Statement

As early as the late 1950s, Manfred P. Kage recognized the possibility of using aesthetic elements of microphotography to create "art forms". They led him to the astonishing discovery of the shape quality of natural forms and new fields of vision. With innovative techniques for the representation in the artistic photography as well as the multimedia and video art, he penetrated into new visual worlds of vision and reached an aesthetics of its own dimension with its microphotographic and apparative art works. Kage saw it as a fantastic challenge to look at and depict intelligent and aesthetic nature design - and thereby fantastically expand the perspective of man and his place in a larger system. Within the artistic work of Kage, the microscope was often at the center of the mystery of the living, which in different ways can overcome the limits of different dimensions. The microscope is complemented by the imagination and imagination that make sense of exploration and discovery. Imagination can permeate space and time dimensions: The goal of Kage was to open up his space-time dimensions to spectators in a phenomenological consciousness with his multimedia concerts and performances: the "work of cosmic design from the boundaries of cosmic matter to the incredible diversity of microstructures" - the fusion of the micro, meso and macrocosm. As a photographer, multimedia and video artist, Manfred P. Kage visualized the invisible, in particular the complexity, sensibility and beauty of nature in the transitional field between science and art that he empirically worked on (see "Photography informal" and "Science Art", terms he coined with other terms and coined as art direction for his art). With this vision, he manifests his individual interpretation of the synthesis of science and art ("Science Art"). The diversity of his fields of activity, the pioneering work, his inventions and visionary ideas encompassed his life's work. Kage's ambition was not to create a pure image of scientific content, but to fuse the maximum of aesthetics and knowledge. An outstanding example in this context is the "optical concert". The first proclamation took place as a manifesto in connection with the group ZERO ("To the realization of the optical concert" 1961). As a groundbreaking idea, Kage played his effects in real-time and interactively like a kind of piano keyboard as a synaesthetic performance. Intention Kages it was u.a. To present natural processes in the micro range in a color noise concert. This realized Kage u.a. with home-made projectors and unique inventions, such as a self-built eight-channel light organ and reprokaleidoscopes, crystal projectors with unique color filter systems as well as film and photo recordings of microscopic structures. and specially built for him video synthesizers. Nowadays, the "Optical Concert" by the family artist collective "K4i" (Manfred Kage, Christina Kage, Ninja-N. Kage, Oliver Kage) is used in a modern implementation as a medial, abstract lightroom, as a large-scale projection on dome roofs, in natural spaces and in architectural buildings as well performed as a synaesthetic interactive performance with live music by different music artists. In this way, astonishing visual worlds open up to viewers, who allow the most diverse dimensions and realities in space, matter and time to merge together. Manfred P. Kage's original idea of playing the optical effects live like a keyboard is still a key component of the performance today.