level five

Audio/video installation, 7-parts, each 330 x 248 cm, 12:05 min, O.K Center for Contemporary Art Linz, Hubert Blanz, 2005

Into urban in-between worlds and seemingly unreal places is where we are led by the artistic work by Hubert Blanz, whose media installations are always created against the background of his experience with multifaceted sound experiments. What interests him most is the extreme artificiality of special spatial situations, such as publicly accessible passages, waiting rooms or transit zones, which the anthropologist Marc Augé described as "non-places". Located in the urban world and yet exterritorial – adapted to special human needs such as acceleration and mobility, and yet artificially technoid.

In addition, in his photography and video works Blanz generates virtual architectures and seemingly utopian cityscapes of suggestive plasticity, whose basic visual elements are derived from the micro-world of electronic components. From the raw material of circuit boards and carrier elements with control circuits Hubert Blanz forms spatial constellations that the camera flies over, accompanied by dramatic electronic sound. For example, a video work arranged like in a film scenario – "digital surroundings" from 2001 – creates the impression of a helicopter flight hectically racing over a futuristic metropolis.

Blanz constantly seeks to evoke feelings of exposure, of social destabilization or the alienation of a place, a space. At the same time he also approximates actually existing architectures, using their design as the basis for his multi-part, walk-in video-sound installations. In the installation "Level 5" conceived for the series O.K spektral, Blanz focuses on lonely-looking halls in a hospital complex. In search of spaces representing the parameters of transfer, of stopovers and waiting zones, he came across the interior architecture of the Vienna General Hospital (AKH). Despite the colored signage system throughout the hospital, its endless halls call to mind disorientation, isolation and room constellations marked by the absence of people.

It is only through shadow-like bodies sporadically passing by and the sound composition that is interlinked with the image projections that something human is inscribed in the labyrinthine visualization. Actual voices are hardly audible. Instead it is the noise of machines from the operating room, elevator announcements, ventilator noises, the sound of breathing and other sounds that form the psycho-social sonic image of the installation. The combination of moving and static picture material reinforces the spatial dimension of the walk-in video-sound installation.

Roland Schöny


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level five Audio/video installation, 7-parts, each 330 x 248 cm, 12:05 min, O.K Center for Contemporary Art Linz, Hubert Blanz, 2005 Into urban in-between worlds and seemingly unreal places is where we are led by the artistic work by Hubert Blanz, whose media installations are always created against the background of his experience with multifaceted sound experiments. What interests him most is the extreme artificiality of special spatial situations, such as publicly accessible passages, waiting rooms or transit zones, which the anthropologist Marc Augé described as "non-places". Located in the urban world and yet exterritorial – adapted to special human needs such as acceleration and mobility, and yet artificially technoid. In addition, in his photography and video works Blanz generates virtual architectures and seemingly utopian cityscapes of suggestive plasticity, whose basic visual elements are derived from the micro-world of electronic components. From the raw material of circuit boards and carrier elements with control circuits Hubert Blanz forms spatial constellations that the camera flies over, accompanied by dramatic electronic sound. For example, a video work arranged like in a film scenario – "digital surroundings" from 2001 – creates the impression of a helicopter flight hectically racing over a futuristic metropolis. Blanz constantly seeks to evoke feelings of exposure, of social destabilization or the alienation of a place, a space. At the same time he also approximates actually existing architectures, using their design as the basis for his multi-part, walk-in video-sound installations. In the installation "Level 5" conceived for the series O.K spektral, Blanz focuses on lonely-looking halls in a hospital complex. In search of spaces representing the parameters of transfer, of stopovers and waiting zones, he came across the interior architecture of the Vienna General Hospital (AKH). Despite the colored signage system throughout the hospital, its endless halls call to mind disorientation, isolation and room constellations marked by the absence of people. It is only through shadow-like bodies sporadically passing by and the sound composition that is interlinked with the image projections that something human is inscribed in the labyrinthine visualization. Actual voices are hardly audible. Instead it is the noise of machines from the operating room, elevator announcements, ventilator noises, the sound of breathing and other sounds that form the psycho-social sonic image of the installation. The combination of moving and static picture material reinforces the spatial dimension of the walk-in video-sound installation. Roland Schöny
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