about the artist: Tim Otto Roth

Tim Otto Roth is known for his large art & science projects in public space including scientists of top research institutions around the world, including also U.S. American institutions as the Fermilab or the Brookhaven National Laboratory. The renown Oxford professor in art history Martin Kemp has summarised his novel concepts bridging art and science:„A new art is encoding a new science.“ [Nature 458, 836].

Tim Otto Roth with his programmer and right-hand man Benjamin Staude at work at the Americain Museum of Natural History. Credit: AMNH/D. Finnin

In general, the question how light is bound into an image is one of the driving forces in his career. So his special interest as an artist in astrophysics is due to the sophisticated concepts of colour in astronomy but also its very long tradition of creating pictures. In 2003, he started his first project related to astronomy with a public light façade in Munich. For this pixel trip on the retinas of particle and astrophysics he was awarded the International Media Art Award by the Center for Art and Media ZKM Karlsruhe in 2004.

In the very same year he was awarded with the German light art award LUX.US and he visited as the first artist the Paranal Observatory of the European Southern Observatories (ESO) in Chile. A residency at the ESO headquarter Garching in 2009 resulted finally in the collaboration with Bob Fosbury reflecting the origins of the colours in the universe. Much attention was given to his project oscillating between particle and astrophysics: "Cosmic Revelation" (www.imachination.net/cosmicrevelation/). This transformed the cosmic ray detector array of the KASCADE experiment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology into a giant flashing light field of 40 000 sqm eliciting associations to Walter de Marias Lightning Field.

Another successful project are the immaterial Imachinations which formulate a new style of painting beyond painting in the age of the internet. He presented – to speak with Duchamp – the 'retarded' projection series among others at the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, the Center for Art & Media ZKM Karlsruhe, the arctic Koldewey station in Spitsbergen or the famous Library of Alexandria in Egypt.

More about the artist & theorician you can find here.

Related projects

colours of the universeColours of the Universe, hydrogen gaz light scultpure 2008

art & science at Kunstfassade MünchenSN 1997ff shot by HST at the Art Facade in Munich, 2003/04
English, 5,5 min., Quicktime, 8,0 Mbdeutsch, 6,5 min., Quicktime, 9,8 Mb

art & science at Kunstfassade Münchenmagia catoptrica, laser installation in the chapel of the Baroque Achberg Castle, 2010

further projects and installations: more