WHO IS STATION ROSE/STR? Here are some frequently
asked questions, answered
by Jerome Lambique.
Q: I just wanted to know where Station Rose/STR
is based. Is there a central
office from which they work?
A: Gary Danner & Elisa Rose work @home, in Frankfurt/Germany. Studio, office,
living space is all in one.
Q: When was Station Rose founded, and by whom, and why?
A: Gary & Elisa have started Station Rose in Vienna in 1988, after they
had made their diplomas at the University of Applied Arts.
STR's purpose
is to give the 2 of them stage and a shared identity. At the time of the Station«s
founding in 1988 there was no other way to get heard and seen in Vienna. In
the meantime STR can be seen as the first public media project in Vienna, maybe
even in the world.
Q: What did the members of STR love as children and grow up with?
A: Gary was very much influenced by the surrounding sixties-pop-culture, manifesting
itself through comics, Beat Club (he vividly remembers The Who smashing a
guitar on TV), radio.and magazines.
Elisa has loved the light installation of a childrens «grotto in Linz
she grew up with, as well as the fairs of the 60-ies, again with light and
sound.
Q: And what do they play now?
A: They play with each other a lot. Playing is their profession & relationship.
That way they have created an enormous artistic output.
Gary is fascinated by constructed coincidences in his music, where semi-controlled
random parameters shape the compositions and sounds.
Besides building installations Elisa experiments/plays with mediarooms as living
rooms recently. She tests how audio-visual art, from DVD or harddrive or
the net, can be brought to the living room, how that can become part of the
living space, integrated @home you could say. She thinks it is important to
get that out from a desktop situation to where people gather - on the sofas,
but online. Comparable to the record player in the 60ies. And as performing
artists they play onstage and online since the beginning of their career.
Q: What is their relationship to technology?
A: Elisa is the one who has been focussed on digital technology since the 1980ies.
She used the C64 when she was at art university, had an Amiga 500 as her
first computer. She was digital on from the beginning. And she was
one of the first women and female artists who have created and built up digital
art and netart. Gary has originally been a more classically trained
person who knows to play an instrument. He led the legendary band The Vogue
in Vienna in the late seventies. In the mid-eighties he got bored with playing
with musicians, and bought a sampler. In 1989 he obtained an Atari 1040ST
with notator software. Ever since he has been composing electronica, reaching
back to his trustworthy Rickenbacker 330 semi-acoustic once in a while.
They are both pioneeers in using computers for playing together. And they are
online since 91.
Q: Where does their inspiration come from?
A: From pop culture, Frankfurter Schule, shopping, supermarkets, TV, toy commercials,
punk, contemporary electronica, mother nature, computer games, psychedelic
pop music 1965-68, the news, magazines, etc. Nevertheless the samples they
use for making their art ist always rendered, generated by themselves, a
unique Station Rose material. They have created their own language of sound
and visual art, and dont sample TV, other artists stuff,... They call that
<the STR-digital archive, 1988-now>.
Q: What is their intention?
A: Mainly to create light-rooms synched with sound. In form of
exhibitions, performances, products like DVDs, TV, and sure the net.
To be
a strong force in the net, where they live since 91 was their goal on from
the start. They created that slogan "Cyberspace is Our Land".