The search for existential connections, and the related perception of a personal identity in manifold dimensions, is not a preview of visions of the future, but already everyday behaviour. It can mean a kind o f self- discovery through seif-invention by way of the possibilities of new technologies and the aid of other media. In the field of human reconstruction, it is not cloning which is the attraction but rather, it seems, the designing of one's own multivalent personality which proves equally valid in all realms. In this situation, by ridding ourselves o f habitual attitudes and having a continually growing potential for experience, a new world model will come into being. Yet first this experimental field requires intensive fundamental research, in order to kindle existing creativity and create surfaces of friction for visions: the answer here is not the small cabled world, but instead the need to capture and understand the world.
The installations which have been invited to this year's transmedia/lOth VideoFest concern themselves precisely with this controversial field. They take up the different issues to be discussed in the forums o f the festival programme.
"Beperkt Houdbaar" (Perishable), one o f Jaap de Jonge's more recent works, deals with the subject of the continuation o f man's existence as a physical and mental being, even beyond death itself. The installation,
"Seven Fruits from the Tree of Eternal Life" by Rotraut Pape represents another universe. In an ironic fashion, the structure o f an alleged laboratory experiment marks the cut between what organically exists and what is medially reconstructable. Like a commuter, so to speak, between vision and pragmatism, Prof. Dr. Horst Prehn holds up the user's own, unconscious emotional worlds like a magic mirror in front of him. Controlled by bio­ feedback, his installation "Pyschophysical Mirror" merges medical-scientific and artistic knowledge into a pyschoperformance. In the creeping vines of the "Menagerie" by Wolfgang Probst and Jörg Niehage, the viewer discovers a special form o f flora and fauna. Dependent on the breath of life received by them from their inventors, these peculiar plants and creatures evolve astonishingly, offering views from all angles.