On Formation
Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber
computer-generated photograph, inkjet print
edition of 3
130 × 480 cm
1995
Acquisition 1996
Inv. No. 0003
A view of a busy square from above, probably from a tower, on a sunny winter´s day. People form bigger and smaller groups, some people appear to stand around talking while others seem to be in a hurry to cross the square. By looking at this picture more intently, the viewer notices that it is manipulated, and that the people, together with their shadows, have been partially duplicated and re-arranged. Someone has been playing puppet theatre.
The picture motif is derived from a found glass negative. The many hat wearers indicate a time before the Sixties. Everything else took place in the computer during the urban exercises project. The electronically manipulated crowd of people – where each person is quasi a pixel – becomes a metaphor for social framework. Bitter and Weber, who consider themselves artistic field workers, talk of a “doctrine of social streaming which throws up questions such as: Where is space made? Where are interests intensified, relationships formed, networks connected…?”
Wolfgang Kos, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)
Continue readingExhibitions
There is something you should know. Die EVN Sammlung im Belvedere, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, 2000
Publications
evn sammlung 95–05, Cologne 2005, p. 46 f
evn sammlung. Ankäufe 1995 – 1996, Maria Enzersdorf 1997, p. 8