationship reality-virtuality, presence-absence are posed.

Text: Michael Reisch

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 17/020, 95x73,5x5cm UV-Direct-Print on Dilite, 2018

 

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 17/019, 85x67,5cm Archival Pigment Print Schoeller True Baryta, Frame, 2018

 

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 15/004, 120x90 cm, Archivable Ink-Jet-Print, Frame, Museum-Glass, 2014

 

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 17/001, 50x40cm Digital C-Print Kodak Endura Glossy, Mounted, Frame, 2016

 

 

 

Michael Reisch: Ohne Titel (Untitled), 15/008 120x90 cm 47,24x35,34 inches Archival Pigment Print, Frame, Museum-Glass, 2014