Medienspiritismus. Videokabinet

Intermediate Faces

First performed at Forum Stadtpark / Graz03 Cultural Capital of Europe , Austria, 2003

Collaboration with Joulia Strauss

Numerous 3D-animated portraits of scientists who today write at the psycho/techno interface or whose deceased backgrounds are Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Marshall McLuhan, André Leroi-Gourhan etc. meet in the nothingness of the rear-screen realm. This meeting is entitled ‘Media Spiritism. VideoKabinet’. These synthetic representations of scientists, looking more natural than nature, resemble the imagined fantastic creatures that emerged from the computer. The 3D portraits descend numinously into the projection and, thanks to an invention by Wolfgang Muench, are made to oracle not with a mouse, but through a performative witch-shadow cast upon the projection wall. Cyclones, clouds and other, also invented, natural phenomena of theory are presented in the form of a media-spiritualistic séance  as a digital text-based weather prophecy.

© Text: Joulia Strauss. Translation: Wolfgang Muench