The Pattern which connects

The 5th X-Dream Festival concludes with the installation & sound performance entitled “The Pattern which connects”, which will take place on Thursday 12 December at 20:30 at the ARTos Foundation in collaboration with the Austrian Embassy. The title "The Pattern Which Connects" is taken out of Gregory Bateson's book "Mind And Nature: A Necessary Unity". This statement attends in a wonderful way with the mind and body matter - a stimulus which interrelates science and art directly in this project. This work builds a bridge between these two worlds, and wants to show that the patterns that connect exist. It is a contemplation about mutual inspiration of scientific and artistic work.

As a composite of tens of thousands of individual images, photomicrographs are both art and scientific method. It's about to move into new dimensions - to find new patterns - to change. If perception is changed, reality might alter too. Perhaps the time is over where everything had to be neatly separated and categorized and we can start working on new concepts, no matter how they may be named - art or science.
The Pattern which connects - as a photograph - was exhibited at the Künstlerhaus Wien in June and July of 2013. For the X-Dream Festival in Nicosia, Cyprus, it will move two steps forward. The project will be extended to the dimension of time and the images will interact with sound where Michael Bachhofer will collaborate with Tomash Ghzegovskyy. They hope that this experiment will lead into new experiences in understanding the patterns that connect.

How “The Pattern which connects” started:
The image, as well as the book, was planned and created/written at the Tokyo University of the Arts - Laboratory for Artistic Anatomy during Bachhofer’s guest year. It was supervised via telecommunication and internet conferences by Bernd Kräftner and Virgil Widrich, which was also an interesting experiment to eliminate the distance of about 10.000 kilometers by new technology.
For this project a device was developed that enabled very precise movement of the recording system (camera and microscope objective with long working distance). The three stages are able to move in fractions of a micrometer and are computer controlled. The resulting image has 1,5 giga pixels and could be printed 3x6 meters with 300 dpi, which offers rich detail, like pollen on the scales of the butterfly wing.

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Michael Bachhofer studied at six universities and holds master´s degrees in biology / ethno-medical ecology from the University of Vienna and in fine arts and media arts / art & science from die Angewandte. He has spent one year overseas at the Tokyo University of the Arts where he has studied aesthetics and art history / art anatomy, photography and Kendo.

Michael Bachhofer´s work is focused on altering and extending human perception by applying technological and psychological approaches. Many works consist of hundreds and thousands of smaller images that form a bigger picture and therefore support a (more) holistic view. He employs tools and methods like micro-photography, computational imaging in radiology, lenticular technology, trance and hypnosis, time-space transformation, network analysis and the generation of low frequency sound and subsonic waves. He is focused on theories and questions concerning perception - reality - truth and in art and science interrelations.

He is strongly influenced by the philosophy and epistemology of the radical constructivism by Heinz von Foerster and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Other major impacts on his work and his way of thinking were Gregory Bateson, Alexandro Jodorowski, Bernd Kräftner, Haruki Murakami, Armin Prinz, Toru Takahashi, Nikola Tesla, Alexey Titarenko, Peter Weish and Virgil Widrich.