CLIENT: Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany
1995

The interactive installation BETWEEN THE WORDS is designed for two performers and is based on the artist’s earlier telecommunication works.

A wall in the room separates the actors but allows a look through a semi-transparent window onto computer-generated hands and the person standing opposite. Through joysticks, each actor can now design and control virtual hand gestures, which not only allows for non-verbal communication but makes it necessary as the only means to communicate.

The possibility of computer-based interaction with the piece of art is one of the few really new dimensions in the arts. Agnes Hegedüs designs scenarios of this interaction and invents new interface techniques. Her artistic work ranges in the area of tension of game and art. She deliberately takes on the challenge of employing computer and joysticks in order to convey both artistic contents and contexts. On one hand, she uses the rules of the game, just to give it a completely different meaning on the other—all in the sense of a ready-made à la Duchamp.

The visitor does not interact within the installation to win or to have fun: rather, the game structure becomes a metaphor that questions our expectations and judgemental criteria of works of art. Simultaneously, BETWEEN THE WORDS explores our capability of a non-verbal communication.

BETWEEN THE WORDS is a co-production of the Art and Exhibitions Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and of the „Ars Electronica“ in Linz.