Johannes P Osterhoff

Uncanny Valley

Seminar at Merz Akademie about the Uncanny Valley of User Interface Design. Projects between abstraction and realism, symbols and images.

June 2011

Another App Store

In my recent seminar at BTK, students made arty apps—ones that most likely would not be approved by Apple. We therefor opened Another App Store.

April 2011

Google, One Year Piece

Since January 1, I publish all my Google search queries in a one-year online performance called Google. Feel free to recommend and buy queries.

January 2011

Firewall Ball Masters

At Merz Aka we played the Swabian Masters of Firewall Ball. Several bruises and broken bones later, we came up with a new set of rules for the aspiring sport.

December 2010

Home, Sweet Home

Home is where one's heart is—with a solid door, curtains and shuttered windows. My new construction of the Home icon from OS X awaits its inhabitants.

Art

November 2010

Don’t drink Google Juice!

Destilling Google Juice was not for the good of humanity. It turned out to be addictive. Don't drink Google Juice! I founded an abstinence movement instead.

Art

google

October 2010

Aqua IV: Window Control

The return of the Aqua series after a long time: a portrait of Steve Jobs emerging from all possible window control bubbles the OS X interface has to offer.

Art

October 2010

Firewall Ball

Play Firewall Ball until no brick of the famous icon rests on one another! The highly official sport for the 21st century premiered at Ars Electronica this summer.

Art

September 2010

Tell 2.0

The long-awaited update of Schiller's famous piece. Freedom is timeless and so is playful insurrection. Grab your iPhone and play along at Ars Electronica.

Art

August 2010

ikeaBookstore

Spontaneous opening of an Apple-like bookstore at a local Ikea mall (Tempelhof). We used the books from there, the iPad we made from cardboard.

Art

July 2010

Google Juice

Recently I was able to distill the mysterious Google Juice, the etheral substance that floats between web pages. ~~Get your bottle!~~ Beware, it is addictive!

Art

google

June 2010

Freedom from Porn

Steve Jobs offered iPad users “freedom from porn.” And yet the iPads' measures offer an unprecedented porn experience. Ad-busting from Berlin Mitte.

Art

May 2010

7 Windows

Seeing now through dim Windows obscurely, but then face to face; now I know partially, but then I shall know as I also have been known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Art

windows

March 2010

Fakebook

Facebook gives people the power to share lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr. I wanted to give up Facebook for the project...

Text

February 2010

Defence Project

A documentation of the numerous promises of absolute security encountered on user interfaces. I started to categorize the associated defensive imagery.

Text

November 2009

Drop Shadow Talks

In the shades of evening lectures the Drop Shadow Talks present projects influenced and inspired by the inerplay of art and user interface.

October 2009

Desktop Island

Got struck on a deserted island. So I thought. By now I discovered a lost civilization based on—Windows. I cannot leave yet, so please read my notes!

Text

October 2009

Black Square 2.0

Outrage in the art world—rounded corners and a crude gloss effect applied to the icon of Suprematism. Kazimir Malevich would turn in his grave.

Art

black square

September 2009

Windows 68

Windows 68 is a modification of Windows XP that starts a revolutionary in the system. Press Revolution! instead of Start, use Graffiti instead of Paint!

Lectures

May 2009

Drop Shadow Blog

Here I blog about the oddities I encounter when I take a walk in the digital drop shadow. Difficult subject. So far I am not even sure about its light source.

Text

May 2009

Traveling Desktop Country

At MoAA Berlin I was starting to think of Windows as a very white-bread system whose suit wearing citizens picnic on far reaching meadows.

Lectures

April 2009

Interface Art & Discourse

My great first students at Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule had to render their most striking experiences with interfaces into concrete projects.

Lectures

January 2009

Defence

Defence is a selection of aluminium shields extracted from the interface of Windows Vista. They can be used in sword fight or similar combat.

Art

November 2008

The Final Frontier

Interface… the final frontier. A seminar at Merz Akademie on the space depictions on desktops. Interface Night lives long and prosper on YouTube.

Lectures

May 2008

Black Square Flickr

I uploaded a digital version of Kazimir Malevich's famous Black Square to Flickr. Because of a bug in the uploader, it turned out entirely black.

Art

February 2008

Aero Contest

For the second Interface Art competition I decided that my partner should be nobody less than Microsoft. So far my inquiries have fallen on deaf ears.

Curating

September 2007

Aqua Contest

The world's first graphical user interface art contest ever! Readers of Maclife magazine were asked to produce Interface Art out of OS X GUI elements.

Curating

September 2007

Aero: System Holidays

The population of Windows Vista has gone to holiday in protected mode. The wanted to shut down gracefully. But on the way home they crashed anyway.

Art

August 2007

Aero: User Romance

Diptych on the romantic feelings operating systems can develop when in close touch. The desktop icons have a picnic then they go swimming—on wallpapers.

Art

August 2007

Aero: Home Security

The first print made of Vista wallpapers and icons (in various sizes). Lucky me! There are 256 by 256 pixel big images in the many concealed DLL files!

Art

August 2007

Prints on Canvas: Vista Ed.

Why the standard icons for my digital images on Windows could be sold at bargain bins and why a collector from New York pays a small fortune for my version?

Art

July 2007

Prints on Canvas: Mac Ed.

I printed the iPhoto and iMovie icon from OS X on canvas, packed them in foley and tried to sell them without being recognized as Apple for 5 € each.

Art

July 2007

Super Dock Clouds

Made of the animation when a program is deleted from the dock of OS X. A very glossy and big print on plastic. Quoting Cory's work with all due respect.

Art

July 2007

Aqua III: Depth

The very last boiling up of Aqua took place at Galerie 35 in Berlin. The long running series of prints evaporated into Aero and is since then gone forever.

Art

July 2007

Windows Real

With the YouTube blockbuster Windows Real users can experience an absolutely real interface. It was the result of a seminar I gave at Merz Akademie.

Lectures

June 2007

– | /

A project by Jay P. Lee and me on Sergej Eisenstein's principles of montage. 50 years after his death we use those principles to let life and RSS collide.

Text

eisenstein

December 2006

Aqua II: Float

Even more water and drops. Almost floating out of the print. As all Aqua II, this diptych was shown at great ABC Gallery at Art Strelka in Moscow, too.

Art

October 2006

Aqua II: Net & Drops

Imagery inspired by the Nature screensaver. Even though water in combination with electrified technology is dangerous, it is all over the operating system.

Art

October 2006

Aqua II: True Color

Seeing true colors and yet color blind? Test your eye-sight with another print on perspex from the Aqua series. Also made of OS X interface elements only.

Art

September 2006

Hausbau

A PDF magazine inspired by my stay in Moscow that generates an unique copy for each reader. The engine is driven by a set of true type fonts and F-PDF.

Text

November 2005

Aqua II: Star Bars

If I could take the scrollbars out of OS X, I think they would be blue light sabers. The force is with this big perspex print—if dark or light side is uncertain.

Art

July 2005

Aqua I

A series of prints on perspex with about a flooding kitchen. The prints consisted of interface elements like scrollbars from OS X and were shown at EMAF.

Art

July 2005

Earthly Bliss

I found a dusty oil painting similar to the famous Windows XP wallpaper on my parents' attic. The history of computer graphics has to be rewritten.

Art

windows

September 2004

The Submit Button

A 50 by 100 cm large-scale real-life model of a submit button from the web's early age, my first interface artwork ever and almost replaced by Like and +1 buttons.

Art

November 2003

Johannes P Osterhoff Interface Artist

Johannes P Osterhoff
Interface Artist