interactive 3D-documentary-environment about right-wing extremism // 2001-2003
This work deals with a broad social phenomenon, the "right-wing extremism" and its precursors. I'm not a scientist, I understand my work as an approach to the topic, virtually as a research result.
While dealing with the issue it was fairly clear that this topic is not strictly regulated, quite the contrary, it is possible to explain the basics of our world when looking closer at right-wing extremism. You'll find everywhere points of contact, different parts meander toward psychology, sociology and the economy.
This led quickly to use a "ball of wool" as the visual metaphor. Debates, speaks, says, live around a center, without being sharp enough to define this center accurately in the middle of the ball of wool. Quite the contrary: the more we talk about the topic and do researchs, the farther away you are from the center.
In order to approach the subject, I've done interviews with friends, and asked them for example, whether they have prejudices and why.
These interviews and video-snippets of me, reading out of important books I then interweaved all threads using contextual links.
The interviews were divided into separate questions, each question was transcribed and results in a long line of text. This line of text was wrapped around an invisible ball. This was done with all materials and produces a writhing ball of text fragments, sonsisting of interwoven threads of texts.
Interaction
The user initially gets an entry into this world of discourse. Depending on the context, offers are made thanks to the integrated network of content appropriate to the current context. the user can now decide whether to continue listening to the currently running text, or switch to another text thread. Thus, the user can navigate through the world of truths.
Additionally all link connections for the current text thread are shown as spline curves; it allows the user to get an idea of the complexity at least to some extent.
The video of the interview is projected onto a shell surrounding the ball of wool, the text-thread advances synchronously to the video. This shell is constituted from the current playing situation, because every point of the shell is coupled with a position on the text thread. The link positions on the shell are moving in relation to the movement of the text-threads. Through these many slow/ fast/ opposing movements, the video image gets distorted. The shell still has its own heartbeat, trying to regenerate the image at periodic intervals.
Application
The application uses several open source libraries, OpenSeneGraph is used for 3D representation Xerces to parse the XML files. The application is programmed in c++ and partially in ObjC using OpenGL to display the 3D scene.
Exhibitions / Festivals
- 2004 // transmediale, Berlin
- 2004 // Ars Electronica Center, Linz