L 12
Helmut Mark
L 12, 1989
Installation Computer (Commodore AMIGA 2000), monitor (Commodore), 3,5" floppy disc, 2 glass elements, connecting parts (plastic angles) Total dimensions: 200 x 40 x 45 cm Auflage 2/2
GF0000069.00.0-1991
Artwork text
Digitally generated computer graphics first become widely available in the mid-1980s. The ‘Commodore Amiga’ personal computer proves popular with consumers in part because it serves as a platform for early two-dimensional videogames. In his installation "L 12", the media artist Helmut Mark probes the material and aesthetic premises that underlie this novel technology. The computer sculpture simulates a slightly larger-than-life abstract human figure. A glass body cradles the computer as its figurative heart roughly at chest height. Face to face with the beholder, the screen shows a computer-generated animation. The digits 0 through 9, constructed as virtual three-dimensional models and continually morphing into one another, rotate in an endless loop. The transparent glass body not only lends the computer an aspect of weightlessness, it also reveals the indispensable power cable running, like the central nervous system in humans, through the body and up into the brain. The immateriality of computer-generated imagery clashes with the sculptural physical reality of the infrastructure that sustains it. (Jürgen Tabor)