Artists in Residence 2011

For Jaak Kaevats and Roel Roscam Abbing, both students at the Interface Cultures Lab at the University of Art and Design in Linz, dealing with digital and virtual worlds is an essential part of their lives. Their occupation and fascination for interface- and web cultures, the tension between and connection of hardware and software, the effects of new technologies on social and cultural conditions and their applicability resulted in the artwork Carousel.

The self-built structure Carousel captures space in an analogue way on the basis of interactive communication between human-machine-word.

As a reaction to the park and its constructed landscape, the two artists used one of the oldest forms of contemplating perception: the Camera Obscura. The title suggests movement and dynamics, while the octagonal form reminds of a slide projector.

With its apertures, the Carousel offers a gradual panoramic view and also an analogue overview of the outside, regulated by the specific location of the visitor and the outside light conditions. In human proportions and dimensions as well as through physical perceptibility on a basis of high-tech knowledge, a play commences between sunlight, focus, existential force and technically built cell, between immediate experience, early perception technology or rather an early technical attempt of capturing and rendering the world and the knowledge of the daily flood of media images. In doing so, not only the velocity of experience and the factor of time are taken into consideration, but also the individually witnessed time – fictional and real.

The restraint of this artwork in its sense as a non-sculpture and as an inner and outer reflector is endorsed by its highest possible reduction of form and its simple usability. These essential components for aesthetic aspirations, functionality and attraction for interface products are perfectly combined in the Carousel, making it a tangible, interactive, memory and productivity generating machine.