Lights will guide you home (Takeoff)
live event by Sebastian Schmieg as part of transmediale Vorspiel 2022
About the event
Lights will guide you home (Takeoff)
On Twitch and YouTube, gamers stream how they fly over a digital copy of our world using flight simulation software - some curious, others dutiful, and quite a few in the service of virtual airlines following official flight schedules. During their flights, they are often guided by other gamers who participate as air traffic controllers. Sebastian Schmieg regularly watches both pilots and air traffic controllers and collects and archives their virtual work. In the winter of 2020, Schmieg exhibited a collection of video clips showing gamers configuring their aircrafts in their virtual cockpits. Now, in his multi-channel video installation "Lights will guide you home (Takeoff)," they drive to the runway, accelerate and take off, soaring into the skies of this networked simulation.
A week later (29.01.2022 from 15:00 to 22:00), the same pilots will land in the new exhibition space "/rosa“ at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
About the Artist
Sebastian Schmieg examines the algorithmic circulation of images, texts and bodies. At the centre of his practice are playful interventions into found systems that explore the hidden – and often absurd – realities behind the glossy interfaces of our networked society. There the boundaries between human and software, individual and crowd, as well as labor and leisure are blurring. Schmieg works in a wide range of media such as video, website, installation, artist book, custom software and lecture performance....