CLIENT: Doug Hall
2000

Doug Halls environment allows for a complex spatial experience through the cooperation of several media. The whole of the exhibition area is integrated into the dramaturgy by creating a complex spatial structure with the help of various steel constructions and by using the walls as projection screens.

Within the darkened room, huge video projections and six video monitors create a dramatic scenery of tempests, fires and floods. These impressive but non-directive—and virtual—energy potentials of Nature presented to the audience both as video images and as sounds, are contrasted with a physical installation exhibit: In certain intervals, a Tesla coil produces enormous “live” electrical discharges in the hall.

The name of Doug Halls installation THE TERRIBLE UNCERTAINTY OF THE THING DESCRIBED refers to Edmund Burkes “A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. Hall draws on Burke’s description of the relationship between Man’s awe in the face of the powers of nature and the sciences quest for enlightenment, staging this field of tension with the help of video technology and various steel constructions. Both fascinating and frightening, the installation does not only deliver a representation, but also an analysis of the transformation of energy. The taming of the sometimes destructive natural powers, represented by the artificial electrical arcs created with the Tesla coi, l seems to be successful; yet it becomes obvious—also under consideration of the latest news of natural disasters all over the world—that Man with all the technology at his hands still is not able to canalise more than a fraction of these enormous powers.

CLIENT: vision.ruhr, Dortmund
2000

An interactive sound architecture to the plans of old sun dials: Echo-cascade for the production of sounds of subterranean vibrations and their optimum atomisation in higher layers of air.

Although sun dials of all sizes have existed for ages, the attempt to build a moon clock has not been made for quite a long time. A moon clock is an invisible machine. Its effects are only audible. The lunar powers of tide do not only influence the sea but also the different layers of rocks. Deep sound vibrations come up daily in different rising and falling cycles. A sound-based moon-clock makes those huge subterranean sound waves audible and brings them to the surface.

Four sound stones are set up immediately above ground with a distance of 25 metres from each other. They form the sound foundation for an echo-cascade rising up to 20m. This leads the sound movement of the deep sound vibrations along an alley and far beyond its tree tops. Six see-through sound transformers are hung up in the branches so as to enable every gust of wind to optimally blow away the sounds.

The layers of air themselves are naturally filled with huge deep sound fields that, however, are inaudible to us. A moon-clock thus is a space where different adjacent layers of space can be brought into a relationship as if we could read the night time by listening to the moon shades. Admittedly, without the magic of poesy, the light of day does not allow any moonlight to be seen. However, the sound areas cycling in the alley that can be diverted by the visitors with the help of four motion sensors, do provide such an impression.

CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

Over some stairs, the visitor enters a 30 m long artificial tunnel mounted on top of a set of uprights and running freely through the machine hall of the mine Zollern ll/lV. The tunnel, an abstracted coal seam, is built in zigzagged shape; its inside height varies between 2.5 and 4 metres.

In turn, the floor and the ceiling of the tunnel are used as projection surfaces. As soon as one enters the dark corridor, head and shoulders of a human appear on one side, feet and legs on the other, moving through the tunnel as a “virtual companion” in sync with the visitor’s walking speed. Since the images are projected onto transparent surfaces, visitors always get a glimpse at parts of the old machinery.

With the movement through the tunnel, the appearance of the alter ego changes: While being clothed in the style of the turn of the century at the beginning, its clothes take on a more and more modern form the closer the visitor gets to the end of the corridor.

Against the background of the unchanged old industrial plant, the change of the industrial society is portrayed through the outer transformation of the “virtual companion”. The walk through the tunnel becomes a journey through time.

CLIENT: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
2000

The interactive installation PLACE RUHR exhibited from June 7 through July 20, 1997 at the Arts and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn extends classical panoramas in painting, photography and cinematography into three-dimensional virtual spaces.

A circular room with a diameter of 8,9 metres is installed in the exhibition area, its walls being used as projection surface. Inside this 260-degree screen, users can operate three video projectors covering a panorama section of 120 degrees each..

The projection system is installed on a motorized platform; through a simple interface, users control the direction and depth of camera movements, allowing them to zoom in or out of the panoramic landscape.
The projected scenery consists of eleven panoramic views captured with a special panorama camera and combined in a computer-controlled system. The various panoramas—in the case of PLACE RUHR, industrial landmarks of the Ruhr region were used—are represented as round objects within a virtual data space and can be accessed and left singly through the control unit.

