Waltraut Cooper, at 80, takes the Ars Electronica Center’s LED façade as her canvas
Artistic Message of Peace on the Façade of the AEC
(Linz, December 18, 2017) To mark her 80th birthday on December 21st, Biennale artist Waltraut Cooper has created a visualization especially for the Ars Electronica Center’s LED façade. After sundown December 19-24, the artistically stylized word PEACE will be emblazoned across the Linz cityscape. A computer code configures the form and color of each letter, inscribes it into its proper place on the high-profile building’s LED-studded façade and illuminates it in all the colors of the rainbow. The result, an artistic visualization of the word PEACE, is sponsored by the musical wishes of listeners to the ORF–Austrian Broadcasting Company’s radio station Ö3, who can request their favorite songs in return for a donation to the Licht ins Dunkel charity drive, and thus make Waltraut Cooper’s message of peace a part of this year’s Ö3 Miracle of Christmas in the heart of the UNESCO City of Media Arts Linz.
Waltraut Cooper Turns 80
Waltraut Cooper was born in 1937 in Linz. She studied mathematics and theoretical physics in Vienna and Paris, and taught at the University of California. She then began an artistic career that included the study of painting and graphic arts in Lisbon and Frankfurt. Waltraut Cooper expresses herself in terms of media, light and architecture—for instance, transforming buildings and façades into huge computer-controlled sound & light installations artistically juxtaposed to the public space surrounding them. Her works, including jumbo-format light installations, have appeared in Vienna, Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, Boston, Washington, New York and Peking, as well as at the Venice Biennale in 1986, 1995, 2014 and 2016, and have been honored with numerous prizes.
Waltraut Cooper is a member of the board of directors of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Kulturpolitik, a member of the International Women’s Forum and the International Kepes Society, Hungary, and a corresponding member of the Académie Européenne des Sciences, des Arts et des Lettres, Paris. She has been invited to show her work at the Venice Biennale more often than any other living Austrian artist.
The Ö3 Christmas Miracle
Ö3 will be broadcasting live from a studio set up on Linz’s Main Square December 19-24, 2017, and the music they’ll be airing over these five days (and nights) will be for a good cause. Ö3 listeners are cordially invited to submit song requests, which will be played in return for a donation to the Licht ins Dunkel emergency aid fund. And after nightfall, the requests will be visualized on the Ars Electronica Center’s façade. Donation details are available at http://oe3.orf.at/weihnachtswunder/.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/38245057165/
Fassadenvisualisierung Waltraut Cooper / Fotocredit: Robert Bauernhansl / Printversion
http://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/24266944907/
Fassadenvisualisierung Waltraut Cooper / Fotocredit: Robert Bauernhansl / Printversion
