Station Rose

Station Rose/STR was founded by musician Gary Danner & visual artist Elisa Rose in Vienna in 1988 - as an open media lab, after they had graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna in 1987. From 1988-1991 Station Rose was located in today´s art center of the city, in the 4th district (Margaretenstrasse 26).

Since the opening of STR Elisa Rose & Gary Danner were equipped with digital tools. Gary had a Prophet 2000 sampling keyboard on from 1986, and Elisa bought her first computer, Amiga 500, in 1987. During the Viennese phase they were travelling & performing a lot, too. They went to Cairo, Egypt for an 8 month postgraduate-grant (again with computer & sampler). In 1990 they came to San Francisco to perform at the Cyberthon festival, and fell into the WELL people, which should become a(n online) relationshi p until now. They got in touch with the worldwideweb during a project in Tokio,Japan, in 1993.

Since 1991 the STR-headquarter is located in Frankfurt. In the same year STR went online. They became involved in the WELL, the computer conferencing system, on a daily basis.

On from the beginning the activities of STR spanned from art production, DVD-, CD-, CD ROM- and vinyl productions, research (on Virtual Realities; in cooperation with the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research), to exhibitions, lectures and performing in the underground, museums, galleries and the net .

At the end of the eighties STR started their Gunafa Clubbings (Skala/Vienna, XS/Frankfurt), the first online-clubevents worldwide, incl. live media jamsessions, releasing the cult vinyl "Dave" in 1992. On from 1992, STR focussed their attention on programming CD ROMs (on their own label "Gunafa", founded in 1993) and in the internet. This period saw the release of 4 CD ROMs and various audio products. Their "pioneering work in the field of multimedia" (Timothy Leary) got them numerous invitations to avantgarde media festivals worldwide.

STR perform live and produce as an audio-visual band in the unique Station Rose method. A jam session (Gary Danner: Music, Elisa Rose: Visuals) begins as a flow- on the workstations connected by MIDI - where structures are developed, a beat is chosen and then, only after ecstatic hours of creating, when the brand new track looks ripe, it is saved on the right medium (DVD, DV, CD, DAT, Internet, etc.).They have started their label "Gunafa" mid 90ies. Since 2006 they are using it intensly again, now as an <online label>. So far 4 releases can be found at iTunes and most download platforms.

Since January 99 they STReam live at stationrose.com. So far almost 200 webcasts have been performed. The schedule can be found on the website, or through the STR-newsletter. STR can be found at stationrose.com, myspace & youtube.

STR have performed live and lectured at (selection): Ars Electronica, Transmediale Berlin, Viper/CH, Museum Ludwig, Kunsthalle Schirn, Staedelschule Frankfurt, Cyberthon/San Francisco, Montevideo/Amsterdam, MAK Wien, Museumsquartier Wien, Rhiz, Wien, V-stream21", Uni Linz, Kuenstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, ICA, London, Kuenstlerhaus Bregenz, Goldfinger club, Frankfurt, Art Frankfurt, gallery Detterer, Frankfurt, gallery [DAM] Berlin, gallery Gawlik & Schorm, Wien, gallery Troester & Schlueter, FFM, Steirischer Herbst, Graz "Mediale", Hamburg, "Chromapark", Berlin, Depot, Vienna "Burning the Interface", Sydney, "Nature One Festival", "Crosslinks", Berlin, "Next 5 Minutes 3 Festival", Amsterdam, Le Batofar, Paris, Kunstverein Salzburg, Kunstraum Innsbruck/ medien.kunst.tirol, Blasthaus, San Francisco, Generali Foundation Vienna, Rotari, Ostklub, Frankfurt, t-u-b-e, Munich, WMF, Berlin, U60311, Frankfurt, Cafe Royal, Frankfurt, Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, Wien, INPUT 2007, "Second City/Capture Your City" Ars Electronica 2007.

In 1996 STR have been german hosts in Howard Rheingold´s virtual community Electric Minds, which was named one of the ten best web sites of 1996 by Time magazine. The same year STR had a record deal with Sony Music.

They won the Prix Ars Electronica 1995 (Honorable Mention) for the website, and became No.1 of the WELL´s favourite sites.

2002-2004 Elisa Rose and Gary Danner shared a professorship at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, where they had been teaching Media Production.

They are credited to have produced the first art CDROM (in 1992), as well as being one of the first audio-visual digital artists/bands. Their audio-visual online Gunafa Clubbings (starting 1992) are legendary. Their electronic music together with art of projection & the net, played in realtime, can be seen years before the VJ-movement & before more audio-visual artists came up. Their netart-projects - starting as early as 1992 have to be counted 4-5 years before netart got listed.

From 2002-2006 they had a regular TV show at hr-fernsehen/ARD Digital called "Best of Webcasting", one of the rare art projects on TV. The DVD & CD "Best of Webcasting" is still available .

Station Rose is credited with inventing the term "Digital Bohemian" in 1994 ,12 years before the german version of this term should be published by a german publishing house.

In 2008 Station Rose celebrated 20 Digital Years.

Publications

• Gary Danner (ed.), Station Rose 1st Decade: 1988-98. 10 years of native multimedia art, 1998. review

http://www.stationrose.com/
http://www.stationrose.com/STR_timeline.html