1/space

Beschreibung
"The audio-visual installation 1/space refers to postulated mechanisms of human perception, of shaping the external world as a sensory image based on an internal body of experience. This appears to be reciprocal to the intuitive conception that the world acts on the human consciousness exclusively from the outside through the sensory organs.

The visitor of the installation – strolling in the border area between the exchanged interior and exterior – becomes a witness of an automatic perception process carried out by a digital machine. This machine tries to interpret audiovisual documents of everyday scenes using a limited body of experience consisting of images and sounds. According to the system’s reciprocity the presentation of the concrete media contents vanishes to the infinitesimal, while the fragmentary and imperfect inner perceptions become apparent.

Specifically, the installation consists of a central glass pearl radiating concrete sound and video scenes – passed on (i.e. streamed) from remote locations – in a way that their content is only vaguely noticeable. What becomes explicitly observable for the visitor are the interpretation attempts carried out by the machine’s perception mechanisms. The system tries to identify known structures in the media, that is, to bring into agreement its body of experience with the incoming media contents. These performed interpretations are uttered into the exhibition environment by means of additional spatial audio and video projection and thus are experienced by the visitor.

1/space constitutes an experimental setup which lets the visitor participate in a continuous perception-process. This arrangement is dynamic and also specific for the exhibition venue insofar as both the source media and the system’s body of experience can be respectively customized. So, let’s equip the machine with barely sufficient experience and make it struggle with media reality – an almost human effort."
Thomas Grill, Werkbeschreibung, Homepage des Komponisten, abgerufen am 05.12.2023 [https://grrrr.org/arts/projects/1_space/]

Auftrag: MedienKunstLabor, gefördert durch die Initiative CO-ME-DI-A

Uraufführung
1. - 14.05.2010 - Kunsthaus Graz