The exhibition “Art in Motion” presents the development of media art through a selection of important apparatus-based masterpieces – from photography to sound art; media-based action and Fluxus arts; and the networked and collaborative artistic practices of the last decades.

“Art in Motion” focuses on the question of how technological media have changed our perception – from the first camera lens to the new possibilities of perception through digitization. Further themes are machine and camera vision (photography and film), telematics (television, satellite, Internet), computer-aided vision and the participation of public in art (interactivity and participation). The exhibition will offer the opportunity to gain insights into the coherent survey of the history of the development of media arts, juxtaposing recent manifestations of digital art with historical works such as experiments in cybernetics and early computer art, televisual works, and interactive computer-based installations.

Futures are not possible without reflecting on pasts. For the movements that lie ahead of us which will intrude into the present we need the frameworks of orientation that past present-days can offer. With regard to the especially dynamic field of the media arts “Art in Motion” offers an operative canon, which is radical in many respects, not least through the inter- and transmedial claim that omits strategic genre divisions such as video art, film art, media installation or net art and rather focuses on links and interrelations. The exhibition thus shows the connections between early avant-garde films, cinematographic art as the illusion of motion, and kinetic art, the art of real movement. Furthermore, the closed-circuit installations of early video art are closely linked to the theories of cybernetics, the science of control, regulation, and message transmission, which in turn pushed the development of computer-based and digital art. Artists who turned their attention to the early media of video and, later, to communication technologies such as the Internet, are often united by a media euphoric but also media-critical approach. These connecting lines of development are presented for the first time in “Art in Motion” in a coherent overview. In this way, the exhibition also takes a look at the current thematic areas of today's media-imbued society. An important focus is on the democratization of the media arts that began in the 1960s through the active inclusion and participation of the public in interactive artworks.