Landcruiser

interactive installation by Roland Maurmair, 2003

Prologue:

Does a stone hit the ground when nobody is watching, or nobody listens? Or better restated today: Aren’t we, when we aren’t

seen…

…the old story between cognition and reality becomes grotesqueness, when you think of the sumless cameras in department

stores, banks, the underground or, in public room, by consistent satellite obervation. With the awareness to know about

observation any time and anywhere, ans incessantly being present in media, develops a strong divergence of individual behaviour

in our society. Paranoid through media, people no more communicate a direct way, but every communication runs through a kind of

filter named ‘political correctness’. Thereby the person interacts with its environment, while being trapped in a cage of its

own optic sense and in a constant illusory world influence of our media realities. The view is deceiving and new taboos arise.

Since every person in its ontogenesis runs through the entire phylogenesis in its embryonic phase, it seems implausible, that a

variance in one growth wouldn’t impact the other…..It would be presumptuous to believe, that the human creates one reality

without being influenced by it afterwards. In other words, we are situated in a recursive act, where form accounts for us, and

vice versa. As per “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle” you can’t get a better survey being as ex-viewer, because quantitative

viewing doesn’t mean to have more quality in viewing. It remains a memory of the present…

Installation:

An exemplar world (overgrown with organic material) build the work’s core. Throgh a joystick controlled camera, the user gets

the opportunity to circle this exemplar world in a range of 360°. The projection of this satellite observation is transferred to

projection plane, placed in the exhibition room. While scanning the surface of the globe, the viewer crosses spots, defined by

myself, that can be figured to be ‘gates’ to a virtual reality. The animations that are played at the same time, describe a

subjective element of the work and generate a surrealityx through a smooth transition form virtual- to real-ity.

Technical realization of the dispositive:

The joystick signal controls two multiphase motors, that move the camera along the x- and y-axis. The reaction occurs

mechanical, on a belt, and accordingly, on a swivel joint. The video signal is interpreted by the computer with a specific videoscript, that plays the particular animations, when recognizing certain pictures (or rather the motor’s x/y position), I previously defined.