INSTALLATION VIEWS
ONLINE EXPERIENCE
Sprung in die Zeit [Leap Into Time] is an intermedial experience at the intersection of art, music, and technology. At its core are 42 abstract photographs by Elias Wessel and corresponding sonic compositions by Natalia Kiës. Developed in close collaboration since 2014, the project approaches the image not as a fixed object to be viewed, but as a counterpart to be encountered.
Kiës developed a technical setup that allows the photographs to be “played”: through touch, each image becomes a score whose surfaces, densities, traces, and tensions call forth specific gestures and sounds. In exhibitions and in the online experience, technologies such as proximity sensing and face tracking make this language responsive to presence and attention. The pictures “speak” only when viewers stay with them, look carefully, and give them time.
The project now extends into a Post-Terrestrial chapter: works from Sprung in die Zeit will be carried into sub-orbital space as part of Post-Terrestrial, a project at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London, initiated by Tom Klinkowstein and co-organized with Dr Barbara Brownie in connection with Klinkowstein’s planned Virgin Galactic spaceflight in 2028. In this expanded context, Encounters continues the project’s central idea of images not as content to be consumed, but as active presences to be encountered.
To experience the project and for further information, visit:
sprungindiezeit.com
ESSAYS
Zhao, Billy (2025): »In Response.« [Forthcoming.]
Zami, Layla (2025): »Extended Experience: Shapes of Sonic and Visual Interventions.« [Forthcoming.]
Khazam, Rahma (2024): »Sprung in die Zeit: Close Encounters between Space and Time.« [Forthcoming.]
Kopplin, Bärbel (2021): »Fotografie als Versuchsanordnung und Denkprozess.« [English translation: »Photography as Experimental Arrangement and Thought Process.«]
Schoen, Christian (2017): »Sprung in die Zeit. Anmerkungen zum Wesen der Bilder.«
Gisbourne, Mark (2017): »Visions of Synthesis. The Photography of Elias Wessel.« In: Wessel, Elias; Gisbourne, Mark (2017): Elias Wessel. Photographische Arbeiten aus den Jahren 2014–2017. 1014 and Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany New York, eds. New York: Phoebe Verlag. [German translation: »Visionen einer Synthese. Zur Photographie von Elias Wessel.«]
Related
Sprung in die Zeit, 2014 © Elias Wessel / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn