Nikolaus Schletterer

SUSPENDED II pursues the ideas formulated in the exhibition SUSPENDED at the Gallery
Widauer in Innsbruck 2009 by expanding spatially and at the same time by radically reducing /
condensing the information in visual representations of our notion of the structure of the
world. The installation raises questions about the “truth” of images, their construction, and the
constitution of our cognitive perception.

Starting point of the works are constructed and photographed digital images found on the
Internet. Assuming that there is no existence without perception, and that today the visual
perception and recognition of the world – or better said: of the generated knowledge about the
world – is only ascertainable through meta-data, the works are the attempt to “distil” purely
atmospheric information through the process of a radical reduction and, similarly to the
mechanisms of our memory, to generate their very essence not from a precise and detailed
flow of reality but from alterable parts and sources.

Unlike in the first series of SUSPENDED which presented reductions of images to 3×3 pixels
which each comprises the average volume of visual information available in the corresponding
area of the original image, the images in SUSPENDED II are indeed done through the same
technique, but this time in order to generate a visual module which then is algorithmically
transformed in a two-dimensional coordinates system and whereby generates an endlessly
repeatable pattern. The decision to generate patterns instead of simplified pictures was taken
in order to build a reference to the cultural milieu of the exhibition which is located at the
crossroads between european and north-african arabic culture. The images seem to be familiar
due to their ornamental character, but at the same time they should provoke a visual
“overexcitation”.

In the spatial installation, the pattern images are grouped according to their source images.
Thus, the images on the floor are representations of the “inside”, of the organic matter and its
evolution. The images on the side walls are related to the “outside”, the inorganic matter, that
is the representation of the visually non perceivable (from very small / quarks to the
incommensurable / universe). Images related to perception in general (visual, olfactory,
selective perception) are placed on the entrance and the front walls. This disposition is still to
be confirmed.

The viewer can “navigate” through this condensed and mediatized visual database of
fundamental elements and concepts which form our understanding of the world.

[Text by Andrei Siclodi]