Publications

Visual Music and Electronic Images. The Oscilloscopic Experimental Films of Norman McLaren, Hy Hirsh, and Mary Ellen Bute, 1951-54, in Sound and Silence in the Visual Arts. Visual Manifestations of Acoustic Phenomena, edited by Karolina Zgraja and Cristina Urchueguía, Basel: Schwabe, 2020, pp. 267-290.

Stirring Motion. Len Lye - Motion Composer at Museum Tinguely, Switzerland (exhibition review), in: Contemporary HUM, February 2020. Open Access: https://www.contemporaryhum.com/stefanie-braeuer-on-len-lye

Electronic oscilloscopy and optical timbre scanning: analyzing and synthesizing timbre, in: Radiophonic Cultures, ed. by Ute Holl, Heidelberg/Berlin: Kehrer, 2018, pp. 173-184.

The case of the slipper animal: magnifications of the microscopic, abstraction and modeling, in: This is not a model. Zum künstlerischen Umgang mit dem Architekturmodell, ed. by Tobias Becker and Thomas Schmitz, Aachen: Department of Visual Design, RWTH Aachen University, 2018, pp. 250-255. Open Access: https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/751788

Together with Ted Davis: New and Newer Media, in: Neshan 40, The Iranian Graphic Design Magazine, Summer 2017, Focus on Interaction Design, pp. 72-77. Open Access:neshanmagazine.com/Article.aspx?l=2&Id=340

Gregory J. Markopoulos on Mary Ellen Bute. Moments of Reception in the Course of Forming an Avant-Garde, in Cinema of the Future. Gregory J. Markopoulos, ed. by Markus Klammer and Maja Naef, Paderborn: Fink, 2016, pp. 85-98.

undersides, insides, backsides. Eric Hattan's Bricolage, in Eric Hattan. Werke 1979-2015, ed. by Anthony Spira and Lutz Eitel, Berlin: Holzwarth Publications, 2016, pp. 218-224.

The Consistency of Brevity: Animation and Plasticity in Tricky Short Films, in Ultrashort | Reframed, ed. by Elke Rentemeister, Fred Truniger, Stefanie Bräuer, Robert Müller, and Ute Holl, Lucerne: interact, 2015, pp. 20-23.

Media Reflection in a Tipping Moment: Axonometric Model for Peter Eisenman's House X, in Knowledge of the Arts, no. 3, November 2014. Open Access: https://wissenderkuenste.de/texte/ausgabe-3/medienreflexion-im-kippmoment-axonometrisches-modell-fuer-peter-eisenmans-house-x/

On the Plasticity of Heuristic Modeling: Wilhelm His' Embryological Models of Lead, Rubber, and Wax, in: The Material Model. Object Stories from Scientific Practice, edited by David Ludwig, Cornelia Weber, and Oliver Zauzig, Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2014, pp. 243-251.

Lectures.

"Electronics in Experimental Animation: Para-Cinematic Practices and Sites," paper presented at the conference "The Movement Movement: Histories of Microanalysis at the Intersection of Film, Science and Art" at Philipps-Universität Marburg, June 26, 2021.

"Affordances of Affordable Digital to Analog Conversion," online talk at the Second Vector Hack Festival, Rijeka, with Ted Davis, October 04, 2020.

"From Minimalism to Labor Science: The Ergonomics of Charlotte Posenenske's Square Tubes (1966-1968)," online lecture in the seminar "'Female Productive Power'. Relations of Production and Gender in Art and Literature around 1970" (Philipp Goll, Anne Röhl) at the University of Siegen, 09 June 2020.

"Drawing and Scanning Waveforms: Optical Synthesis of Tone Color in the 1950s and 60s," paper presented at "RE:SOUND 2019 - the 8th International Conference for Histories of Media Arts" at Aalborg University, August 20, 2019.

"Mixing Media - Techno-Material Agency in Electronic Processing and Experimental Film," paper presented at Nordik XII, International Symposium of Art History of Northern European Countries, University of Copenhagen, October 27, 2018.

"Oscilloscope Imagery in Early 1950s Experimental Film. Mid-Century Forays into the Intersection of Electronics and Filmmaking," paper presented at Vector Hack - International Festival of Experimental Vector Graphics, Ljubljana, October 06, 2018.

"Electronic Oscillography in Early 1950s Experimental Film", presentation at "RE:TRACE 2017 - 7th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology" at Danube University Krems, November 23-25, 2017.

"Experimentation in Motion Design", presentation at the symposium "Display | Disruption | Disorder. New Formats, Actors, and Places in Audiovisual Media" at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, November 17-18, 2017.

"Seeing Sound, Visualizing Oscillations: The Oscillographic Animation Film Abstronic by Mary Ellen Bute," paper presented at the workshop "Sound and Silence in the Visual Arts" at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich, June 17, 2017.

