Tamara Knapp is a multidisciplinary artist from Weimar where she also completed her bachelor's and master's degree in Visual Communications at Bauhaus-University. Before moving to Weimar she trained as a photographer in Heidelberg.

In her work she places great value on interdisciplinarity, so that often related disciplines in art and design meet thematic blocks from (natural-), (human-) scientific fields and become recognizable in their thematic implementation. She seeks her vocation in the creation and documentation of new aspects in the fields of visual research and has been teaching this since 2021 under the "Space for Visual Research" at Bauhaus-University Weimar.
In addition to her teaching, she works as a freelance media artist with her expertise in generative and analogue image creation in cross-media as well as the fields of (photo)graphic visuals. In general, she likes to be inspired by inconspicuous, everyday materials and her penchant for the intangible.

Arts & Science

Segments of a cell

Tamara Knapp worked together with the Department of Bioinformatics at the Hans Knöll Institute in Jena. There she examined datasets of various cells; fungi, fluorescent and neutrophils. She converted pixel-based images contained in the datasets into digital graphics. In this process she implemented artificial intelligence for further automized recognition of the outer and inner shape contour of these different kind of cells. After analyzing and reconstructing these shapes a 300 page archive demonstrates how the artist explored the aesthetic potential of these images as a basis of her further work. 
Six laser cut sculptures are part of an image based study entitled »Segments Of A Cell«. The sculptures display the forms of the cells as well as reflect the possibilities of a close relationship between technology and art regarding their way of production. 
In addition to these sculptures, Tamara created a three channel video work and eleven prints.
The video shows patterns, various shapes, contours and motions converging and diverging in a black and white arrangement. They originate from the AI generated data set. 
The prints are processed enlargements of chemigrams. In this sense she translates images of a highly technologized praxis into one of the first mechanized imaging processes – photographic film. Highly technological and analogue processes are combined. What emerges is an artistic product between scientific methods of bioinformatics and the unbreakability and irreversibility of analogue image production.
The group of works not only deals with the different handling of image material in the field of Arts & Science, their contrary approaches and similarities, but it also refers to traditional discourses of the humanities: What can the human eye capture? What can only be seen with the artificial eye of bioengineering? And what information do we draw from that?

the curtain of water
It is slowly getting dark. J walks along the street. A noise gets louder, white lights, red lights, a breeze, then it's quiet again. J crosses the street and looks down the embankment. In the back the lights of the street lighting, in front of him only noise. After a short wait, he recognizes a narrow path in the dim light. Was it here? His heartbeat almost drowns out the chirping of the crickets. J takes a breath and starts walking. Dry stalks brush his calves, bushes brush his arms. There is a rustling. J flinches and stops. He tries to remember the way. In the process, the spinning in his head only speeds up. He tries to remember the images from back then. But it's as if the rustling in front of his eyes is also spreading inside. Drops on his arm snap J out of the rising panic. Intuitively, he looks up. But he does not see the rain. He feels his face touched by the rain. He smells the air being washed by the rain. He hears the plants that are covered by the rain. "Rain has the peculiarity of highlighting the outlines of all things; it casts a colored blanket over things that were previously invisible; where before there was an interrupted and thus fragmented world, the evenly falling rain creates a continuity of acoustic perception." J exhales and continues walking. Text and images explore what it feels like to walk the path to total blindness. This was based on the notes of a blind person who describes how in the state of blindness not only the physical eye but also the "inner eye" gradually goes blind, how visual memory and orientation, pictorial memories and concepts are lost.

Forms of the Formless
Master Thesis

Experimental Tools & Systems

Music Video

Exit Strategy
Ivory Mix

Nebula

Voids

Editorial

The Chopped Off Head Magazine

The Chopped Off Head Magazine is a fashion magazine, an artist book and an artwork. Born in 2022 and founded by Colombian artist Eduardo José Rubio Parra, this publication is meant to serve as a bridge between different artists, artistic disciplines and cultures. Each issue will feature the world of a chosen artist or artists. The title of the project was inspired by the thought of these artists chopping their own heads off to give the viewer an insight into a world only existing in their minds.
28 pieces in total representing one body (my body) carrying one world (my world).
Each piece carries a wound, an acrylic painting.
One body wounded 28 times differently. 
Documentation Photography: Janis Uffrecht
Fashion & Artwork Photography: Nathalia Azuero
In cooperation with Lena Weber

Port Magazine is an official publication of Bauhaus University‘s Lucia Verlag. It is released annually featuring curated projects of students. For the 2018 redesign of Port Magazine, we created a double-sided book that divided the magazine into two parts. Using exclusively offset spot colours we were able to present a uniquely coloured product. One part is extremely colourful (2-colour-print on coloured paper) and one is strictly monochromatic using silver and black spot colour on white. Through our expertise in photography, we were able to display imagery within these special colour limitations making images pop with silver highlights or displaying the biggest colour depth possible using only 2 colours.104 pages, 23,5x17 cm, Offset + imprint, + Inlay-Poster 46,8 x 30cm.
In cooperation with Lena Weber.