undsonstso #98

For over ten years, the industry association WGD – Wir Gestalten Dresden – has been asking every first Thursday of the month: “What’s good in Dresden and why is it worth staying? At changing locations two participants give answers and show what creative and innovative things are being created in this city. Whether product designer or make-up artist, choreographer or publisher, art founder or club owner collective – in two short lectures we will learn what drives these creators and what visions they have for the city.

Moritz Simon Geist is a musician and robotics researcher and works as one of the only ones worldwide in the genre “Robotic Electronic Music”. Robots and techno – a combination that was “so obvious that it is unclear why no one had ever tried it” (Geist).
Equipped with a musical education and a degree in engineering, the leitmotif of Geist’s work is the vulnerability and inevitable imperfection inherent in engineered systems. His works do this in a playful way: through electronic music. Geist’s work includes performances, compositions and robotic instruments such as the net viral installation MR-808 Drum Robot, Glitch Robot and most recently the futuristic music sculpture Tripods One.

With his works Geist has performed at a number of international music and art festivals, such as the Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, South By South West and on concert tours in Japan, Israel and Russia. Since summer 2017 Geist holds a guest professorship at NYU Berlin, Future Pop Studies. sonicrobots.com

Dominic Kießling is a visual artist who works with a wide range of visual expressions. He studied product design at the HTW Dresden and was then for ten years part of the design studio Pfadfinderei in Berlin, where he designed stage shows for musicians such as Moderat and Modeselektor. After many years of creative work with various elements such as light, video, space, architecture, music and sound, Dominic Kießling now works in free, experimental projects that examine these elements in more detail. In a playful handling of analog and virtual materials and tools he tries to put our perception of space and time to the test. www.dominickiessling.net