DRESDEN.- Since 2024, the Kustodie of TUD Dresden University of Technology has partnered with S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology and Arts), a European Commission initiative aimed at combining technology and artistic practice in the best possible way. The Kustodie oversees three of a total of ten residencies from the S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o program. For thirteen months (as of December 2024), internationally successful artists Johanna Bruckner, Carolyn Kirschner and Theda Nilsson-Eicke are welcomed as guests in Dresden. In their S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Residencies they conduct artistic research on Exploring Human-AI Relationships (Johanna Bruckner), Physics of Life (Carolyn Kirschner) and Modelling the Mind (Theda Nilsson-Eicke).

During these residencies, the artists receive intense support from experts and are given the opportunity to draw on the resources of TUD. Selected works by the three artists will be on display at the exhibition S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Showing in the TUD´s University Gallery during the summer term of 2025.

Johanna Bruckner
Internationally renowned artist Johanna Bruckner (born in Austria in 1984) uses her residency to continue her work on Exploring Human-AI Relationships. Her cross-genre work combines film, sculpture, and installation with performance and sound, focusing in particular on the interface between man, organism, and machine. Her oeuvre carries a critical examination of corporeality and technology, as she examines datafication for accessibility, exploitation structures and algorithms in the context of bio politics, queer theory and post-humanism. For her project at TUD, Bruckner deals with interfaces, i.e. points of intersection and fracture, as well as with bodies and technology. The focus is on invasive and non-invasive methodologies in medicine and AI research.

Carolyn Kirschner
London-based designer Carolyn Kirschner (born in Germany in 1993) conducts artistic research on Physics of Life. In her work, she explores the growing interconnections between humans, ecology and machines, using design as an investigative method to visualize fragments of alternative or expanded worlds. With her Zebrafish: Interspecies Futures project, Carolyn Kirschner looks at one of the most common laboratory animal species, the zebrafish, and its socio-cultural significance. Complex interrelationships between the world of zebrafish and that of humans are analyzed at micro and macro levels, giving way to speculations about the animal’s potential futures.

Theda Nilsson-Eicke
Berlin-based theatre director, author and artist Theda Nilsson-Eicke (born in Sweden in 1981) was chosen for the residency for her topic Modelling the Mind. Her Thrown into This World project is dedicated to the elementary prerequisites of human perception and the internal and external factors that influence it. The focus is on examining the complex and ambivalent state of being “thrown into a new world” and what modifications or further developments are necessary in order to adapt (or not to adapt) to new circumstances. So what behaviors do we exhibit when our life situation changes, and why do we do so? What parameters influence our decisions and actions in these new situations? The Thrown into This World project wants to create a synthetic world and show how analogue and digital phenomena, but also social and cognitive factors, influence the construction of perception.