The number 43-316/8017 9242 flickering across the facade invites you to make a phone call - but not to the Kunsthaus; the facade, its light signs, i.e. the digits of the phone number answer the phone calls themselves, so to speak, and can be animated by the callers. People speak to the facade, whistle or sing a song, and the facade, in its turn, draws an individual image into the light pattern of the exterior space.
Yet some time a discomforting question creeps over us: does the installation do what we want, or is it the other way round and we do what the machine wants?
43-316/8017 9242 is a reflection of the principles of interactivity and communication, both key concepts, and almost fetishes of the present-day computer art scene. As principles “interactivity” and “communication” are short-circuited with themselves in an auto-active loop. The resulting random and purely self-referential banter between architecture, technology and man caricatures the naïve ideal of user empowerment by means of the interactive and communicational possibilities of the new technologies. Here it becomes obvious that man can only influence those new areas of reality that he has created beforehand by means of new technologies. And by no means do we have new tools for coming to terms with an already existing reality at our disposal.
Hence it is ‘only’ a new toy. Yet, on the other hand, it is a tool of the most important raw substance that we know: human imagination. Without it we would not be able to come to terms with the upcoming reality.
The satisfaction about the light cloud you make hover across the facade to the sound of a long hummed ‘oooom!’ reminds you of the genuine relief you feel when you dial the number of your lost mobile phone and pinpoint the tiny gizmo under a pile of magazines with the help of its ring tone. You sense: a zero-sum game on a high level. And what you sense too: there is no way back, only forward - so let us enjoy the show…
The local Kunsthaus phone number 43-316/8017 9242 is reserved for the project. Via an analogue answering machine the caller’s voice is routed as an audio signal to the BIX control computer. A piece of video-synthesizer software specially developed for this purpose analyses the incoming audio signals and, depending on the volume and the frequency of the input signal, triggers off different algorithms transforming the film with the phone number in real time. When the caller falls silent or rings off, the system returns to its initial state.