Tobias Bilgeri and Jens Isensee, 2024 | Interactive Video Installation

This interactive installation runs synchronously on 9 smartphones. The devices are fixed in a grid on a pedestal and a harmonious, virtual delirium initially plays out on their screens. The player can drift off into various AI-generated worlds and truths. However, this harmony is soon shattered by suddenly popping up disaster scenarios. Cell phone videos of devastating floods, such as those that have become rampant in the wake of the climate catastrophe in recent years, flood the screens like Instagram stories. Initially sporadically and then increasingly frequently, the ideal digital world is confronted with a harsh and brutal reality. In a way, AI simulations and disaster videos have the same hypnotic attraction. No wonder, since the field of tension between environmental dystopianism and AI tech utopianism is a field that is cultivated and harvested by the attention extractivism industry.

Paradoxically, the only action left to the player in these events is to swipe the disaster stories off the screen, as is familiar from social media apps. The hermetic game loop intensifies until the events flood all channels like a torrent. Here, the installation concept addresses how human consciousness tends to repress itself when overwhelmed by the complexity of the global situation, instead of moving into action. The escapist nature of media production and a belief in technology and progress that is as tempting as it is fatal are critically juxtaposed in the form of these lucid AI dreams. The simulation comes full circle when the question of the inevitability of this end finally appears on the screen and a new beginning is offered via swipe.

Synchronized Smartphones

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Room installation | cardboard, paint, hot glue | 6 x 8 x 3 m

The Pulpit

Interactive spacial video installation  |  Motion sensor, PC,
short distance projector, 3D-software  |  2.7 × 1.8 × 4 m  |  2019

In this interactive video installation up to 4 recipients are confronted with a virtual recreation of themselves out of objects and stuff. In a way they are becoming interactive ready-mades. The masks on the figures in the virtual mirror recite an acoustic collage of text fragments from the essay ’The Imaginary‘. It’s an early book by Jean-Paul Sartre which is a phenomenological study of human imagination. In it, Sartre distinguishes between perception and imagination which he identifies as humans ability for creating reality.

The work also has an immersive level. The viewers which are re-embodied out of objects and things, can move around and collect virtual coins that appear out of thin air in the virtual space. They even have to do it to sustain themselves, otherwise someone else wins and rest will disintegrate. This Win-Loose-Loop continues endlessly. The recipients could listen to the speakers, but the temptation to get lost in the spectacle is enormous. Also the exhibition environment is reconstructed in 3D to condense the experience of a reflection in this site-specific installation.

This project is a cooperation Jens Isensee and Rico Possienka. The installation is made with Kinect Sensor and Unity 3D and an ultra short distance projector connected to PC rendering hardware.

Virtual Materialism | Interactive Installation

Interactive spacial video installation  |  Motion sensor, PC, short distance projector,
3D-software  |  2.7 × 1.8 × 4 m  |  2018

Limits of Growth is an interactive spatial video installation combining motion sensors, PC-based processing, and short-distance projection. The installation’s sensor detects the spectator’s position and viewing angle in front of the projection, dynamically generating and displaying a three-dimensional scene from their unique perspective.

Hand movements are captured and translated into the virtual space as luminous traces. These light spots drift across the scene, triggering the emergence of organic structures that sprout and expand across the projected surface.

Through continuous interaction, these structures grow exponentially until their complexity reaches the system’s rendering threshold. Subsequent gestures can then cause the formations to shrink, producing a living rhythm of proliferation and regression within a self-regulating digital ecosystem.

In this process, the spectator evolves from passive observer to active co-creator, shaping a transient virtual sculpture. Once the participant leaves the installation, the system resets, rendering each formation ephemeral and unique to its moment of creation. | Read more…