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Works > Electronic environments
Tür für Huxley, 1989

Interactive computer video installation
Video projection with sensor-controlled computer animation, videotape, two live cameras, real door, B&W monitor, art reproduction, sensor-controlled sound


Three doors of the environment Tür für Huxley (Door for Huxley) simulate the entrance to different realities. The observer has the choice between pure observance of a conserved and continuosly repeating image reality; enter entrance into illusory spaces through a projected door, which is controlled by a sensor; or, finally, the role of a voyeur. The left projected door is half open and showcases a space of action consisting of artificially distorted staircase and door sequences from films directed by Hitchcock and Siodmak. When the observer enters the sensor area, the projected door in the middle opens and and shows him/her from the view of the "Other", who views him/her from behind. If he/she attempts to approach his/her own image, it moves back and disappears into the illusory space. In front of the third real door, a pre-production of a painting by surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning is lying on the floor. This painting is projected by a B&W camera onto a monitor behind the keyhole. "Original" and copy, evident presence and secret presence are face to face.

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Different rooms with displaced space-time axes are nested, so to speak, and are unsettling in their simultaneity. Here, different media deployments are partially converted: There are techniques of trompe-l'Œil, the illusionistic architecture; however, the texture and color of the painting are replaced by the animated electronic image, and the static depiction of architecture is replaced by a moving projection in correspondence with the real architecture of the space. The view is duplicated- split between camera-eye and actor- and becomes a part of the game of spatial representation in suspense films. The surveillance monitor suggests a control over space and events "there"; the viewer, in the position of keyhole voyeur, will be surprised from "here".

Ruth Schnell

From: Ruth Schnell: In/different Spaces. 1999 lecture given as part of the project Difference at the Institute for Art History at the University of Innsbruck. Published in: Differenz, Hrg: Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck 1999


Exhibitions:
1991, ARTEC 91, International Biennale in Nagoya, Nagoya (JP)
1991, Les Images en Folies, Centre valaisan du film et de la photographie, Martigny (CH)
1989, Im Netz der Systeme. Ars Electronica ´89, Brucknerhaus, Linz (AT)