Works Olsen
Digital land of milk and honey (cybernetic ball pool version)
2024 | 50,000 modified plastic cubes, black box | 350 x 350 x 30 cm
The work “Digitales Schlaraffenland” is a cybernetic ball pool with unlimited possibilities. Analogous to the land of milk and honey, there are almost no limits here. The work consists of 50,000 cubes with zeros and ones, so-called bits, the basic unit of the digital. The 50,000 bits enable two to the power of 50,000 combinations, a number that is so large that it is almost impossible to visualize.
However, this impossibility can be directly experienced here as “virtual reality” in the truest sense of the word. The work shows the logic and variety of options of digital technology to create images of everything and everyone with data. With a binary-numerical representation of the world, literally everything can be transformed into pure numerical shapes, into algebraic structures of zeros and ones – the grammar of the digital.
Link: https://www.olsen.studio/digitales-schlaraffenland-kybernetisches-baellebad/
Photo credits: Wolfgang Günzel ©Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, Ana Baumgart ©KFZ Radolfzell
World’s largest cuckoo clock (digital)
2021/24 | Sculpture with AR application | variable dimensions
The sculpture, which is over seven meters high, takes up the Black Forest’s clockmaking history and one of its icons: the cuckoo clock. The clock is depicted as a pixelated abstraction with an empty clock face and can only be fully experienced through an augmented reality app.
As usual, the time and cuckoo can be seen on the half and full hour. In this case, however, the digital ‘cuckoo’ consists of hundreds of video recordings of cuckoo clocks made by people from over 30 countries around the world. The sculpture thus opens a digital door to the global phenomenon of the cuckoo clock by bringing together worldwide versions of the Black Forest export product in one place.
The work is also based on the parasitic habits of the natural cuckoo, which lays its eggs in the nests of other birds – here, however, the eggs of others are laid in a digital nest.
Link: https://www.olsen.studio/weltgroesste-kuckucksuhr-digital/
Photo credits: Irene Pérez Hernández
Apollo 11 (Edition unread package insert)
2019 | plastic model, enamel paint, computer algorithm | var. dimensions
Apollo 11 (Edition unread leaflet) is a project in which the computer was used to once again venture into territory unknown to man. The mission was completed in 2019, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, where the computer was instrumental in helping the astronauts land on the moon.
Today, 50 years after the moon landing, the computer is used more than ever to generate new things and advance into new spheres. In this project, the components of the commercially available Apollo 11 model kit (Columbia & Eagle) were entered into a computer. Using a machine learning algorithm, the computer generated five different possibilities for assembling the model. These five models were all put together in a way that was far removed from the instructions, demonstrating an advance into new dimensions previously untouched by human hands.
Link: https://www.olsen.studio/apollo-11/
Photo credits: Olsen