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Christiane Peschek, Lukas Dworschak, Sound Designer Ernst Lima and Art Director Charlotte Winkler
Photo: Luca Celine Müller

Innovation holds the key to developing deeper self-awareness. AETHA was born in 2021 as a continuation of the artistic practice of Christiane Peschek, an artist and researcher dedicated to creating multi-sensory interaction between the human soul and technology. Her practice of 16 years is focused on understanding and achieving a fluid transition between digital and physical surfaces as a method to heal and expand the self in contemporary life. She was soon joined by her Co-Founder and artist Lukas Dworschak, who she has already worked with for nearly two years. Together they have been creating smartphone-based interactive experiences that deal with the body in various extensions.

Rooted in extensive research, observations and lived experience, their joint goal is to make the virtual world we all navigate a warmer, calmer and more inclusive space.

website by studio y
website by studio y

Their unique interdisciplinary team composition of artists, designers and developers is what differentiates AETHA in their field. AETHA’s team unites both expertise in boundary-pushing tech and a holistic understanding of conceptual research and design. Next to the successful symbiosis of CEO Christiane Peschek and CTO Lukas Dworschak, who merges the art and tech side of AETHA, they are backed by the artist and sound designer Ernst Lima to create unique, hyper-personalized audiovisual scapes. These invigorating experiences enable users to immerse themselves intensively in AETHA’s virtual environment based on their emotions and data. To communicate and bring this new immersed aura experience to life across various platforms, the team sets on the sparkling talent of Art Director and Designer Charlotte Winkler. By exploring the ways in which we can shape and improve the way our physical and digital worlds feel, she aims to create emotionally centered design solutions which enrich the process of creating AETHA. The foundation of AETHA is the belief that the virtual has great potential to be a space for rejuvenation where we can rediscover and reconnect with ourselves in new ways. This vision builds on their established art and design practice, which grapples with ideas of identity in the phygital space and how we can test its technological limits.

AETHA image film – shot & edited by simp video

Overall, their collective perspective is flipping the script of the virtual wellness industry by offering a hyper-personalized form of retreat to help us encounter ourselves on an intuitive level, making AETHA the virtual oasis we all long for.

After successfully developing the first prototypes of the app, they are confident that this magic of alignment is possible to build for anyone to explore! A huge part of AETHA’s mission is to create experiences from the core of their users, allowing them to become an integral part of the process. Now they are moving on to the development of their Beta Application for iOS, coming to a screen near you by the end of this year. Intrigued by AETHA and their mission? You can become part of this venture for a better digital co-reality by supporting AETHA on Kickstarter until the 3rd of June 2022. Become part of the #aethaverse

AETHA – www.aetha.world

On the occasion of Tom of Finland’s birthday, the Foundation and The Community have curated AllTogether, a group presenting Tom of Finland Foundation’s permanent collection to the public.

Han Xiao was born in China. In 2021, his family moved to Spain. In 2005, he graduated from the Design Department of the Academy of Arts and Design, Tsinghua University, majoring in Landscape.

The exhibition gives us insights into the spectrum of expressive forms of art. The artworks shown are based on what had happened, memories and perception, spanning from the past into the future.

Lavinia de Rothschild is an artist, art collector who has never felt like she belonged to any one culture or nationality. Lavinia has always felt closer to animals and nature than to humans and our mechanical world.

Kalina Horon is an artist painter from Poland, who has been living in Vienna since 2014. Although she received classical music training in her childhood and youth, she decided to give it up in favour of painting.

Kenji Lim graduated with a BFA from Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, in 2002 and with a Masters in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art, London, in 2019, and has lived many lives in between.

Dan McCleary is a Los Angeles based artist. He has exhibited extensively in the United States and frequently travels to Oaxaca, Mexico, where he makes etchings at the Taller Sangfer.

This is Liza. A 23-year-old girl. Also an illustrator, graphic designer, and explorer of all things circling in our brains. She visually describes thoughts which have their own existence.

Carlos Vergara is an artist from Barranquilla, Colombia, currently studying at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Within his work, he positions himself in the periphery of diverse scenarios.

Pati Baztán is a Spanish artist, based in the middle of the countryside near Barcelona. She paints as she lives, with wild abandon. She is more interested in being led by the desire, emotion, and primal instincts.

Elke Foltz is a French painter. Her work is a search for balance within a constant chaos. All the elements aim to be in harmony and in perpetual renewal in spite of the prevailing disorder.

It was William Burroughs who, in the early 1960s, in his eponymously named cut-up novel, described the human body as a ‘soft machine’, constantly besieged ‘by a vast, hungry host of parasites’.

Olga graduated on the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava and has also studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. She has realized dozens of solo and group exhibitions in Austria and in other European countries.

Due to the fusion of digital life with the physical they have become part of our lived reality. The inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality is addressed through artistic positions.

Feels so warm that you can walk around with your transition jacket. We are invited by the artist Nives Widauer to her studio, and I arrive there with Cornelius, who backs me up in documenting this conversation.

Kim Dorland pushes the boundaries of painted representation through an exploration of memory, material, nostalgia, identity and place. Drawing heavily from the Canadian landscape.

In Impuzzibil, there are these bodies struggling and folding and stretching in stacked boxes. They didn’t disappear but they’re not fully there either. And there is no magician present to help out.

From one art fair to the next, from Vienna to Milan. Therefore, the impressions of the second edition of SPARK reach the reader a little late. I deliberately visited the site of the art fair three times.

Faye Wei Wei’s paintings feel like they are wearing lingerie, draped in a body of delicate sensuous marks. The colors, often posed against a white background of exposed untouched canvas, are transparent and fleeting.