STATION ROSE
Biography
Station Rose was founded in Vienna in 1988 by multimedia artists Gary Danner (concept & sound) and Elisa Rose (concept & visuals).
On from the beginning Station Rose was a point of crystallization for new ideas developed in various fields of art. Their open space in Vienna served as a meeting point for bohemians and multimedia artists engaged in everything from painting, sculpture and music to performance, video and filmmaking.
Keeping pace with the rapid technological progression of the eighties, Danner and Rose soon transformed their concept of a real world multimedia gallery into the idea of a digital space.
With the rise of Techno they moved to Frankfurt, Germany, where they have been living and working since.
This cold business metropolis was attractive to them not only as a European Techno capital but also as a highly sensitive trend-seismograph and an important international traffic junction.
In the shade of gigantic bank towers Station Rose step by step established their digital concept. In Vienna they had developed their theory and put several details into practice. In their new hometown Danner and Rose for the first time presented their achievements in a live context. Between 1992 and 1994 they arranged a series of "Gunafa Clubbing" events at the Frankfurt cult location "XS", which attracted clubbers from all over Germany and today have "legendary" status. The Gunafa Clubbings were ecstatic tribal gatherings fuelled by digital images and animations, subsonic sound experiments ("Public Brain Sessions"), vinyl techno music, live sequencing and E-mail/Online-connections to California.
But the hopes and expectations Rose and Danner had pinned on techno music were disappointed. What they once had embraced and loved as the "first digital ecstasy movement" suddenly produced hits and superstars: Techno was no longer a progressive digital art movement but had become a mass culture adapting the traditional patterns of rock music.
At this point Danner and Rose made an important decision: They withdrew to their Frankfurt hypermedia studio and began exploring the new possibilities of creative expression offered by the Internet, CD-ROM and CD plus. Communicating with experts in San Francisco and Los Angeles like Howard Rheingold and Timothy Leary they absorbed the latest digital trends and experienced their final coming-out as hypermedia artists.
Their intensive excursions into cyberspace resulted in 4 CD-ROM-productions and a Station Rose Internet "Homepage", which can be downloaded from the server of the Virtual Community "The Well" (which you just did a couple of bytes ago). While working on these projects Danner and Rose built up their "Gunafa" label, a hypermedia label releasing art-products ranging from vinyl records and CDs to complex CD-ROM and CD-plus productions.
Right now they are working on an album and on a book on Station Rose´s 1st decade. With their homepage (which gained an award at "Ars Electronica" and reached the No. 1 position of "The Well"´s Favourites-list), host-status at Electric Minds, four releases on the "Gunafa" label and the release of their CD EXTRA and Vinyl, Danner and Rose range among the leading hypermedia artists in Europe.
Yours sincerely