17 Jul 2025
Crespo Haus
Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Photos by Eda Temucin
Offenbach based artists Carolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler create sculptures and installations that explore the aesthetic, social and ecological effects of technological developments, using elements of robotics and scientific processes. In their works, material qualities of a visual and haptic nature are just as important as programmed processes, physical laws and chemical reactions.
Carolin and Nikolas spoke to us about their generative artwork RE:PLACES, that centres around a robotic construction that extrudes different colored sculptures made from PLA, like three-dimensional brush strokes. While giving us insight into their progress, they even brought us a robotic prototype to drive around the room, cool!
From Linz, Austria, we had Amir Bastan, who explores human consciousness, artificial intelligence, and robotics within media arts and interactivity frameworks. Currently a doctoral researcher at Creative Robotics and lecturer at Kunstuni Linz, Amir’s research focuses on “The Human Robot Transference,” which examines connections between psychoanalysis theories and human-robot interaction.
Amir gave us a mini-lecture about the distinction between “reality”: what is symbolically ordered and, the “Real”: what resists symbolisation. At the centre is “lack”: not simply what is missing, but what must be missing for the subject to exist. The following day, he held a 4-hour workshop deepening our understanding of robots in art.
Contributors
Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler
Offenbach, Germany
www.radiate.fishCarolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler create enigmatic plastic sculptures in collaboration with quirky robots. Through these and other sculptural and installation-based works, the artist duo explores the interweaving of natural and artificial, human and non-human, material and ideology. Their practice unfolds through an aesthetic investigation in dialog with scientific research.
Since 2020, they have been pursuing ongoing artistic research into biodegradable plastics in cooperation with researchers at the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub, University of Manchester, UK. In 2019, the duo founded the interdisciplinary art space Atelier Wäscherei in Offenbach am Main and have served as its artistic directors ever since.
Their works have been exhibited internationally and are represented in prominent collections, including ZKM in Karlsruhe, WRO Art Center in Wroclaw, Poland and Ennova Art Museum in Langfang, China. In 2022, their monograph hello world was published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin.
Carolin Liebl
Offenbach, Germany
www.radiate.fishCarolin Liebl and Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler create enigmatic plastic sculptures in collaboration with quirky robots. Through these and other sculptural and installation-based works, the artist duo explores the interweaving of natural and artificial, human and non-human, material and ideology. Their practice unfolds through an aesthetic investigation in dialog with scientific research.
Since 2020, they have been pursuing ongoing artistic research into biodegradable plastics in cooperation with researchers at the Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub, University of Manchester, UK. In 2019, the duo founded the interdisciplinary art space Atelier Wäscherei in Offenbach am Main and have served as its artistic directors ever since.
Their works have been exhibited internationally and are represented in prominent collections, including ZKM in Karlsruhe, WRO Art Center in Wroclaw, Poland and Ennova Art Museum in Langfang, China. In 2022, their monograph hello world was published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin.
Amir Bastan
Linz, Austria
baxtan.xyzAmir Bastan is an artist and researcher with a background in fine arts, philosophy, and interaction design. His work explores human consciousness, artificial intelligence, and robotics within media arts and interactivity frameworks.
Currently a doctoral researcher at Creative Robotics and lecturer at Kunstuni Linz, Amir’s research focuses on “The Human Robot Transference,” which examines connections between psychoanalysis theories and human-robot interaction.
Through his academic and artistic practice, Amir has developed expertise in real-time robotic control and simulation as part of The Bunraku Project, a software which enables real-time control, visualization, and simulation of industrial robots.
Currently a doctoral researcher at Creative Robotics and lecturer at Kunstuni Linz, Amir’s research focuses on “The Human Robot Transference,” which examines connections between psychoanalysis theories and human-robot interaction.
Through his academic and artistic practice, Amir has developed expertise in real-time robotic control and simulation as part of The Bunraku Project, a software which enables real-time control, visualization, and simulation of industrial robots.
His interests are analysing human-robot interactions and understanding how contextual properties affect human behaviour. Amir’s research focuses on creating a dynamic framework that can observe and categorize actions within an interactivity framework, interpreting the factors driving behavioural changes in advanced interactive systems.
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3 contributors
52 community members
meetup #20
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Funding
The project is funded in the program “Promotion of Cultural and Creative Industries Institutions” by the Hessian Ministry of Economy, Energy, Transport and Housing.
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