On the Nature of Things

ALEXANDER HAHN

electronic media artist

ON THE NATURE OF THINGS

1996, 5 channel, synchronized video installation with 4 monitors, 1 projector and rain apparatus

SD video, 29:37’, loop, sound

Documentation of installation, part of my exhibition «Memory of Light - Light of Memory»

at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Oct 28, 2022 - Apr 02, 2023

In the original with four stripped TV tubes, the SG version with four Hantarex monitors on black bases, rain machine (four glass tubes with glass faucets, aluminum base) video projector, water basin, marble slab, water pump

Artificial rain falls on a marble slab in the middle of a water basin. A beating heart is projected onto the stone. Four monitors in the corners of the room show scenes from the artist's life between 1987 and 1995 with locations in Basel, Sicily, Rapperswil, Warsaw, New York. The original recordings were made in various, historic video formats - Video8, Super VHS and Hi8 - and digitized in time-lapse. Through frame-synchronized playback, the four channels preserve the structure of the videotapes set by the random camera cuts, but they differ through the varying excerpts from a scene which were determined in post-production.

The rain machine was inspired by a scientific experiment that investigated the dampening effect of rain on the formation of ocean waves. The beating heart is based on 12 X-ray images from a German university hospital that the artist obtained around 1993.

Original computer sketch preparing for the exhibition at the Galeria Foksal in Warsaw in 1995