Cartesianisches Chaos

In the interactive computer installation »Cartesianisches Chaos« [Cartesian Chaos], Peter Weibel engages with the viewer’s perspective in computer-simulated space. In real spaces of perception, humans are always part of the system they observe: internal observers. In front of a painting, in front of a film screen, in front of a TV screen, humans are external observers. The digital space, partly already the video space, facilitates a simulation of internal observation.

The installation consists of a wooden platform on the floor, equipped with sensors, and the projection of a table made of the floor. As soon as you enter the installation, you are captured by a camera and see yourself in the picture. While you are in the real world inside the room, you see yourself in the virtual image space from the outside. Depending on how forcefully you tread on the wooden platform, in the virtual space you trigger wave movements on the surface of water and the surface of the table. The more forcefully you stamp, the higher the waves become in the image until, finally, they flood the entire image space.