Jeffrey Shaw
«The Virtual Museum»

An exact reproduction of the exhibition space is shown on a large monitor placed on a circular, motorized platform. Sitting in front of the screen in an armchair, visitors can navigate their way through four further virtual spaces by using the weight of their body to tip or swivel the chair. Each of these spaces contains different things: a gallery of pictures with running captions; an accumulation of sculptures consisting of letters of the alphabet; characters from the kanji alphabet on which sequences of film can be seen; and floating letters that become a source of light. This ‘Virtual Museum' functions only in part as a visual memory facility. Although every artistic medium is represented in it, paintings, sculptures, films and the computer-generated space itself are all transformed into signs that can be interpreted only with the help of specialist knowledge.