Touchscreen

1999

Anna Anders (DE)
Klaus Gasteier

"Touchscreen" focuses exclusively on touch, the pleasure of physical contact, playing a wide range of variations on the theme of types of behavior and expectations displayed by the users of interactive installations.

Through a window positioned at eye-level in a wall, the visitor can touch the "Touchscreen". Various different video and/or audio sequences are assigned to each sector of the monitor; their arrangement is determined at random, so that even after extended use, it is impossible to make out any sort of regular pattern. A total of more than 400 different events can be called up on screen.

The user is buffeted by a constantly vacillating flood of feelings. He might be an object of desire whose hand is requested, and the spot that it touches kissed with rapt devotion; and, perhaps immediately thereafter, his harassment is scorned and he himself shamed as someone who doesn’t know when to keep his hands to himself.

If no impulse is received over an extended period, the installation activates sequences to call attention to itself and to stimulate potential users to make contact. For example, a beautiful blonde presses her nose against the screen and checks out new "clients," or a man vigorously knocks on the glass and calls out "Hello!"

If the monitor is touched at too many places at once or if the intervals between touches are too short, furious reactions from the interior of the computer are the result—"Not everybody at once!" or "Don't be so pushy!" the machine is heard to say, and it gives the impatient guest a dirty look.

Besides the extremely realistic video sequences, there are also purely audio segments. Users navigate through sounds like hissing, clinking glass, gurgling, harrumphing, rattles and thumps. Or the real finger is pursued by a virtual one. As the point of contact proceeds from left to right or from top to bottom, the sounds become louder or softer, higher or lower.

The Cast: Rosa Barba, Christin Bolewski, Michael Hanschmidt, Jürgen Jansen, Christiane Schoenen, Clea T. Waite

"Touchscreen" was awarded the 1st Marl Video Installation Prize in 1998. Without this generous support, the production of this project would have been impossible.