DRESDEN.- Since 2017, the Office for Academic Heritage, Scientific and Art Collections (Kustodie) at TUD Dresden University of Technology has been developing and presenting exhibition projects and collaborative formats at the interfaces between art, science and the university’s teaching and research collections. In artistic residency programmes such as the Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden, which was initiated in 2020, artists work at TUD in close exchange with scientists from all disciplines.

The Kustodie has been partnering with S+T+ARTS (Science, Technology & Arts) — an initiative of the European Commission that seeks to optimally combine technology and artistic practice — since 2024. In addition to TUD, the consortium also includes the following partners: Ars Electronica (AT), INOVA+ (PT), La French Tech Grande Provence (FR), Media Solution Center Baden-Württemberg e. V. (DE), Salzburg Festival (AT), Sónar (ES), and T6 Ecosystems (IT). In the context of the S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o programme, we supervise three of a total of ten residencies at TUD.

The three internationally successful artists Johanna Bruckner, Carolyn Kirschner and Theda Nilsson-Eicke have been guests at TUD since December 2024. In their S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Residencies, they conduct artistic research on Exploring Human-AI Relationships (Johanna Bruckner), Exploring the Physics of Life (Carolyn Kirschner) and Modelling the Mind (Theda Nilsson-Eicke). During the residencies, the artists receive intense support from experts and can draw on the university’s resources. Johanna Bruckner, Carolyn Kirschner and Theda Nilsson-Eicke are led by the interfaces of Science, Technology & Arts (S+T+ARTS, for short) as they explore a wide range of topical research topics and artistically investigate the relationships between humans and machines, the socio-cultural significance of the zebrafish and human perception in the context of immersive and digitised worlds.

In the 2025 summer term, ‘S+T+ARTS Ec(h)o Showing’ will present works by the three artists to introduce them and their artistic oeuvre to the university and a wider public.

Johanna Bruckner will be showing two comprehensive works that demonstrate her interest in interfaces, i.e. the points of connection and contact between human bodies, technologies, and machines. In her sculptural, filmic and performative works, she explores processes of both alienation and rapprochement, critically questioning the extent to which socially standardised body images are idealised in the age of artificial intelligence as well as the transformation processes that bodies are subjected to in the context of robotics.

Carolyn Kirschner’s research-based projects, on the other hand, often focus on the role of technologies in addressing planetary ecologies. In her conceptual works, she explicitly combines media content with analogue work forms, for example to capture the echo of increasing digitisation in the material world. The exhibited works are analytical yet approachable installations that demonstrate Kirschner’s multi-faceted exploration of the role of conceptual, biological and computational models in scientific research.

For Theda Nilsson-Eicke, who, as an author and director, hails from the world of theatre, the defining question is how to depict the simultaneity of reality, illusion and virtuality. For the group exhibition, the artist has transformed theatre installations from the past eight years into new forms of display to make the idea and context of her performative non-stop productions tangible, independently of performance and plot. The leitmotif is dealing with ‘digital evil’ and the appeal of digital cultures against the background of philosophical considerations on the evaluation of possibly outdated moral norms and values in the age of digitisation, and the strengthening of anti- democratic forces.