About

Can pictures speak?

Sprung in die Zeit (Leap Into Time) is an intermedial experience at the intersection of art, music, and technology. At its core are 42 abstract photographs by Elias Wessel and corresponding sonic compositions by Natalia Kiës. The visual works originated in 2014; the collaboration between Elias Wessel and Natalia Kiës began following the works’ presentation at 1014 New York in 2016–17. The project approaches the image not as a fixed object to be viewed, but as a counterpart to be encountered. Kiës created a technical setup that allows the photographs to be »played«: through touch, each image itself becomes a score, whose surfaces, densities, traces, and tensions determine specific gestures and give rise to specific sounds (see video sample). Rather than illustrating the images, the compositions translate their formal properties into an independent sonic language. In exhibitions and in the present online experience, technologies such as proximity sensing and face tracking make this language responsive to presence and attention (see prototype sample). The pictures »speak« only when viewers stay with them, look carefully, and give them time. What emerges is a form of encounter in which image, sound, space, and movement converge, and the works begin to appear as individual presences. The project’s Post-Terrestrial chapter takes this logic further through the works’ passage into suborbital space and their subsequent circulation as Encounters.

Essays

• Zhao, Billy (2025): »In Response.« [Forthcoming]
• Zami, Layla (2025): »Extended Experience: Shapes of Sonic and Visual Interventions.« [Forthcoming]
• Khazam, Rahma (2024): »Sprung in die Zeit: Close Encounters between Space and Time.« [Forthcoming]
• Kopplin, Bärbel (2021): »Fotografie als Versuchsanordnung und Denkprozess.« English title: »Photography as Experimental Arrangement and Thought Process.«
• Schoen, Christian (2017): »Sprung in die Zeit: Anmerkungen zum Wesen der Bilder.«

Exhibitions

• Pulsar. Photoszene Festival, Cologne, May 12–21, 2023.
• zu mir und zu dir. Franz Jyrch, Maria Sainz Rueda, Elias Wessel. Synagogue Walldorf, June 25–July 24, 2022.
• Sprung in die Zeit. No Cube – Raum für Kunst und Medien, Münster, February 18–March 25, 2018.
• Sprung in die Zeit – Zum Wesen der Bilder. Raum für Kunst und Gegenwart, Ansbach, December 19, 2016–February 26, 2017.
• Elias Wessel: Stuck Together Pieces! 1014, New York, November 2, 2016–May 31, 2017.

Collections

• Kunstsammlung des Deutschen Bundestages, Berlin (2020)