Inhaltliche Beschreibung
In this installation a rotating platform allows the viewer to interactively rotate a projected image within a large circular projection screen and explore a three dimensional virtual environment constituted by an emblematic constellation of panoramic locations and cinematic events.
The work presents a virtual landscape containing eleven cylinders that show particular sites in the Ruhr area. The viewer can navigate this 3D space and enter these panoramic cylinders, inside each of which a surrounding cinematic sequence fills the projection screen and presents a 360 degree pre-recorded situation and acted event.
The ground surface of the overall landscape is inscribed with a diagram of the Sephirothic 'Tree of Life' in figurative relation to which the eleven Ruhr site cylinders are situated. This diagram is coupled to a map of existing underground mining tunnels in the Dortmund area. The identity of each of the eleven sites is defined by its environmental scenography (both actual and composited) conjoined with the time based events that have been staged there.
On the platform there is a column with an underwater video camera. This device is the interactive user interface, its buttons and handling allow the viewer to control his movement through the virtual scene as well as cause the rotation of the platform and of the projected image around the circular screen. A small monitor within this housing also shows the ground plan of the virtual environment with reference to the user's location there.
A microphone on top of this interface camera picks up any sound that the viewer makes, and this causes the release of continuously moving three dimensional words and sentences within the projected scene. Originating in the center of the screen, the physical arrangment of these texts in the virtual environment is determined by the path of the viewer movements while they are being generated. These texts have a temporal five-minute life span; becoming more and more transparent until they disappear they constitute traces of the viewer's presence there.
(Jeffrey Shaw)