Video installation in public space
Video player, videotape, video projector, five-part projection screen, computer, rotary motor
In co-production with Kike García Roldan
By entering the installation room the viewers find themselves between several spatially-arranged projection surfaces displaying a video of a fragmented eye. They may try to find the optimal position to see the eye as a whole. However, the installation Der andere Beobachter is constructed in such a way that this point of view is never reached. On the iris, electronically-processed film images flicker, showing extracts from Hitchcock films. The depth of field of the projection changes; individual projection parts become sharp or blurred.
In this conceptualization, conventional deployments of image and sight alter and correlate with one another:
- The mode of looking at the panel, whereby the ideal position is not possible.
- The cinema apparatus is introduced, although the screen looks back, mirroring itself in the iris and allowing the projector to take over the function of the eye. The viewer/observer moves into the picture as a shadow and moves through the image space. Thus, they construct and deconstruct codes of visual perception.
Images
Video
The fragmented video image and its constantly changing content become a metaphor for the constructedness of the visual process. The observer is always referred to as the ever "Other". The artist and the "activated" viewer, and finally — in the constructed reality of the "cinematic" happening — the fragmented eye can be found here in the roles of observers of different levels of perception.
Johanna Hofleitner, in: Das Sehen re-konstruieren [re-constructing vision]
Exhibitions:
2004, Patterns of Perception, California Science Center, Los Angeles (US)
1999, Hitchcock, Kunsthalle Tirol, Hall in Tirol (AT)
1993, Beyond the Screen, allerArt Bludenz, Bludenz (AT)
1992, Der andere Beobachter, KunstSchauFenster, Dornbirn (AT)
1991, Transformator (Computer- / Videofestival), public spaces, St.Veit/Glan (AT)
Bibliography:
=> Hofleitner, Johanna: Ruth Schnell – Das Sehen re-konstruieren. Publiziert in: EIKON - Internationale Zeitschrift für Photographie & Medienkunst, Heft 24, Triton Verlag, Wien 1998Schnell, Ruth: On the occasion of La Biennale di Venezia 1995, Wien 1995
=> Schnell, Ruth: In/different Spaces. Vortrag, 1999 im Rahmen des Projektes Differenz am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Innsbruck gehalten. Publiziert in: Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Innsbruck (Hg.): Differenz, Innsbruck 1999
Weibel, Peter (Hg.): The Media Pavillon. Art and Architecture in the Age of Cyberspace. Austria, Biennale di Venezia, Wien 1995