DIGIGRIPPER: September 2007

Sunday, September 30, 2007

A human sized 5 x 7 dot-matrix display becomes a climbing wall. The individual display dots protrude from the wall and thus form steps and handles to allow the climber to hold on to the display. However, if one uses an unilluminated dot, this dot will cave in, causing the climber to slip and to tumble to the ground. Prior to climbing the display one has to memorise a continuous series of letters (signs), as this is the only way to change the dots one is holding on to in time for the next change of letters. In doing so one can key into a terminal a short sentence. Whoever manages to hold onto the display the longest is the winner. The longer one holds on to the display the quicker the change of letters.

The display climbing wall refers to the moloch motive from the film Metropolis (Fritz Lang).
The film includes an impressive scene involving the so-called ”Paternoster Machine”. The classic film shows how a worker keeps on aligning the hands or levers of the machine to the flashing bulbs to a point of absolute exhaustion. In this very expressive picture the human being turns into an electro-mechanic device, and he ultimately falls prey to the machine, that carries on because he is interchangeable. DIGIGRIPPER transfers the theme of the ”Paternoster Machine” from analogue to digital and enables the audience to experience it for themselves.

We are Information

In Lutz Dammbeck’s film „The Net“: John Brockman asks “Do we think the heart is like a pump?” He then declares, that our brain functions like a computer, and corollary arrives at the query, if man is nothing but information?
Increasing abstraction is beneficial in many aspects of life. However, digital technologies have accelerated processes of abstraction, which have led to yet unassimilated cultural developments. Many issues regarding the interplay of virtual worlds and reality cannot fully be understood on an epistemological level alone. While the abstract world of the cross-linked media was considered new and alien a decade ago, we now talk of an addiction to the Internet and “Always on”. Many answers and solutions for a humane levelled accommodation of the abstract can only be found in real life. Consumers of digital comforts decide emotionally in every day life.
In this context I express a critical attitude towards the abstraction through works like “Gamo-top” and “Amplifier”; on the one hand by exhibiting a white mouse in a completely designed world, on the other hand by confronting the audience with the disappointment of connecting a PlayStation game pad to nothing but a light bulb. With the construction- kit- projects “Display” and “Mignon Game Kit” I attempt to find a constructive approach to the abstract technologies by way of digital aesthetic education.
“Digigripper” raises the artistic reflection of the media to a surreal level. Similarly to many previous works “Digigripper” uses the 5 x 7 dot-matrix LED display. These display modules can depict all universal signs, such as numbers, letters, arrows, and even Asiatic characters. They form the smallest universal unit within communications and are thus a symbol for the digital. “Digigripper” uses one such enlarged display module (Height 2,10 m, Width 1,50 m). The beholder not only reads the displayed text, but is asked to get involved with the outsized display on a physical basis. Strength, dexterity, and fitness are required. Gravity is one of the most distinct signs of reality. Through the fight against gravity one experiences his own body, which is holding on to the digital display and gliding off time and again. Every visitor, who tries to climb the “Digigripper” will end up with a performance, that shows the human being in a situation where he uses up all his energy to follow the hectic, seamless changes of the digital medium. Information becomes a meaningless score, the abstract is revealed as a game.

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