tmaTrans-Media-Akademie Hellerau e.V.
Founded in 2001, Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau e.V. (TMA Hellerau) is a Dresden based nonprofit association for interdisciplinary research on theoretical and practical level focused on how new technologies influence human body, behavior and creative expression. Main activities of the organization are based on two pillars, TMA laboratory (TMA lab) projects on the one side and CYNETART festival on the other.
The focal point of TMA lab Hellerau is media education, reflection on media and interactive media art practice. Its philosophy is to create and provide space for creative exchange and coproduction in the field of arts based on new technologies. It is dedicated to mediation of various ways to perceive and to apply new media. Projects within TMA lab Hellerau are for example European Tele-Plateaus, A.P.P.I.A. Lab or holiday-workshops for kids and young people. On the other hand, there is the CYNETART Festival, which is an international high-level festival for computer based arts and interdisciplinary media projects. Every year it unites outstanding media performances, cutting-edge interactive installations as well as current positions of electronic and experimental music. CYNETART festival is an experimental space where artists can experiment and play with future art, music and ideas. It aims to engage festival audience and artists in participatory experiments, in creating new kinds of artworks, new forms of participation, different understanding of art and technology and innovative ways of presenting media art. Arranging encounters between artists from all over the world, the festival becomes a vibrating, interdisciplinary space for groundbreaking projects.
TMA Hellerau is considered to be a platform for artists, researchers and passionated activists. The association is embedded in many international networks like for ex. European Cities of Advanced Sound/ International Cities of Advanced Sound (ECAS/ICAS) and participates in numerous international exchanges like for example in the TANDEM-program. In Germany, Trans-Media-Akademie Hellerau e.V. (TMA) is an unique institute for exploration, testing and application of walk-in, interactive, virtual environments and their effects on the perception of human body and the society. In this process interconnections are made between the artistic, scientific, psychological, technical, cybernetic and cultural aspects of the development in media technology. TMA Hellerau pursues the integral investigation, testing, and development of media technologies. This entails the following: - focus on perception and extension of consciousness on as fields of research - grouping and specification of different interdisciplinary approaches - consideration of the characteristics and of the inherent connection between the sciences, culture, art, technology, politics, economy, everyday life. - questioning of the distinctions between scientific disciplines and social spheres - use of the unifying force of digital information technology as a point of reference for methodological orientation. - compilation of the correspondences between technological development and the development of consciousness TMA Hellerau sees itself as a flexible network project for the registration, investigation, linkage, and testing of the possibilities of an extended perception of the self, of social reality, and of the world.
This includes the exploration of interfaces, transitions, and transformations between: - physiological, neurological, and psychological processes and their syn-aesthetic transformation (bio-feedback) - individual movements or movements affected by group dynamics and virtual environments (body space- cyberspace-transformation) - choreography, composition, film, image, light, dramaturgy, language, text, smell (trans-theatre) as well as techno-cybernetic and mental-bodily mediality - theoretical-conceptual work and practical-experimental work.
