information sluice

audio/video installation, 4:3 format, 13:15 min, Hubert Blanz, 2003

Being Hubert Blanz

Wolfgang Fiel

Perception is a question of point of view and therefore also of the relation between the observer and the observed system. As object of endophysical investigations this seemingly abstract statement could be described to some extent and therefore objectified, but the observing subject cannot access its content for his/her self-perception. This is because affective ‘over amplification’ of the simultaneously activated channels of perception makes a ‘conscious’ registration of the respective parameters considerably difficult. Accessing the world from within, however, as an artistic approach to the cognitive implications of the statement at the beginning of this essay, is the emotional starting point and content of the work titled Information Sluice. The many psychological and physiological operations in the process of perception, probably borne out by the innumerable processes of the cognitive apparatus running in parallel, provide Blanz a rich repertoire of reconstruable mental images.

During an approximately three-month residency in New York Blanz exemplified all the traces of his own hypertextual travels through the Net within the frame of reference of individual searches in the World Wide Web, documenting them chronologically in the form of text images and audio files. An endless flow of fragmented words, images and sound directs the chains of visual and phonetic associations. This overawing abundance of the above-mentioned impressions elude reflected perception and, as an outcome of continually reduced intervals, finally turn into polyphonous noise.

For an external observer (‘exo-Blanz’) to gain the perspective of an author who is within the system (‘endo-Blanz’), he must first become part of the observed reference universe. Blanz ensures this by means of a tube, which, as it soon turns out, is not an interface at the other end of a new endo-perspective, but rather leaves the observer full of expectation as he glides through the tube. This trip itself, however, becomes the chief focus of his perception. What he sees is a sort of monitor that does not display an interface-objectivity but much rather a state of ‘hyperbolic subjectivity’ in continual self-denial. In a reflexive reversal of the generic source material, the psychedelic trip through the pipe-shaped interface medium ( Information Sluice) becomes a kind of informative overkill for the glider. Without any warning, the traveller on an expedition through a Blanzian universe is left to his own devices and his own world of perceptions.

In reference to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, this experience could be termed as the media junkie’s ‘weave of fantasy’.

Translations: Nita Tandon, Vienna