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Hochschule / Fachbereich
Hochschule für Künste Bremen
Mediengestaltung
URL der Hochschule
Betreuer des Projekts
Prof. Peter Rea
Kommentar des Betreuers
I have known Torsten Rehberg for more than 4 years, since 1997/8 as one of my students and more lately as a young design colleague who has worked on the University of Arts, HfK, Bremen projects such as the annual Profile Intermedia conferences. He is an excellent student, concerned and focussed.
For digital sparks Torsten has developed an apparently simple and from my experience a potentially extremely interesting internet concept: his www.logbook. My own computers now have mega Download folders, full of images from my travels around the net. My hard-copy paper files similarly have trees full of print-outs from the www. Yet I have no way to really organise on my computer the information (and inspiration) often found (or stumbled upon) during surfing or searching or journeying. Torsten has developed an earlier project which he called 'Vortex' into this very useful 'Logbook' . It is not a quick idea but a carefully refined one. Torsten is an assiduous worker, he has good ideas and pursues them steadily to the furthest he can take them. His work deserves recognition since he does not start from the surface aesthetics of his projects but his starting point is to try to make 'designs' useful, to clarify his aims and then to pose possible answers, testing them, revising them until they will function.
I recommend his work to you very strongly.... especially the idea and concept. Don't make the mistake of judging his proposal on the basis of the aesthetic graphic examples which he chose to use to illustrate his Logbook concept..... they were taken from an on-line version of Der Spiegel, just as they were that day when he was reading it.... and he assembled the Logbook as though he wanted to remember points from that day's news. Each user would make their Logbook look different, naturally. It is clear to me that if a user of the www.Logbook were to collect together images then the end results would reflect each user's aesthetic selection and layout taste. My wallboard in my London studio is my choice of photos, postcards, maps, banknotes, ephemera, posters, scribbled notes, pieces of typography and small objects and the layout of all this makes my whole studio wall into a giant collage.
A www.Logbook user can choose, edit and re-arrange their choices in the way that personalises their collection best. Best of all you can remember what you have seen or where you have been by simply opening up the relevant part of your own Logbook.
An extremely interesting project from a very hard-working, caring, student. Torsten has my fullest support.
Seminar / Kurzbeschreibung
Torsten is a member of my New Intermedia Studies team at the Bremen Hochschule für Künste und Design.
New Intermedia Studies
The HfK allows its Professors to write their own curriculum as an extension of their own interests. Mine are in the area of working across various media... hence 'intermedia studies. I have a loose curriculum that includes various fundamental set assignments such as:
"seeing with your ears";
"hearing with your eyes";
"the pixel project";
"time-based design";
"the time-code project" and
"research for the digital future".
After the fundamental projects the basic study programme encourages students from our 3 main disciplines, art, design and music to:
work together and to cross over between media;
and to "go beyond the borders" (book, published by Springer Verlag) often working in areas less familiar to themselves... learning by doing.
Students can work in teams and on individual projects.
Thereafter, my programme allows me to accept students who propose their own projects to me, at the two main levels of the Bremen Hochschule für Künste Diplom course: that is at Advanced levels and Diplom level. The programme is structured around a "student-led" philosophy which is guided by the professors once we have negotiated suitable project proposals with the student.
We specialise in 'learning by doing' and concentrate on inspiration + theory into practice by working on real life projects or "applied design". Torsten has worked on several such projects, in particular as a member of the international Profile Intermedia Conference teams held in Bremen each December. (His interest in inspiration + theory into practice has clearly influenced his wish to make his Digital Sparks submission one which is potentially a 'real-life' project).
The full Diplom programme takes approximately 4-5 years and allows students to carry out internships by taking time out, or by working part-time.
The Diplom programme concludes with a major personal project.
Zuordnung Forschungsbereich
This project is an extension to Torsten Rehberg's earlier research studies (looking at the digital future, which is one of the themes of my New Intermedia Studies programme and of the Profile Intermedia Conferences). He has concentrated on the 'gathering together and retaining of information in a digital environment'. His first substantial project called 'vortex' concentrated on that idea, that in a vortex many items are washed up together... www.logbook is a direct applied extension of theoretical research onto a real-life problem.