Zeroglab

ZEROGLAB Rotterdam NL Based Institute Founded By Artist Composer And Curator Károly Tóth 1996 Budapest Hungary. Www.Zeroglab.Org. Bio Károly Tóth The 70's
His Mother Was Caretaker Of A Music School In The 70's Budapest. He Abused Pianos Of The School Every Weekend With Much Joy. At Age 13 He Composed Music For Kitchen Instruments And Harmonium And He Used A 19th Century Manual "How To Breed Horses?" For The Lyrics. He Wrote Some Song Texts About Desperate Love For A Local Rock Band Of Schoolmates. At Age 14 He Reinvented The Prepared Piano Not Knowing That John Cage Did It Twenty Years Earlier .
His Attention Also Turned To The Visual Arts When He Read A Book About Avant-Garde Art And Learned About Musicians Like Ligeti Xenakis Stockhausen. His Musical Carrier Had Temporarily And Abruptly Ended When An Angry Neighbor Killed His Harmonium With An Axe.
He Studied At The Graphical Lyceum And Became An Offset Printer And Continued His Visual Art Studies. At The Lyceum His Art Teacher Was Péter Türk Avant-Gard Conceptual Artist In The 70's In Hungary Member Of The Influential Group 'Szürenon'. Still At School He Organized A Theater Group At The Print Shop Where He Was Working. Later Worked In Different Theaters As Stage Assistent Actor Composer And Set Designer. The 80's
He Decided To Become A Professional Artist And In The Communist Hungary This Was Not Possible Without An Official Diploma Of An Art Academy. He Was Repeatedly Rejected By The Official Academies. He Became More And More Pessimistic About The Communist System. Sometimes He Could Show His Work In Provincial God Forgotten Exhibition Spaces But Always Had To Fight With The Art Censors. He Left Hungary For Holland In 1987 Studied Art In The Hague NL And He Begun His Carrier As A Gallery Artist In 1991. At The Same Time He Begun To Make Artworks With Softwares Like Autocad And 3D Studio V.2.0. In 1989 His Wife A Computer Programmer Showed Him A Flyer Of Compuserve The First Company In The World Which Offered Access To E-Mailing And A Strange New Thing The Internet. The 90's
Dispite The Fact That His Gallery Was Able To Sell Is Art He Soon Realized That There Is Not Much Fun In Gallery Art Except You Can Drink Free Red Wine And Eat Peanuts At The Vernissage. Gallery Folks At That Time Found Computers Boring. In His Hometown The Poshy The Hague He Met A Group Of People In 1990 With Different Kind Of Approach To Practice Art. The Dutch Artist Martin Sjardijn Showed Some Of His Works Which He Had Made Sjardijn Worked With Simulated Micro Gravity With Sate Of The Art Technology Head Mounted Display And Data Glovesat The Virtual Reality Lab Of The Technical University Of Delft.
Together With Sjardijn The Architect Philosopher/city Planner Wim Nijenhuis And Other People They Founded The Interdisciplinary Group UBIQUE To Research The New Emerging Information Technologies And Network-Culture. The Members Had Very Different Backgrounds Like Politology Natural Science Art History. UBIQUE Has Set Up The First Art BBS Bulletin Board System Via Modems In Europe Called "Moir Brands Honk BBS". In 1992 Toth Founded His Own Art-Lab 'Dark & Light Research Lab' To Work On Digital Art Projects. In 1993 Came The First Web Browser And He Published His First Net-Art Projects On The Net. In The Early 90's Tóth Was Also Organizing Lectures In Holland About Contemporary Hungarian Art And In Hungary About Duch Art. In 1993 Tóth Met The Dutch Architect Kas Oosterhuis Who Had A Similar View In Architecture As Tóth Had In Art Use Computers Or Die! They Collaborated In Several Projects During The Following Years. 1995 - Moving To Rotterdam & Founding ZEROGLAB An Independent Art Institute An Evolving Process Of Exchange With Initiatives Of Individuals And Institutions Based On Mutual Sympathy. 1996 - Guest Professor Of The Master Class At The Art Faculty Of The Janus Pannonius University In Pécs HU . 1997 - Artist Residency In Helsinki Finland. The 90's Was The Era Of The New Paradigm And Toth Contributed To The Net-Culture And Making Digital Art Poetry Working Extensively With 3D Technologies Participating International Festivals. The 2000's
2000 - Scholarship Of The Bauhaus Foundation In Dessau Germany.
2002 - Organized A Film Festival The NANOFESTIVAL For Extreme Short Ten Second Long Films Which Went On Show At The Shortfim Festival Of Berlin G-Niale Festival Of Stralsund And Also At The MOMA In New York And He Made All Together About 30 Screenings In Every Habitable Continent.
2003-2006 Artist Residency At Bootlab.Org Berlin Germany
2007 - The Austrian Music Curator Daniela Swarowsky Introduced Him To The Dancer Thomas Körtvélyessy. They Made A Project Together Based On The Idea Of Tóth To Use Movements Of Characters From The Hollywood Film Classic Of Michael Curtis The Casablanca. The Track "The Fall Of Casablanca" By ZEROGLAB On Last.Fm Is Made For This Project. Tóth Composed The Music Sheet With Photoshop He Developed A Patch With Pure Data A DSP Software To Capture And Process Movements From The Film Which Was Transformed To Digital Sound. read less