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Trigger Your Text
'Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek
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'Gottfried Hüngsberg
Gottfried Hüngsberg
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'Hannes Franz
Hannes Franz
Two 3-meter high sweeping silhouettes stand in the room as counterparts to one another. While the rear form is leaning against the wall, the front one is freestanding. Both squat aluminum figurines are covered with a sensitive orange polyamide sheath, which was applied with electrostatic flocking. The silhouette-like structure awakens a wide variety of associations of an anthropomorphic nature, from Baroque altar fronts to Far Eastern shrines. The shape of the meter-high cylinder placed in front of them, the front of which is equipped with an operating lever, reminds one of a candle. This cylinder contributes a great deal to the hieratic and religious character of the installation.
Using a joystick connected to one of the monitors built into the silhouette forms, the visitor can play an aggressive video game based on the destruction of virtual flies. Depending on how successful one is at swatting flies, the player can call a selection from three chapters in Elfriede Jelinek's book Wolken.Heim on the second monitor. By increasing the level of difficulty, one can advance to other levels of the text, which are organized according to the system of German Idealism – the "pure" idea, the "political" idea and the "practical" idea."The experiences which I have had in the theater in the past few years have made me think about the basics of distributing literature. Through my involvement with computer art, with the new electronic media in general, I have concluded that one must find new literary forms with which the consumer of art must be able to interact with the material with which he or she is provided. The work should already include its own reception! And at the same time, the viewer becomes a part of the work."
(E. Jelinek)
TRIGGER YOUR TEXT The installation "Trigger Your Text" contains a computer game in which the player can win texts from Wolken.Heim.*
One hundred and twenty-eight excerpts from Wolken.Heim. are stored in the computer, and these excerpts are organized into three groups:- the "pure idea"
- the "political idea"
- the "practical idea"
The three groups will be subdivided into three "levels of difficulty", so that nine different groups are available.
The installation introduces itself in the lead-in, requests the player to start and displays brief instructions for its use.
The game's object is to "swat flies". With the aid of the joystick, the player must attempt to kill as many flies as possible without letting them back him or her into a corner.
The prizes are a text excerpts from Wolken.Heim, which are recited or sung by various actors. Which excerpt one wins depends on how well one has played.
When no one is playing, the installation will show video clips and examples of the text and will occasionally invite passers-by to play.© 1993: Elfriede Jelinek/Hannes Franz/Gottfried Hüngsberg
Produced for Literatur + Medien, 1993. * Wolken.Heim. Elfriede Jelinek, Steidl Verlag. 1990. The texts used are by Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger, Fichte and Kleist, etc. and are taken from the letters of the Rote Armee Fraktion, 1973-76.
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