On the inside of the cylinders, video sequences are presented that correspond to the topic and place of the outside of the objects in question. These video sequences are produced at characteristical places. For the PLACE RUHR installation in Dortmund, actions with different elements were produced, including fire, water and smoke as well as sequences with actors, children, sportsmen, etc. Each cylinder is assigned a symbolic live element closely connected to the specific landmark and the position of the cylinder.

An additional microphone on the control unit allows visitors to trigger a computer program that projects three-dimensional fragments of text into the panorama.

CLIENT: Zeche Zollern II/IV
2000

Jill Scott’s large spatial installation consists of two interactive sections. The artist uses the representative architecture of the Zollern ll/lV mine’s “Steigerhalle” hall as a projection surface for seven video projections.

In the first section, visitors are assigned the role of observers, out of which they are given the opportunity to enter in a sort of dialogue with six different persons—three men and three women—representing the industrial workers of the Ruhr area from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. The six characters are fictional personalities modelled by Jill Scott to the results of intense archive studies, oral tradition and interviews.

The individuals work in different industrial branches; yet, they have in common a reflected view on their work and living situation. With the help of six electronic interfaces—custom-made computer-controlled chairs—, visitors can explore the history of each of the six persons. The control system allows the selection and order of subjects that the characters talk about. By following the whole of the six life stories, visitors become witnesses of the changing work situations; however, this is not achieved by merely imparting facts and figures, but by intimate insights in the worker’s lives. The video images are projected onto the insides of the big blinded arched windows of the “Steigerhalle” hall, merging the workers’ life stories of the workers into the architecture of the mine.

The second section of BEYOND HIERARCHY consists of a video projection on the window opposite the entrance of the “Steigerhalle” hall and an interface that needs to be operated by two simultaneously to start the projection. The two visitors are required to shake hands —a metaphor for solidarity—through both openings of the box-shaped interface. This triggers the projection of documentary (“objective”) film material showing acts of protest and solidarity of the labour movement interspersed with images of equally fictitious labourers who comment the footage from their personal point-of-view.

Jill Scott uses the electronic media as an instrument to digest history, offering the audience the subjective reports of fictitious “witnesses” to create a point-of-view allowing for an identification with the past on a very personal level. a view on history.

CLIENT: Zeche Zollern II/IV
2000

The installation BALANCING ACT consists of a dark rectangular room with a large square rear projection video screen at one end and a small LCD video screen at the other end. On the floor, next to and facing the large screen, there is a walker filled with lead. In front of the walker, on the large screen, is a changing solid color field of light. Towards the bottom of the color field, there is a shadow of the walker.

As the viewer heads towards the walker and stands near it or within it, he perceives that the shadow of the walker in the image is not live. In other words, even if the viewer is looking at the image from within the walker, ha still sees the shadow of an empty walker. It seems like a mirror in which the viewer does not exist. The color field of light is constantly changing, slowly transitioning from one color to the next, lighting the whole space and the viewer with a single color at any one moment.

On the small video monitor at the other end of the room, there is a still image from the Wizard of Oz, produced in 1939. The image is taken from the scene shortly after Dorothy meets the Scarecrow which has a hard time standing because his knees are made of straw. When the viewer gets close to the small image he sees a single black pixel slowly moving from the left to the right and then down along a line, slowly scanning the image. It soon becomes apparent that the moving black pixel represents the location of the color that is currently being displayed on the rear projection screen behind the viewer.

As the pixel moves across the yellow brick road, the room fills with yellow light immersing the viewer in the same color as the moving black pixel on the image is being immersed in, giving the viewer the sensation of being within the image as a pixel and stuck in a 2 D world without being able to see beyond.

CLIENT: ZECHE ZOLLERN
2000

For the duration of the exhibition “vision.ruhr” on the premises of the former mine Zollern ll/lV in Dortmund, Jochen Gerz realöised the set-up of a digital photo studio and a frame workshop.

