Ulrike Gabriel
«Perceptual Arena»

In this interactive installation, using a virtual sensor the visitor manipulates and constructs computer-generated, abstract forms (an interface between objects in the space and the viewer) shown on a large projection screen. The more intensely the viewing is directed at the ‹arena,› the more concentrated and complex the audiovisual forms and sounds become. «A two-dimensional surface can be viewed as three-dimensional, with the missing, third dimension left open to interpretation. The spatial paradox created here is applied to the two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional segment of reality selected through the viewing. And the values of the viewer’s static movement serve the virtual sensor, which offers parameters for the new three-dimensional interpretation of the two-dimensional representation. The more intense the viewing, the more the observed view of reality condenses to an ever greater complexity; the less intense the viewing, the more it dissolves.»

Source: Ulrike Gabriel, in: INM Institut für Neue Medien an der Städelschule (Hg.), INM 1990—1994, Frankfurt/Main 1996, p. 90.