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. | Read more…

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

The Pulpit

Wilderness

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

by Rico Possienka and Jens Isensee

Virtual Materialism is an interactive video installation in which up to four participants are confronted with a virtual reconstruction of themselves composed of objects and everyday materials. In this sense, they become interactive ready-mades. 

The masked figures that appear in the virtual mirror recite an acoustic collage of philosophical text fragments. Although the participants can listen to the speaking figures, the temptation to lose themselves in the spectacle is big. At the same time, the exhibition environment itself has been reconstructed in 3D, condensing the experience of reflection within this site-specific installation.

The work also operates on an immersive level. The viewers, re-embodied as assemblages of objects and things, can move through the virtual space and collect coins that appear out of thin air. They must do so in order to sustain themselves; otherwise, another player prevails and the remaining figures begin to disintegrate. This win-lose loop continues endlessly.

The project is a collaboration between Jens Isensee and Rico Possienka. The installation uses a Kinect sensor, Unity 3D, an ultra-short-throw projector, and PC-based real-time rendering hardware.

Virtual Materialism | Interactive Installation

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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.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WZVIlIXtDo[/embedyt]

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…