ABSTRACT ¦ ART + SCIENCE ¦ MODEL / METHODS ¦ AN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN ¦ MEDIA-SYSTEMIC ART ¦ COMMUNICATION OF SPACES ¦ COMMUNICATION SPACE AND INTERACTION SPACE ¦ THE CUE ¦ NOTES ¦
T H E   C U E



The cue consists of a glass basin filled with water and a six-channel surrounding field marked off by loudspeakers - the acoustic space. The moving water's own dynamics functions as physical interface - an expression of its specific morphology.

Set into motion, a number of irregular disturbances take place in the water. These gradually form a stream (laminar stream), the behavior of which describes the systemic event of a fluid. Objects with the specific weight of the fluid carry out these "outcomes," which are "depicted" in the acoustic space. What emerges thereby is a new, acoustically defined psychological interface that obtains its dimension from the dynamics of the liquid system and, on an explicitly sensory level, confronts three forms of perception with one another: the haptic (tactile), the visual, and the auditory. The objective is to transfer the primary forms of perception to additional experiential spaces and to provoke other spatial experiences.

For this purpose, a network of satellites - a network of interaction units linked up to each other as well as to the core installation, and, thus, a communication and event structure - will be set up: a netspace that is likewise subject to the dynamics of the liquid. The interweaving of the spatial tones which determine the satellite station with the tonal behavior of the core installation and the exchange of alphanumeric encoded information is designed to provoke the experience of specific characteristics of netspace as the behavior of a self-organizing system. The system takes shape by means of programs that are capable of learning as a result of pattern recognition processes.

In this context, communication means both the behavior of the communication system as well as the exchange of alphanumeric encoded information. System and information exist - with respect to structure and meaning - in a reflexive relationship. Pieces of information are mediators of the formation of the communication system; at the same time, they obtain their meaning through its specific structure. To communicate by means of *Liquid Space* will mean: to make use of *Liquid Space*, to communicate with it, and, at the same time, to set it in motion. The netspace as the project's forum of public discourse is - like hand and water - an intervention medium in the functional context of *Liquid Space*. The behavior of the fluid serves as physical interface into the systemic. The behavior of the sound in space serves as physical interface into the netspace.

*Liquid Space* thus stands for the systemic behavior of "spaces" that are interwoven with one another and for the experience of interweaving, not for the means - in other words, for the shape that the project is preliminarily imparted by means of the cue.

The point is [in analogy to the idea of materially functionalizing the term liquid as this is used in media theory] to transfer theoretical assumptions into actual practice - that communication art not only participates in communication space, but rather, by means of its functional and organizational structure, generates it and imparts an expanded definition to it. As media-systemic art that makes these specific phenomena able to be experienced and consciously considered, it is in accordance with the paradigms and issues upon which research focuses in the empirical social sciences.

The model presented at Ars Electronica 99 represents the considerations undertaken up to now. Bearing in mind the provisional nature of any form of knowledge, the discourse as a means of obtaining insight implies to art [as well] possible modifications of the model, and thus also changes in the "shape" of *Liquid Space* - both in the form of the installation as well as of the project.

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