stop_and_go by Jo Siamon Salich

interactive installation
CYNETart_02realtime, 07. - 17. November 2009, Kunsthaus Dresden - Städtische Galerie für Gegenwartskunst

This installation is based on motives by which the artist has been fascinated for some time now: on the visualisation of movement, on the making visible of the distance between stillness and movement.
The observer can extinguish his or her image by reducing his or her activity. By returning to action, the image can be re-established and made visible again. Written instructions shown on monitors give hints regarding the optimum usage of the installation, thus helping the visitor/user to see which processes would be necessary in order to reach certain aims. This action is made available in a black box so that every visitor can experience it entirely by him- or herself, can work with the installation and follow the directions on the monitors: action and reaction.
It is the extinction, the blackness, the release, the murmur, which, of course, is also energy that results from the stillness and must be accepted as potential. References and parameters that occur in the course of the use are shown as animated text on two monitors. The interaction can be controlled by a life-size projection. Thus, being confronted with the image is inevitable and the media image inescapably turns into a confrontation: likeness and effigy.