The photo studio offered every visitor the possibility to get a photograph taken for free by a professional photographer according to the artist’s instructions, which was framed afterwards in the workshop. At the same time a second identical photo was printed and framed and transported to the local museum “Museum am Ostwall” and exhibited. An estimated amount of 5600 portraits of 50 by 60 cm had been produced twice. The back of each photograph contained exact specifications, such as the date and serial number of the portrait, as well as a certificate about the context of production. However, visitors did not received their own portrait as a gift, but rather a randomly chosen portrait of another person. The image of a stranger in the recipient’s private space thus became a symbol of the social interaction of unselfish giving.To see their own portrait the visitor had to go to the museum.

CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

Masaki Fujihata’s interactive and networked installation VERTICAL MAPPING is oriented along the communication between miners above and below ground.

The installation consists of five hoisting cages that serve as the basis for the exploration of a three-dimensional computer-animated underground landscape where you can meet other visitors and communicate with them. Two of these cages are the original hosting cages of the Zollern ll/IV coal mine, two stylized copies can be found in the maintenance building of the mine, and another one on the balcony of the pithead baths. The different places where the hoisting cages are positioned are linked by “Shared Virtual Environment” technologies. VERTICAL MAPPING is a virtual pit system that contains quite a few surprises and invites the users to communicate.

The interface of the control system is the hoisting stand, or rather, its copy. The right lever is used for the movement along the X-axis (left and right), the left lever along the Y-axis (up and down). Next to the chair there is a telephone over which one can communicate with the actors of the other hoisting stands.

VERTICAL MAPPING uses an extended version of the software for “Global Interior Project”, 1996, and “Nuzzle Afar”, 1998, developed by Takeshi Kawashima.

CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

A bunch of cables is hanging from the ceiling like a giant pendulum. On the lower end of the cable, just a few centimetres above ground, an omnidirectional bar code scanner casting its intense red laser light onto the floor is supended. A laminated print of about six square metres containing hundreds of bar codes and other high-contrast black-and-white images covers the floor beneath the scanner. A few metres above ground, a small video projector is mounted to the cabling, casting its images downward.

By swinging to and fro, the scanner reads the various bar codes at random. The projector projects an image to the floor that swings in tune with the scanner at its centre. The bar code data are forwarded to a computer controlling the video projector and constantly changing the images and animations. The images are determined by the bar codes, their appearance depending on the direction of the scanner/pendulum’s swing.

An octagon railing of the size of the pendulum?s maximum swing surrounds the cable bundle. On it, eight powerful hairdryers are mounted to act as a sort of interface. The visitors may direct the jet of the hairdryers towards the pendulum in order to change its course. Several visitors can combine their efforts to force the pendulum into a certain swinging plane or into a circular motion that will produce spectacular images.

The work and its hard-to-use interface evoke associations of a consumerism out of control, with a flood of goods and transactions melting into each other and becoming undistinguishable.

CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

In the installation INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION visitors can interact with historical photographs from the time of the Industrial Revolution. Pictures of factories, mines, assembly line, production sites and connected administration buildings convey a fascination for the technical achievements of the time, not unlike the one that can be felt towards the present digital revolution.

In part, the images selected present the mine Zollern ll/lV in Dortmund, others show factories and production sites from all over the world. Many of the images accessible in the installation are stereo photographs from the middle of the 19th century. They were looked at through a so-called stereoscope that allowed a three-dimensional view.

Based upon the idea of combining those historical pictures of the Industrial Revolution with the digital technology of our time and opening them to be experienced by the visitors, Sommerer and Mignonneau created this interactive and immersive virtual environment integrating the audience.

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION allows the visitor to enter the historical images and to interact with them. When entering the installation, visitors see themselves on the projection screen being set into one of those pictures. By moving within the real space of the environment they may simultaneously experience the virtual three-dimensional space of the historic photograph.

CLIENT: Stadt Dortmund
2000

Within the setting of the media art exhibition vision.ruhr, Peter Kogler designed two huge printed courtains covering the lateral windows for the right half of the great machinery hall of the Zollern II/IV mine. Kogler’s works, developing their
best effect when in large formats, are based on recurring patterns of graphic items.

This work referring to the tools of coal mining was custom designed for the machinery hall by Kogler. In addition to the artistic message it conveyed, the curtain was actually intended to darken the right-hand side of the hall.