zerseher (deviewer) - interactive installation, 1991

visitors of an exhibition find themselves in front of a painting. Upon coming closer they notices that exactly the spot of the picture they are looking at is changing under their gaze. the picture reacts on the way the viewer are looking at it and they never see it in the same condition twice.

technical setup: 
a framed rear-projection on a canvas displays the painting. behind this screen an eye-tracker is installed (camera, infrared-light, pc, video-tracking software). the camera is pointing at the viewers eyes. a software analyses the video-signal and locates the center of the iris and a reflections of an infrared-lightsource in the viewers eyes. with this it can calculate exactly on which part of the painting the viewer is looking at. these positions are then sent to a graphic program which is distorting the picture exactly at these coordinates. this means that as soon as a viewer looks at a particular part of the picture this part is distorted. 
if no one looks at the picture for more than 30 seconds the picture goes back to its original condition.


The project was developed as a reaction to the general attitude to computers as tools rather than medium still in the end of the 80s. The painter swapped brush for a mouse, but used it almost exactly the same way. This installation was to promote one of the most crucial qualities of computer as a medium, it's interactivity or mutual dialogue. The painting chosen for this installation "boy with a child-drawing in his hand" by Francesco Carotto shows the first documented child drawing in art history - an appropriate metaphor for the state of new media art in late 1980s. In the past an old master might leave an impression in the mind of the passive onlooker, now the onlooker can leave an impression on the old master.
co-author: dirk luesebrink