Prototype Balance

[2022]

Stainless steel, biodegradable resin, hemp

Collaboration between Jenny Brockmann (visual arts), Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schareck (director of the University of Rostock), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wilko Flügge (director of the Fraunhofer IGP), Prof. Dr. Henkel (vice-director of the Fraunhofer IGP), engineers Dr. Michael Irmer, Philipp Andreazza and Stefan Schneider.

Titled Prototype BALANCE 2022, the first interdisciplinary collaboration between the artist Jenny Brockmann, the University of Rostock, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Large Structures in Production Engineering IGP took place in 2022. Initiated by Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schareck, rector of the University of Rostock, and further made possible by the director of the Fraunhofer IGP Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wilko Flügge and under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Knuth Henkel (Fraunhofer IGP), Jenny Brockmann and scientists of the Fraunhofer Institute created a multi-perspective art/science project that explores the nature, limits, and future visions of her art object Seat#12. After an intensive research phase of several months at Fraunhofer IGP, the newly adapted Seat#12 was handed over to the institute, where it was placed—in public space—in front of the building at Albert-Einstein-Str. 30, Rostock. Seat#12 is a kinetic sculpture with seating for twelve people. The sculpture thus formally relates to a round conference table arrangement and invites people to try out balance with each other. With its swinging function, Seat#12 creates an unusual situation: every movement, no matter how small, of one seated person has a direct effect on the seating position of all other eleven seated persons. Equipped with twelve aluminum arms, connected to each other in the middle, the futuristic-looking object serves direct and indirect communication. A spoken as well as a felt discourse inevitably develops between the sitters. In the past, Seat#12 sculptures have accompanied specially curated lectures or talks that bring together experts from various disciplines, such as art, music, physics, philosophy, or chemistry, to discuss selected topics and take a seat on Seat#12. In Rostock, Seat#12 was already shown in this form during the exhibition Experiment Zukunft at the Kunsthalle Rostock in 2019 and used for interdisciplinary events, the so-called ”seesaw conversations.“ As part of the then-joint project of the University of Rostock and the Kunsthalle Rostock on the occasion of the six-hundredth anniversary of the university, the focus was on exploring the interface between art and science and a collaborative exchange of ideas on the future and interdisciplinarity. With Prototype BALANCE, the cooperation between art and science was deepened over several months in the laboratories of the Fraunhofer IGP and a new version of the original object Seat#12 was created. For example, Brockmann examined the use of new materials for the seats and new ways of welding the arm joints. Using existing areas of expertise at Fraunhofer IGP (test engineering, new processes and materials, or production systems and logistics), Brockmann developed four unusual research units and entered into dialogue with scientists on the topics of #LIGHT, #ATMOSPHERE, #MATERIAL, and #TEMPERATURE. Along these research units, classical scientific and technical tests took place using microscopy, climate chambers, and experimentation with new composite materials. These combine with philosophical, sociopolitical, and artistic perspectives in the exploration and observation of the outcome. Insights into the emerging art/science dialogue are offered by individual research reports with photo documentation and sketches. The focus of Brockmann’s Prototype BALANCE is not only the work on the artwork Seat#12, but above all, the examination of knowledge production and research itself. If one follows the art historian Elke Bippus, artistic research is characterized precisely by this interest in the process of knowledge production as well as the creation of spaces for thinking. With Prototype BALANCE, Brockmann opens a dialogue between art and science—creating approaches, sounding contradictions, and offering artistic views of Fraunhofer IGP’s methods and procedures.

Text by Nora Mayr

In collaboration with: Fraunhofer IGP Rostock and University of Rostock