FLICK_KA MIRROR

Interactive Installation

ZKM_Foyer with the photo automat in the background

Following the development in 2008, a non-interactive version of the installation »FLICK_KA MIRROR« was installed in the Media Museum. For the anniversary exhibition, the work was extended so that the visitor influences the process of presentation by his/her presence.

The basis of the installation »FLICK_KA«, by Peter Weibel and Matthias Gommel is the redemption of the democratic promise of photography: in the age of painting, art experts and social elites shared the monopoly of picture production. In contrast to this aristocratic medium, photography is a democratic pictorial medium, since everyone can take a picture of everything – and above all – of himself. In addition, the installation »FLICK_KA« offers visitors the possibility to also be present with their portraits in the representation space »museum«, which had been closed to the general community for a long time.

»FLICK_KA MIRROR« makes the portrait gallery interactively accessible in the museum space: if the visitor approaches the project portrait pictures, the video camera takes his/her portrait live so that they can see themselves on the projection screen. After a short moment, a pan movement moves into the portrait picture, whereas the pixels in the camera image are replaced in increasingly finer steps by portraits from automatic photo booths in the installation »FLICK_KA«. Access to the portraits deposited in a databank is coincidental, following only the criterion that the color value of the picture is most similar to the area of the camera picture to be replaced. In this way, the user experiences himself as part of a community, which becomes his mirror image.

Credits