While working on the soon to be published article
BauHaus 100 Opening Celebration, an event that took place this April in Weimar that included 2 massive TouchDesigner-driven installations by Daniel Dalfovo,
Stefan Kraus, Stephan von Tresckow and Gregor Sauer as well as the live visual work of Stanislav Glassov and David Leroy (also TouchDesigner-based) for raster media artists, I was reminded of Stefan Kraus' workshop intriguingly
titled Why the Bauhaus Would Have Loved TouchDesigner and decided to put that question to Stefan. Always quick to respond and prolific as ever Stefan got back right away...
However, when Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, the aim was to unite all arts in one wholistic experience - the "Bau" - an idea inspired by the medieval cathedrals. Also there was a strong notion that artists should be craftspeople again.
That is somehow how I feel about TouchDesigner. One tool that will help you to get all the arts to interact with each other to create an immersive environment.
While being an artistic tool, you nevertheless need to be crafty about it. Digital art has to have some knowledge of code and visual programming is the perfect middle ground between arts and crafts.
In the later, more well known phase of the Bauhaus, the focus shifted from artistic exploration to industrial production. "Art and Technology, a new unity" was the main claim of that period. This taps right into what I mentioned above. With TouchDesigner it is simply not enough to be an "Art Director" - it is not about creating shiny surfaces. You have to act appropriately with the material you are working with (Hardware, Software) - just like you have in Architecture and Design - two disciplines that carry the Bauhaus' DNA deep inside them.
The last point that makes me think, that the Bauhaus would have loved TouchDesigner are the endless possibilities to experiment with light, music and the moving image.
When we read today about the visions of early media pioneers like Hirschfeld-Mack and Moholy-Nagy we are struck by the futurism of their ideas. Yet they were limited dramatically by the technological means of their time.
