Süddeutsche Zeitung Saturday / Sunday 18-19 . January 2014 , No.
14, page R6
Virtual Fortune Cookies 30 years ago, Tamiko
Thiel designed the first super computer in the United States.
Today, the Munchner teaches art and media students in Singapore
Munich: 160 centimeters. They are as tall as Tamiko Thiel, the
Connection Machines I and II , two super - computers that in the
early eighties were the fastest computers in the world . Tamiko
Thiel was then 26 years old and worked at a large technology
company when she was commissioned to design the product. The
request of her boss , the inventor Danny Hillis was clear: " It
should just look great . " For two years Thiel drew
three-dimensional pencil - sketches , while Danny Hillis tinkered
with 65 536 1 -bit processors and many cables to give the heavy
cube the highest possible artificial intelligence. "We had to pack
the wiring pretty tightly , so that the machine could remain so
small," Thiel says today. At the end , the giant black cube with
red LEDs had less power than today is in an ordinary laptop. , But
it was so attractive that it had a role in the film Jurassic Park.
And when at the presentation in 1986 many people stood amazed in
front of the machine Thiel realized what a fascination computer
technology could produce. Tamiko Thiel tells this sitting in black
sweatpants with a cup of tea at the kitchen table of her apartment
in Gärtnerplatz Quarter. Almost 30 years have passed since the
supercomputer came out, but Thiel's fascination with computers has
remained. In her kitchen rows of Asian teas stand beside Bavarian
clay plates to match Thiel's ancestry: her ancestors come from
Japan and Germany . Thiel was born and raised in the U.S. in
Seattle and now lives in Munich. She is an engineer - and one of
the few media artists in Munich. With her crazy ideas Tamiko Thiel
has already traveled all over the world Everyone's take on media
art is slightly different , it has a lot to do with digital media ,
ie mobile phone, computer, power and everything in between . For
the art historian Bernard Serexhe it is " the art of using new
media as a tool and primarily as a distribution option " . Thiel
has her own definition . For her, " media art everything that forms
invisible electrons into sensory experiences ". The interplay of
reality and computer - so , virtual and augmented reality in the
site specific locatins . "I want to find out how technical progress
forms our culture," she says . In one work, Thiel distributed
virtual fortune cookies in space, that you can look at with a
smartphone app. When you find one, you receive a message. In
another work, via a heart rate monitor Thiel measures heartbeats of
different people , connecting them and via the rhythms programming
plant life in the computer. With her ideas Thiel has traveled
around the world . She has exhibited , among other places, in Tokyo
, Hong Kong, Istanbul, London , Berlin and New York. She currently
teaches for half a year art and media students in Singapore. Her
husband, the Munich-based computer scientist Peter Graf is with
her. In Singapore he is taking a break . This is how the couple
connects travel and their Munich home: At home in Munich Peter Graf
earns their living as a computer programmer; traveling Tamiko Thiel
earns it as a media artist and lecturer .
Thiel started in technology : She studied Product Design &
Engineering at Stanford University and engineering at MIT,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology . She started working as an
engineer , but soon wanted to see more of the world . In addition,
the supercomputer awoke her passion for designing . Today, Thiel is
somewhere between the crazy artist and rational technician . Life
in the art world is a constant up and down - sometimes Thiel has a
successful exhibition and is sought after - the next moment " you
have to start from scratch and climb back up again," she says.
These fluctuations one must withstand . Thiel does not earn as much
as she would as an engineer , but the artist's life is so exciting
for her. "I want to get to know cultures, and my job gives me this
possibility," she says. Today , technological progress has gone so
far that Thiel must not transport 1.60 meter tall giant
supercomputers around the world in an aircraft . Thiel's artworks
can often be seen on a mobile smartphone. For example, her current
work , called "Transformation" , which can be seen in Munich's
Lehel neighborhood and is concerned with how we want to live in
cities in the future. In the Church of St. Luke and in surrounding
streets you can use an app to his streets and cars behind sunflower
and learn about the history of the area by exploring locations of
former waterwheels . Ancient art in a new art form. Caroline von
Eichhorn Thiel's work "Transformation" is at the media arts
exhibition " Unpainted " in Munich Postpalast ( until 20 January).
