transImagine
The Media Pump

'Ingrid Burgbacher-Krupka Ingrid Burgbacher-Krupka

'The Myth of Information', doubly focussed on the level of awareness, ties in with the project 'transImagine' as a transformation of Joseph Beuys' Theory of Sculpture. Franz Marc once said that future art will be the materialization of our scientific convictions. In terms of the awareness of one's methods, this is a visionary statement. Today's art can refer to discoveries of depth psychology about itself and thus use its weight as a mental force in the 'realm of computer-aided artificial senses' (intelligent environments).

The artist as a day-dreamer, creating symbols (finding, what he has intuitively been looking for) by using himself as material (for example in action, performance). Symbols that prove meaningful since they refer to reality in concrete terms and are linked to the living human being by the bridge of emotions.

The artist as a therapist, using the ability to bring forth symbols in day-dreaming in order to elevate the original human mind to the state of "progressive" differentiated awareness where it has never been before and has thus never been subjected to critical self-appraisal.

In my opinion, 'information myth' ties in with the struggle of art on an archetypal level. It seems as if in the media age the artist, by acting, turns himself into a symbol, or as if his works only take shape because he handles material physically. In other words, it seems as if the artist does not project part of his soul into the material world, into objects, but that he grasps and reclaims his soul acting out of it. This is always a personal act. Beuys' use of his own body as material to be shaped in order to make use of the energy flowing through the body, and the relational systems he created, stand for an integrated practice, with the simple and yet so challenging demand for increased awareness (of oneself),of the human being.

But there is also an important social meaning to awareness, only he who is aware of himself recognizes the evil in this world as part of his own soul, which is a condition sine qua non for tolerance among human beings. In his social sculpture Beuys called upon the sociality of man.

Seen against this backdrop, the words that accompany his late monumental sculptures (such as 7,000 Eichen', 7,000 oaktrees) seem all the stranger: "To replace media by monuments". Does this give monuments the status of a material counterpart to the media, surviving beyond the creator's death in an emerging immaterial media world?

This is precisely the point at which the project 'transImagine' is positioned: What about Beuys as a myth in the media age? We are faced with an oeuvre, the complex contexts of which, present themselves as continuous transformation (also with a view to social and human claims).

'transImagine' wants to give form to immaterial conceptual structures by means of digital media, thus attaining transformation and continuity. In our interactive computer installation the audiovisual medium allows for open chains of associations by search procedures in a maze-like formation on the monitor.

The approach is dialectic and ramified. 'translmagine' does not convince by means of a clearly delineated pointer, i.e. by rational conclusion, but by circling and repeating, by a recurring view of the same thought moving on as the perspective keeps changing.

The arguments move in spirals, growing upward from the basic thought, just like a bird circling a tree. The recipient may realize from recurring aspects, but without ever getting proof that he has unwittingly been circling and absorbing a growing universe.

In structuring the project we also wanted to deal with images of images, tying in with the state of complexity reached and "scanning the horizon of representation self-critically and experimentally." (Peter Weibel)

In allowing for personal experience, the main structure of the project, the 'Generische Kiste' (Generic Box), conceived as a space-time-axis, broadened into 'Anima' – a world of free associations.

STRUCTURE