»Babel« 
Light Box
Light Box
© Ruth Schnell; Anamorphic installation
Dimensions variable
Video projector, video recorder, videotape, mirrored cylinder
Keywords
Information
Technology
Hardware
Video projector, video recorder, videotapeInstallation Requirements / Space
Dimensions variableMaterial
Video projector, video recorder, videotape, mirrored cylinder
Descriptions & Essays
Ruth Schnell 25-09-2021
Anamorphic installation
The installation displays a projection on the ground, which presents anamorphic distorted video sequences. The video is composed of archive footage of TV reports on refugees in Rwanda and a picture of Brueghel's painting 'The Tower of Babel'. The viewers might stand and walk in the distorted image area, perceiving the rectified image in the mirror cylinder, superimposed by their own distorted mirror image. The curved endless mirror forms its own space.
The installation gives the feeling that the images revolve around the cylinder. A continuous stream of people passes by the viewer, leaving the tower on one side and entering again on the other. One can circumvent the mirror but not step "behind" it. The installation stages sight in such a way that it can't escape the mirror.
Ruth Schnell: Babel, 25-09-2021, in: Archive of Digital Art Anamorphic installation
The installation displays a projection on the ground, which presents anamorphic distorted video sequences. The video is composed of archive footage of TV reports on refugees in Rwanda and a picture of Brueghel's painting 'The Tower of Babel'. The viewers might stand and walk in the distorted image area, perceiving the rectified image in the mirror cylinder, superimposed by their own distorted mirror image. The curved endless mirror forms its own space.
The installation gives the feeling that the images revolve around the cylinder. A continuous stream of people passes by the viewer, leaving the tower on one side and entering again on the other. One can circumvent the mirror but not step "behind" it. The installation stages sight in such a way that it can't escape the mirror.
Ruth Schnell 27-07-2021
"Using electronic media, 'Babel (1992)', the work in progress 'Co-Verzerrung [co-distortion] (1993)' or 'Fleckvieh und Kontinente [Fleckvieh and continents] (1994)' (...) convey the medieval technique of anamorphosis with its perspective outside the image towards the moving video image, which is infinitely fragmented by the anamorphic distortion (...).
Whereas in this extreme case of the 'soft-sweet central perspective' the viewer's position was 'deliberately excentric' in the classical painting (for example, Holbein), the image can now completely disintegrate and liquefy in virtual reality. The role of the viewer is explicitly redefined here. Only through his or her cognitive re-construction does the image become comprehensible as a result if image construction – and thus the process of seeing can be perceived as infinite."
-Ruth Schnell quoting Johanna Hofleitner in "Ruth Schnell - Das Sehen rekonstruieren [Ruth Schnell - re-constructing vision]"
Ruth Schnell: Babel, 27-07-2021, in: Archive of Digital Art "Using electronic media, 'Babel (1992)', the work in progress 'Co-Verzerrung [co-distortion] (1993)' or 'Fleckvieh und Kontinente [Fleckvieh and continents] (1994)' (...) convey the medieval technique of anamorphosis with its perspective outside the image towards the moving video image, which is infinitely fragmented by the anamorphic distortion (...).
Whereas in this extreme case of the 'soft-sweet central perspective' the viewer's position was 'deliberately excentric' in the classical painting (for example, Holbein), the image can now completely disintegrate and liquefy in virtual reality. The role of the viewer is explicitly redefined here. Only through his or her cognitive re-construction does the image become comprehensible as a result if image construction – and thus the process of seeing can be perceived as infinite."
-Ruth Schnell quoting Johanna Hofleitner in "Ruth Schnell - Das Sehen rekonstruieren [Ruth Schnell - re-constructing vision]"
Literature
Schnell, Ruth. »In/different Spaces.« Lecture, 1999 as part of the project Differenz held at the Institute of Art History of the University of Innsbruck. Published in: Institute of Art History of the University of Innsbruck (editor): Differenz, Innsbruck, 1999.
Hofleitner, Johanna. »Ruth Schnell-- Das Sehen re-konstruieren.« EIKON - Internationale Zeitschrift für Photographie & Medienkunst 24 (1998).
Weibel, Peter, ed. Jenseits von Kunst. Vienna: Verlag, 1997.
Sandner, Oscar, ed. Artist Austria a Roma: Rom suchen. Vienna, Bolzano: Folio, 1996.
Schnell, Ruth. »On the occasion of La Biennale di Venezia 1995.« In On the occasion of La Biennale di Venezia 1995, edited by Ruth Schnell. Vienna: 1995.
Exhibitions & Events