“the illiterate man of the 21th
century will be the one who cannot comunicate with pictures“
( peter nagy, bauhaus 1919 )
aka gerhard kohlmaier, born in graz, austria 1964, visual
art since 1986 / vj sets since 1986, computerlive acts since
1989, 1st vj working with pitchable animloops, beside art
geko worked under the name „digital canvas“from
1988 till 1994 in postproduction for commercials and musicclips
like vw, henkel, suchard or falco & gianna nanini. geko
did a multilingual-mediainstallation for the expo 92 in sevilla
for austrian industries. in the field of art geko was in this
time also creator and producer of „xtrax“ a monthly
visual programm for clubs which ran well from 1994 till 1997.
36 releases each one hour.
in this period geko produced about 3000 minutes of additional
visual material. 1996 – 2002 he founded the fast forward
group as c.e.o. and creative director and made intense development
of „mediaskin“ tecnique 1996 launched visual label
„general cosmics“ 2001. optical matrix dvd vol.
1 relesed 2003, optical matrix show format 2004, together
with vj buzzt geko did 2 festival dvd´s one 4 visionquest
japan and one 4 boom festival portugal.
visual cooperative with the band „skazi“ for dvd
and livevisual set. gigs in japan, brasil, mexico, russia,
germany. directeur nightprogram of artchannel sateltetv channel
in cooperation with gallery artcore in paris. the program
is emmited on eutelsat hotbird and reaches potenially 120
million households. el geko & his team will launch „vj
tools pro“ dvd series in the end of 2005. geko also
is going to realize major visual concepts for optical matrix
tour in russia, fullmoon festival germany, celebra brasil
2006.
gekos history with art began in school, when he made objects
and paintings- in this time he loved vasarely, kandinsky and
later his favorit-artists were andy warhol, joseph beus &
most of all salvator dali. 1988 el geko began 2 take part
on exhibitions and art-festivals. in styria 1988, 7days under
ground1988, several times at ars electronica 1986, 1991, 1992
and also klangwolke 1999 were he made the liveregie for the
visuals 4 more than 100.000 people. early in 1990 he made
his 1st online-vernisage in the kulturhaus linz (austria),
this creation from el geko is an exhibition were all the works
were generated in presence of the audiance live by el geko.
within one hour he creates up to 25 spontaneous artwork including
3d, paint and parts of pictures of the audiance, he shoots
with a caméra at begin of the live-art-performance,
while visitors enter the gallery.
the names online art or online vernisage were defined by geko
in the end of the 80th, meaning geko in front of computers
generating a visual program live with computer or just painting
digital art in front of audience. onlineart means a liveperformance
with computer, videoplayer and videomixer. thats why el geko
is called sometimes „godfather of vj-ing“ (arte
2002).
from 1994 till 1997 he did his x-trax programm a milestone
in visual history for about only 25 clubs. one hour of grafics
animation which fits to every beat produced each month. with
the time his visual archive became a powerfull source. while
making x-trax el geko did a lot of scientific studies with
fast videoinformation and the interpolation of the human brain
to fit things. the human brain is very active in intepolations
while the x-trax is consumed.
„selfreflexive“ programs geko gave birth in 1992.
it means completely abstract program with shapes & mirrors.
so anything concrete you see while watching these fast morphings
of shapekeys any feeling you have is a feedback from your
own thoughts.
gekos visual performances have allready been in austria, germany,
italy, portugal, greece, southafrica, portugal, russia, brasil,
japan, mexico. doing visuals at big musicfestivals or events
is routine now. el geko made sucessfull shows for hundreds
of times including the big vortex millenium-party in southafrica
2000 or the biggest outdoor 2003 in japan the visionquest
gathering near nagano.
after all the years el geko easily can perform up to a dozen
top-vj-sets with completely different style raging from deepchill-artwork
via live-generated set using only cameraliveinputs to generate
the visuals so fit to all styles & colorsituation on stage
automatically.
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