I always have to have the last word
| I always have to have the last word |
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| Werner Vollert , 1985 |
| Installation (machine) |
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(Photo: Peter Leutsch) Link to the picture |
I always have to have the last word is an installation by the German artist and today's entrepreneur Werner Vollert from the 1980s. It is a machine "that automatically shoots five fireworks rockets into the air as soon as an atomic bomb detonates at a distance of between twenty and thirty kilometers ". The interactive work of art has been shown at numerous art exhibitions in Europe, including the Ars Electronica 1991 in Linz .
plant
The machine "I always have to have the last word" created in 1985 belongs to a cycle of six machines that were designed and built by Werner Vollert between 1984 and 1990 and which thematize the symbiosis of man and machine. Like the formally similar and from the same cycle machines “Are you a professional smoker?” And “Test your reaction!” It is a ready-to-use machine that works after inserting money .
Various parameters of the outside world are constantly measured by the machine "I always have to have the last word", such as radioactivity , temperature and humidity , in order to avoid five in the event of an atomic bomb explosion near the machine - within a radius of about twenty to thirty kilometers Launch fireworks rockets. After insertion of a Mark is on a LED - display element of the "emergency" with the display of "Exact Overkill Time" ( englisch exact overkill time , "Exact Total Annihilation Time") and countdown time references to the start of fireworks simulated.
The installation “I must always have the last word” was shown together with other Vollert machines at the Ars Electronica 1991 , which took place from September 10th to 13th, 1991 in Linz, Upper Austria. (English out of control , "out of control") stood.
reception
With the machines shown by Werner Vollert at the Ars Electronica in Linz in 1991 , the then exhibition organizer and current lecturer for event management ( Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin ) Thomas Sakschewski, in his contribution entitled Dem Homunculus in spite of the 1991 exhibition catalog (“Out of Control ". Ars Electronica 1991) apart. He sees Vollert's automaton "in a connotation space of interaction pessimism , techno-aesthetics and misanthropy ", whereby neither the material value of the automaton nor the operating process are in the foreground. According to Sakschewski, it is “naive, positivistic and machine-utopian to claim that media or interactive art is a priori an evolutionary thrust , an avant-garde shock”, because how should “the 'active observer become a real participant' ( P. Weibel ) when through the program of the interactive work of art mutates every participation into pseudo- participation ; if everything is set like the digital alarm clock the digitized worker at 'Exact Overkill Time' (appears as an LED display at the time of the program start, i.e. also at the time of a nuclear weapon attack , with the machine 'I always have the last word') wakes ".
Sakschewski does not see Vollert's automatons themselves as aesthetic carriers of symbols, but rather the interaction between man and machine and the metacommunication about this relationship. Without dismantling the machine it would not be possible to check whether the machine really regularly measures the parameters mentioned, whether the fireworks rockets would really start in an “exact overkill time”. The unimaginability of the feasible leads to a shudder due to the handiness of the automat, the proximity of the toy rockets and the urgency of the LED countdown, says Sakschewski; the “ metaphor of control” in this machine becomes a “game of almost tragic proportions”. The machine, which is supposed to recognize whether an out-of-control state begins, cannot be controlled; the “dilemma of perceiving reality through observation” can thus be “experienced in an impressive way”.
Through the ambiguity of the symbols used and the inextricable interplay of machine storms and techno-aesthetics and the overlapping relationships of interaction, Vollert's automatons make it clear, Sakschewski sums up, that the out of control is not a description of the state of an individual automaton, but a stigma of our time. With the exponentially growing global amount of information , every explanatory model becomes so multifactorial that a target / actual state control is no longer possible; just as little as the installation “I always have the last word” can be dismissed as a fairground attraction.
literature
- Thomas Sakschewski: In spite of the homunculus. On the aesthetics of Werner Vollert's machines . In: Karl Gerbel (Ed.): "Out of Control". Ars Electronica 1991. Festival for Art, Technology and Society. Landesverlag, Linz 1991, ISBN 3-85329-907-5 , pp. 221-226. (Exhibition catalog; freely available online as a PDF file)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Thomas Sakschewski: Dem Homunculus defiance. On the aesthetics of Werner Vollert's machines. In: Karl Gerbel (Ed.): "Out of Control". Ars Electronica 1991. Landesverlag, Linz 1991, ISBN 3-85329-907-5 , pp. 221-226. (Exhibition catalog)
- ↑ Karl Gerbel (Ed.): "Out of Control". Ars Electronica 1991. Festival for Art, Technology and Society. Landesverlag, Linz 1991, ISBN 3-85329-907-5 . (Exhibition catalog)
- ↑ Information about Thomas Sakschewski ( Memento of the original from February 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the WSP-Management website at www.placemaking.de; Retrieved March 25, 2011.
