SCIENCE ARTIST

Olaf Schirm

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Thinking Symboter
News / 8. September 2021

New Song “HASAG”

This new song is about HASAG, a mighty Ammunition Manufacturer in the Third Reich. In special the song is about the factory Pelcery (Peltzer) in Czestochowa (Tschenstochau). HASAG was destiny for 10 thousands of forced labour workers, mostly young jewish men and women. Many of them died within weeks because of exhaustion or were poisened by the chemicals, died in factory accidents, were murdered by the SS after only 3 days of illness or just by fun. My grandfather LEO was forced labor worker in several camps after being in the ghetto of Krakow. He survived the concentration camp of Plaszow under the evil SS officer Amon Göth and ended in Czestochowa until liberation by the Russians in January 1945. Hard stuff….uff….had to do this song therefore.

Text:

HASAG
Czestochowa
Pelcery
H-A-S-A-G

Symboter – HASAG

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News / 6. August 2021

 Selected artist at “33 guests”

I am very pleased having been chosen as one of three artists at the “33 guests” event by host Jana Noritsch. Three artists are presented by three hosts during an exclusive dinner with 33 guests, each artist is present and represented with three works and one edition. It is an extraordinary format with a selected audience.
I show there my spray kinetics work “fadeR”, the robot installation “EasyBot”, the light kinetics object “SPY” and the german version of the paper work “the now remains”.
Event 05.08.2021
Exhibition: 06.08.-08.08.2021, 12:00-19:00, Potsdamer Straße 120, HOTO Berlin

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News / 17. February 2021

Oscar Technical Achievement Award

At this years (2021) Oscar Technical Achievement Award, which was held digitally due to the corona pandemic, my ground braking idea and development of a facial motion tracking device: the FaceTracker was honored. Too bad they did not award this disruptive development, which was the foundation of the whole process of head mounted optical facetracking, but the Academy gave the price to the company Standard Deviation which took my idea and developed it further. The price wace given to the company which served the most facetracking devices actually used in movie production. Under these conditions, of course US based companies in the Hollywood circumfence were preferred.
Standard Deviation founders worked in the same studio as I did at that time, at a company called Mr. Film, run by Chris Walker. Chris was a technology driven producer, but always short in money. So, instead of buying one of my FaceTrackers, he asked his technicians to copy it. Of course they improved it further. I never received any royalties. Anyway, I sold about 100 of my units to other mayor movie and 3D anmiation companies such as Disney Imagineering, Sony Picture Imageworks and Warner Brothers.
Standard Deviations grew with their Facetracker sales and still are in business. Their founder was so fair to mention my name in his list of thanks during the award presentation.
Thanky you Babak, anyway.

FaceTracker original product by Olaf Schirm

Here is a full report in visual effects magazine “fxguide”

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