WHITEOUT

18.12.2017 Medienwerkstatt Wien 11:00 – 19:00

Reinterpretaion of blackout – wie nahe kommt das Fernsehen an mich heran Richard Kriesche (1974-75)

„In this media live action the artist asked himself and all those involved the question: how closely does television affect me? what does the communication medium of television make of reality? – what reality does “television” develop from “non-vision”? during the recording of the programme the artist wore a black blindfold. The non-vision excluded the artist – he spoke into a space that was imaginary for him. at the same time, however, it was also his intention to confront the television audience with his situation of “no longer seeing”. to see nothing other than a black screen on the air on television. on this electronic media level – according to kriesche – the recipient and producer, artist and public would find themselves in the same state of reality. on the black screen the producer’s reality would be transformed into the recipients’ reality. due to the elimination of the distance from the visual image, the visible retreated into electronic space

Seppo Gründler purses in his installation the question, how near we are able to come to reality How acts the communication medium, in particular in the current form of VR glasses, which are available in the meantime at any Italian motorway service area, on reality and our communication. The audience has to use VR goggles and headphones, so it seems to enter the same space like in Richard Kriesche’s “blackout” and is in an identical state of reality. This time even more congruent, yet more diverse than it could possibly be. In passivity and immobility, white noise is acoustically and visually projected. In terms of signal theory, this represents the simplest stochastic process. Exposed to this for a few minutes, each individual experiences the Ganzfeld effect, hallucinations produced by perceptual deprivation. Through movement, different frequency bands, tones and patterns can be extracted from the noise, very elementary forms and sounds. Thus, the audience is free to generate by passivity complex hallucinations or activly seeming to generate rudimentary forms. As Günther Anders writes in “The Antiquity of Man”, those who are put to death can choose whether they want their last meal sweet or sour. Currently, the installation is in a search and evaluation phase. Whether the starting material for noise and generated forms consists of basic components of image and sound synthesis or is generated from social network material has not yet been determined. Other aesthetic parameters and the hardware and software configuration are currently being researched. Between high-end configurations like HCT-Vive and low-cost solutions like Google Cardboard all is still conceivable.

Material: Comfortable chair, VR glasses headphones, calculator