heim@pendel
Tidying up I found an old work by me from 2001, which I submitted (unsucessfully..:)) to the Karl-Hofer Preis 2001. I included it today in the daytar page.
The text is in german, so I explain a bit. Among others the installation consists of a Java applet with a 2 dimensional parameterspace domain. The 2 dimensional domain is controlled in the applet case on the daytar page with the mouse, i.e. dragging up and down results in different images than dragging from right to left. In the installation the two-dimensional domain was controlled via an black IKEA rocking chair, which was coupled by a simple self-made bar to a joy stick (see fotos below). One could have likewise steered a mouse, but it turned out that the joystick construction was the simplest and best working one.
The images are images of the socalled quantum pendulum, which I showed (in a different form) in the ASCI01 exhibition, there you also can find the math explanation.
The installation consisted of two phases.
In phase 1 the rocking chair together with the applet (projected to a wall) should have been installed at the Berlin Ausländerbehörde (see fotos below). Movements of people with the rocking chair would have been screened and stored via the sequence of images they invoked via rocking.
In phase 2 two pairs of the rocking chair-applet unit would have been installed, however one pair would not be fully interactive (like in phase one) but replaying the stored images (i.e. the stored motions from the Ausländerbehörde), when the chair was used.
The installation was intended to pose the question about the role of the observer. Is it possible by observing both chairs (in use) and the two corresponding image sequences to tell the difference of the interactive components? Unfortunately the installation was never realized in phase 2 so I can’t report. Phase 1 was only shown around, but never made it to the Ausländerbehörde. My sister told me that I can’t leave the DIY-chair-joystick connection like this but that I should cover everything with a box. Given my previous bad experiences with presentations I even bought wood to do this. However I had to move a couple of months after the production of heim@pendel to a foreign country (Ausländer means foreigner) so I left it as it was.