"Audiovisual Operativity in Early 1950s Electronic Oscillography," PhD course "Operative Images" at Humboldt University Berlin, March 03, 2017.

"The Electronic Oscilloscope as a Novel Tool for Visual Music-Films of the Early 1950s," Sound/Image Colloquium at the University of Greenwich, London, 13. November 2016.

"The Cultural Technique of Measuring: Abstronic by Mary Ellen Bute, 1952," during the Lüneburg Summer School for Digital Cultures, September 24, 2015.

"Oscillography in Mary Ellen Bute's Abstronic - Merging Abstraction and Electronics in Experimental Filmmaking," at the conference "Digital Abstraction at the Interface between Electronic Media Arts and Data Visualization" at Jacobs University Bremen , May 08, 2015.

"Zero Hour in American Painting - Barnett Newman's Onement I 1948", in the context of the graduation ceremony at the Institute for Art and Image History at Humboldt University Berlin, May 16, 2014.

"Experimental Oscillography in Media Art", input presentation in the context of the workshop "Visualization: A critical survey of the concept" at Humboldt University Berlin, April 09, 2014.

Teaching

Course "Expanded Cinema - Discourses of the Dissolution of Boundaries in Cinema, the Arts and Design" in the spring semester 2021 at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW.

Theory coaching Bachelor theses in the fall semester 2020 in the Digital Ideation course at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Seminar "Culture and History of the Digital" in the fall semester 2020 at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW.

Lecture "Design and Technologies: Experiments, Practices, Concepts" in the spring semester 2020 at the School of Design and Art FHNW.

Seminar "Interdisciplinary Acts" in the fall semester 2019 at the Hochschule für Musik Basel, with Anne-May Krüger.

Seminar "Digital Technologies Fundamentals" in the fall semester 2018 at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, in the Digital Ideation program.

Media Practical Course/Experimental Practice "Processing Audiovisuality" in spring semester 2017, cooperation University of Basel/Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW, with Ted Davis.

Block seminar "Sound and Images in the Visual Arts, Science and Technology - Processing Audiovisuality" at Jacobs University Bremen, January 21-29, 2016, with Isabel Wünsche (Jacobs University Bremen) and Ted Davis (Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst FHNW).

Workshop "Ultrashorts" at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India, as part of the Chitrakatha International Student Animation Festival, October 14-16, 2015, with Elke Rentemeister and Fred Truniger (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts).

Project Seminar "The Space In-Between" at Epoka University, Tirana, March 24-April 02, 2015, with Alexander Schellow (Ècole de recherche graphique, Brussels).

Seminar "Models as Media in Cinema and Science" in the fall semester 2014 at the Media Studies Seminar of the University of Basel, with Sarine Waltenspül (Zurich University of the Arts).

Stefanie Bräuer studied art history, media studies, and psychology at the universities of Jena, Berlin, Basel, and Siena, and completed her studies in 2013 at the Humboldt University in Berlin with the master's thesis "Material an der Bildoberfläche - Klebeband als materialisierte Linie bei Mondrian, Newman und Posenenske". From 2014 to 2017, she was a research assistant in the SNF project "Ultrashort - On the Medial Logic of Shortest a/v Forms." She then continued her research at the German Forum for Art History in Paris, funded by an SNF Doc.Mobility grant (2017-18). Stefanie Bräuer is working on a dissertation supervised by Prof. Dr. Ute Holl and Prof. Dr. Isabel Wünsche on electronic oscilloscopy in experimental film of the early 1950s (submitted September 2021).

The early 1950s saw the emergence of experimental films that for the first time artistically processed electronic images. This dissertation project captures them for the first time as a corpus and examines the incorporation of electronic oscillograms into the animated films of Mary Ellen Bute (1906-1983), Hy Hirsh (1911-1961), and Norman McLaren (1914-1987) in 1951-54, looking at the intersection of electronics and cinematography. The project aims to determine the relation of oscillograms to related images (visualization in the sciences, visual music, abstract animation film, early computer graphics, TV and video) and to clarify the web of relations involved in the production of the films. The actors and practices involved in production include human actors as well as apparatuses and technical processes. In order to adequately describe this human-technical relational structure, a transfer of the affordance approach into a historically oriented media science is carried out: It is asked which modes of operation the oscilloscope allowed due to its usual contexts of use, technical parameters and interface design and how it was appropriated for the experimental films. Moreover, the previous epochal classification, according to which the electronic arts are to be located from the 1960s onwards, is challenged by examining this critical moment in the history of technology and film at the beginning of the 1950s. This expansion of the history of electronic images takes place with a perspective on the digital-numerical media and electronic arts that are continually gaining in importance.