| A woman views the interactive computer-based installation "YOU:R:CODE" (2017), produced by Bernd Lintermann and Peter Weibel, at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in central Seoul. Newsis |
By Park Han-sol
A 1967 black-and-white composite photograph, produced by Austrian new media and post-conceptual artist Peter Weibel, shows a curious-looking technological "invention."
It combines images of a camera, walkie-talkie, speaker, television and telephone into one imaginary mini-electronic device that can perform every function a modern human would need.
What was an idealistic project for the artist nearly six decades ago has indeed become a reality for today's audiences with the advent of smartphones.
This prophetic photograph, entitled "Information Unit," offers a peek into the art world of Weibel, whose forward-looking oeuvre since the 1960s has become a present-day icon of media art.
| Installation view of Peter Weibel's retrospective, "respectively, Peter Weibel. Art as an Act of Cognition," at the MMCA / Courtesy of MMCA |
His retrospective, "respectively, Peter Weibel. Art as an Act of Cognition," mounted at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), brings in some 70 of his seminal works in the form of reproduced photography, digital poetry, expanded cinema and computer-based installations. The show has been jointly curated by the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Germany, where Weibel serves as chairman.
"Normally, media art is seen in the history of art as a medium of images, as a medium of representation to depict the world," Weibel, who could not attend the press preview in person held early this month at the museum, said in a video message.
"But I have a different position: I say the media are extensions of all sensory organs, artificial sensory organs. And with these organs, we don't only receive the world, we also produce the world."
| Peter Weibel's 11-channel video installation "Chants of the Pluriverse" (1986-88/2023) / Courtesy of MMCA |
The pieces spanning the two floors of the museum are as eye-catching as they are philosophical, aiming to convey that "art is the process of cognition and thinking that opens our eyes to the ontological difference between representation and reality," as Philipp Ziegler, head of ZKM's curatorial department, puts it.
The 11-channel video installation, "Chants of the Pluriverse," combines different commercial video footage, photography, film and digital special effects that the artist accumulated for two years in the late 1980s and remixes them to create an "audiovisual pluriverse."
This kaleidoscopic visualization of the modern age of technology is reminiscent of video art visionary Nam June Paik's psychedelic collages of electronic images created around the same time.
| "Alphabet Space" (2017), produced by Peter Weibel, Christian Lolkes and Adam Slowik / Newsis |
Since taking the helm of ZKM in 1999, Weibel has become increasingly aware of the significance of audience participation in his works.
These participatory installations, mostly nestled on the museum's second floor, are the elements that stand out the most in the show.
"YOU:R:CODE" ― the title with the double meaning of "your code" and "you are code" ― begins with visitors seeing themselves reflected in a mirror. What they will find next are four LED screens equipped with cameras ― all ready to scan the moving bodies and convert them into abstract digital data.
Accordingly, each viewer's silhouette is soon rendered onscreen as a collage of social media icons, genetic code and, finally, industrial readable barcodes.
| 'Bibliotheca Digitalis: Three Phases of Digitization" (2017), produced by Bernd Lintermann, Nikolaus Volzow and Peter Weibel / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol |
Visitors can also play around with a peculiar-looking 3D object in "Alphabet Space," which is capable of representing all 26 letters in the alphabet by itself through rotations.
"The artist encourages the viewer to write down any message with this object that would then appear on the digital screen in front. He thereby invites them to physically experience how we humans use languages to communicate and muse on how digital tools mediate that experience," MMCA's curator Hong Lee-ji explained.
There are even books with completely blank pages in "Bibliotheca Digitalis: Three phases of Digitization," whose texts describing the foundational theories of logical thinking only become magically visible when they are viewed through a transparent disc and projected onto an electronic screen.
"respectively, Peter Weibel. Art as an Act of Cognition" runs through May 14 at the MMCA Seoul.