Peter Krieg was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, in 1947. After graduation from High School he studied and worked in Hamburg, the Middle East and in the USA; collaborator of "NEWSREEL ", movie collectives in New York, Atlanta and Detroit. 1970-73 he studied at the Film and TV Academy in Berlin (DFFB). Since 1973 he has been a freelance movie maker, first in Cologne, then in Freiburg (1976-88), now in Cologne again. Besides many movies he has published various works.

The first application of the 'Interactive Cinema' is the documentary film 'Suspicious Minds (Die Ordnung des Chaos)'. This movie follows new ideas of reality and combines
interviews with the cyberneticist Heinz von Foerster, the neurobiologist Humberto Maturana and the systemic family therapist Helm Stierlin with scenes, e.g. from the first free elections in Eastern Germany and an Elvis Presley Imitation contest, in a movie
collage.

The first version is structured after a quite simple pattern known as 'footnotes' in literature. In analogy, the observer is offered a kind of 'footnote' shortly before the end of a film sequence, i.e. a supplementary sequence. This is done by inserting a red strip in the right top corner of the screen. The strip is shortened every second and disappears altogether after ten seconds. During this period, the observer may push one out of six buttons on the remote control. If a majority of the audience wants to see a footnote, a second video disc player inserts it directly at the end of the present sequence.

The perspectives of interactive cinema are to be found in versions offering alternate choices to the audience. Each audience member knows that his control is necessary for the continuity of the film, but as a majority of the audience is needed for the control, a much closer psychic relation in the audience is created. The spectators become the participants in a game just like the ubiquitous society games.

Technical Background

HW: PC (80286), Steuerzentrale (Eigenentwicklung)
SW: E.L.V.I.S. (Eigenentwicklung)