Holger Förterer

»fluidum II« is the result of a ten-year engagement with digital video feedback systems, fractal mathematics and fluid simulation. The interactivity and immersiveness of the installation create an experience of presence that dissolves the space between image and recipient.

When a person steps into the beam of light and casts a shadow on the image, a camera registers the movements and translates the gestures into painting movements. It seems as if the shadow sponges in floods of liquid light. The complex fluid pictorial event, reminiscent of natural conditions such as water, wind, lava flows and clouds, is generated by a combination of several algorithms.

In terms of art history, »fluidum II« alludes to the painting technique of Action Painting (Jackson Pollock) and the Schüttbild (Hermann Nitsch, Lynda Benglis). Whereas artists used chance and the properties of materials to find images, in Förterer's work it is the active viewers who create ever new moving images with gestural bodily investments. The involvement of the visitors reevaluates the roles: The artist assumes the function of the programmer and engineer, the audience that of the designer. But also the artwork itself is questioned: every moment is unique, there is no repetition, no fixed work - everything flows, »panta rhei« (Heraclitus).