Michaela Melián, Life as a Woman, 2001
Wood, satin, 400 x 50 x 105 cm, hand print on wall, 2 stamps, each 30 x 16 cm, music track 7:34 min. Installation Kunsthalle Bremen, Foto: Michaela Melián

Hedy Lamarr, real name Hedwig Kiesler, was born in Vienna on 9 November 1914. In 1933, she simulates the first orgasm in cinema history for the feature film Ecstasy and bathes undressed in a forest lake in another scene. In 1933, she married the Austrian munitions manufacturer Fritz Mandl, but leaves him in 1937 and emigrates to the USA.
MGM’s Louis B. Mayer praised Hedy Lamarr as the most beautiful woman in the world. In her very first Hollywood film, she establishes a new type of woman in US cinema: the exotic dark-haired woman, the enigmatic stranger. At her ex-husband’s Salzburg villa, the emigrant had had an insight into the plans for remote-controlled torpedoes, which were not realised because radio control proved to be too susceptible to interference. After the outbreak of the Second World War, she worked on practical ideas for effectively combating Hitler’s regime.
At a party in Hollywood, Hedy Lamarr meets the avant-garde and film music composer George Antheil. The actress had the decisive idea for the realisation of her torpedo system while playing the piano with the composer. Antheil set the system to 88 frequencies, which corresponded to the number of keys on the piano, and used perforated strips for the construction, as he had used for the automatic piano in his Ballet Mécanique.
In December 1940, the Frequency Hopping Device developed by Lamarr and Antheil was sent to the National Inventors Council. The patent was granted on 11 August 1942. The two inventors leave its use to the US military. In fact, Lamarr and Antheil’s Secret Communication System disappears into the drawers of the U.S. Army. It was not until 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that their technology, now known as Frequency Hopping, was used for the first time. However, this was not used for the remote control of torpedoes, but for secure communication between the ships involved in the naval blockade. As a result, the principles of the patent became an absolute foundation in the communications technology of the US military. Today, this technology not only forms the starting point for the US military satellite defence system, but is also used extensively in the civilian sector, especially in cordless and mobile phones.
A frieze of two alternating wall stamps printed with watercolour runs along the wall of the bunk. The wall stamps are based on two edited stills from films by Hedy Lamarr. In the photos, the water and the dress form the woman’s body, which in turn is reminiscent of a submarine. In the room stands a construction made of wood and fabric, a submarine on legs. For the specially produced music track, concrete sounds from echo sounders and other electro-acoustic measurement frequencies such as sine tones were incorporated into a flowing, romantically mysterious musical bed.