Video installation at the Chengdu Tianfu Art Museum / 成都天府美术馆 created by Martin Maria Blum for “Pulse of Life”/ 《生命的脉搏, the Art Biennale Chengdu 2026 / 2026成都艺术双年展, China, 08/02/2026 – 15/08/2026.

BRODMANN – AREA 19

Brodmann – Area 19 is one of the brain regions heavily involved in complex visual processing. Of these, Area 19 is specifically responsible for associative and higher-order visual features. During dreaming, Brodmann – Area 19 plays a key role in processing and constructing visual imagery, including the shapes, colors, and movements we experience in dreams. Even in the absence of external visual input during sleep, this visual association area can generate rich internal images and reconstruct visual elements from memory. This contributes to the realistic feel of dreams, even when they involve entirely imagined or impossible scenarios.

Korbinian Brodmann was a German neuroanatomist and psychiatrist (*November 17, 1868, in Liggersdorf; † August 22, 1918, in Munich).
In 1909, he published his findings on the cytoarchitecture (cellular structure) of the cerebral cortex. He divided the cortex into 52 distinct regions, based on differences in cellular composition, which are now known as the Brodmann areas. Brodmann had already begun to recognise the potential functional significance of these regions. However, it was only in the years that followed that the functional roles of most Brodmann areas were more fully understood and widely accepted.

BRIEFING

In spring 2025, Professor Rendel asked me if I wanted to participate in the 2026 Chengdu Art Biennale with a video installation. He was commissioned to curate the new design section, which would include three large halls in the Chengdu Tianfu Art Museum. Professor Rendel had assigned each of his rooms a color and a theme. Through the section entrance, the visitor would enter the (almost completely) black hall of contemplation, where my video installation would play a major role. Then you would come to the white room of creation, and the conclusion would be the green room of inspiration. Professor Rendel had recruited Arik Levy from Israel as lead designer, who would design a puristic set for the black hall consisting of an artificial black meteorite, my video installation and a few loungers. Another approach taken by Professor Rendel was to address not only the senses of sight and hearing, but also the sense of smell. That’s why he wanted to commission the French fragrance designer Georges Maubert to extract a perfume from the overall effect of the black room. For the opening of the design section, Professor Rendel thought of his own music and wanted to ask the American composer James Reynolds to create a work especially for the Biennale and to perform it there.

My briefing for the video installation was simply: “Koyaanisqatsi 2.0” – and Professor Rendel had already agreed this with his Chinese clients. A new, modern interpretation of the film Koyaanisqatsi, reflecting the essence of the original from the perspective of the 21st century. The chosen aesthetic is intended to convey the emotional and visual impact of the technological and social transformations of the last decade.

THE ESSENCE OF KOYANNISQATSI

“Koyaanisqatsi” is the title of a film that was released in 1983 and used impressive time-lapse shots to deal with nature, the environment and what humans have made of it – both positive and negative. The eponymous term “Koyaanisqatsi” is a word from the Hopi Indian language, which is only passed on orally and means something like: life out of balance.

1983 was the last “analog” year before the start of the digital revolution.

1983 – KOYAANISQATSI IS RELEASED IN THEATERS

1984 First e-mail in Germany

1989 Tim Berners-Lee developed the WWW

1991 First website goes online

1996 BackRub (1997 “Google-Search”)

1997 Deep Blue beats Kasparov

2000 Amazon Marketplace

2004 Facebook

2005 YouTube

2007 Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone

2011 IBM Watson won “Jeopardy”

2015 Alexa was introduced in the USA

2016 AlphaGo beat Go master Lee Sedol

2018 Chat GPT-1

2019 TikTok reached 1 billion downloads

2020 First printed house in Germany

2025 Deep Seek (Chat-GPT competition from China)

PERSPECTIVES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

If “Koyaanisqatsi” was at the beginning of a digital development in 1983, algorithms would best mark the world and emotions of 2025. So “Koyaanisqatsi 2.0” could mean: Time-lapse footage seen through the “eyes” of algorithms. Now you have to know that algorithms can “recognise” three things in live images or archive recordings, namely movements, shapes and colors. And it was more of a coincidence that at the same time, I was working on the processes in the brain that enable us humans to dream. Brodmann Area 19 is of particular interest. “Processing and construction of visual images, including shapes, colors and movements” – a wonderful parallel to algorithms and a good-sounding title for my installation: “Brodmann – Area 19” / 布罗德曼 – 19 区.

DESIGN-DEVELOPMENT-PROCESS

THANKS TO

Curator_ Professor Martin Rendel

Scientific Advisor_ Brandon Stell

Touchdesigner_ Paco Muro

Musician_ Raphael Weinroth-Browne

Lead Designer Black Space _ Arik Levy

Download a detailed description of the creation process as a PDF