hubert blanz
digital surroundings
audio/video installation, 16:9 format, 11:14 min, Hubert Blanz, 2001
The Downward Gaze
Wolfgang Fiel
The analogy is obvious, the result baffling. In his work titled Digital Surroundings Hubert Blanz creates a kind of ‘patchwork’ with an assembly of dismantled CPU circuit boards. On a closer look, one
discovers that the forms of the electronic components soldered onto a conductor
board possess a significant potential for construction, which Blanz uses as ‘hardware’ for building an associative spatial structure.
By interpreting the assembled configuration as an urban structure, he creates an
analogy between the sculptural qualities of his source materials and the
morphology of an urban landscape. In order for it to be perceived as an urban
landscape Blanz turns the viewer into a helicopter passenger, who, flying over
the densely staggered buildings in a virtually endless urban agglomeration gets
a sense of what Christoph Asendorf termed as the “spatial revolution” in his book Super Constellation 1), which has radically changed our visual perception since the beginning of
aviation in the early twentieth century. Super Constellation was the name of
the legendary long-distance planes by Lockheed, a leading company in civil
aviation. For Asendorf it stands for the entire era of civil aviation and space
travel, but can only be comprehended when looking out of the plane’s window.
Initially represented by the virtual network of international civil aviation as
the final cartographical description of the world, it was given yet another
global dimension by the World Wide Web. Having altered not only our perception
of space forever but also the very appearance of built urban space, the Web is
not merely virtual in nature. Taking this as his leitmotif, Blanz liberates the
visual aspects of the electronic components of their intended functions and
heightens their physical presence by shifts in scale creating thus the
impression of a real cityscape.
While the soundtrack of the visual flight shows that the positivist paradigm of
total overview, and therefore also total control, could be a self-deception,
the modulated and incessant sound of helicopter rotors triggers associations
with apocalyptic dislocation.
In Blanz’s work, exact simulation does not result in concise realism – and system errors are part of the programme.
1) Christian Asendorf, Super Constellation. Flugzeug und Raumrevolution, SpringerWienNewYork, Vienna, 1997.
Translations: Nita Tandon, Vienna