Peter Weibel

In the interactive computer installation »Das tangible Bild« [The Tangible Image], you are standing in front of a Cartesian coordinate grid. You are filmed standing in front of this grid by a camera, you see the image projected on the opposite wall. When you touch the rubber screen of the monitor, which stands on a pedestal in the middle of the room, the projected image warps. Thus, you can interact with the image via a three-dimensional »touch screen« in real time. Each time you touch the screen, behind which sensors are installed, information is sent to a computer to which the camera’s live images are transferred. In the computer, the signals of the warping of the screen converted into digital data influence the data representing your image within the space. The screen and the Cartesian grid become identical. Real distortions of the rubber screen appear in the projection image as distortions of the grid in front of you. An interface (the rubber screen) is switched on between the grid and the projection image. It is not the changes in the grid that affect the projection, but the changes in the interface. Is our world merely the product of an interface technology, the interface of the natural body?