Community
Artist Profile
Tina Lorenz & Christian Schlaeffer
Tina Lorenz:
Tina Lorenz came of age in the Chaos Computer Club but went on to study theater studies and American literary history in Vienna and Munich. They were a lecturer for theater history at the Academy for Performing Arts Bavaria, later dramaturge at the Landestheater Oberpfalz and finally consultant for digital communication at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, before founding and leading the Digital Theatre department at the State Theatre of Augsburg from 2020 to 2023. Tina Lorenz is a founding member of the hackspaces metalab Vienna and Binary Kitchen Regensburg; since January 2024, they head the department of artistic research and development »Hertzlab« at ZKM | Karlsruhe.
Christian Schlaeffer:
Christian Schlaeffer holds an MA Animation from the Royal College of Art, London and is a 3D designer, tech-artist and award-winning animation artist. His animated short films and documentary sequences have screened at festivals such as the BFI London FilmFestival, Encounters in Bristol and the Melbourne International Animation Festival. He has taught animation, communication design and cultural history at Technical University of Applied
Sciences Augsburg, DSK Supinfocom in Pune, India and the Royal College of Art, London. In 2021, he developed the VR theater platform »Elektrotheater« with the Staatstheater Augsburg as a 3D artist and designed VR sequences for various productions.
Artwork
Spectral Haven
NOTE: To book slots on Thu or Fri, you have to be a ticket holder or have a FFM festival badge.
The VR experience "Spectral Haven" is set in a future that could already be now: How do we deal with AI-driven service industry that is increasingly dominating our everyday lives? What is behind the human desire to create a synthetic consciousness and merge into it? And what will actually happen once we have achieved this? Ray Kurzweil's seminal book "The Singularity
Is Near" serves as an entry point into a world where the promises of conscious AI fell short.
“Spectral Haven” is the first feature-length narrative VR experience by ZKM’s artistic research and development department, the “Hertzlab”. Together with the artist Christian Schlaeffer, hundreds of photogrammetry scans, eerie robot simulation surroundings and a disgruntled futurist make up an engaging and immersive experience into a future where AI holds none of
the promises of today, but all of the regrets.
