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A model is the formalization of a conception, to which methods are sought to make it possible to test whether the model conforms to reality or not. This corresponds to the image of testing science; the exploring of questions that have been raised is frequently assigned a lesser value in the process of gaining insight. Conversely, the self-conception of art can basically be traced back to the fact that it poses questions and, as a rule, does not concern itself with the answers. This task is left up to protagonists in its applied disciplines - mostly disciplines of mediation - and has to do for the most part with already formalized questions (works of art). The discussion of the processes and organizational structures of this formalization, in which what is generally designated as art is represented, takes place only marginally. And, in general, science also declares itself responsible for that which emerges from these questions (whether having to do with space or with biotechnology) - the process of calling art into question, a process beyond fashion and polemics, in the sense of art's theoretical and methodological foundation. Art would perpetuate by means of this "lack of responsibility" its romantic understanding as being committed to the idea of genius - a tradition which "media art" also seems to be following in spite of its methodological approaches which have been propagated as new in many quarters. Nevertheless, on the way from modernism to post-modernism, a convergence of art and science has taken place. If science was the testing discipline and art the poser of questions, then these hard and fast standpoints have softened. Science is said to be methodologically dominated. "Within disciplines, questions are only then allowed when there is a method available for them to be handled." 9 At least, questions are evaluated as sensible only when they are assessed as capable of being answered. Ernst Pöppel inverts this valence: "[...] in that we have, up to now, made possible unposed questions, stimulated still-concealed ways of thinking, and launched still-undiscovered artistic processes." From the community of science, working is transformed into a collective process, a network-linked association of knowledge, and the consciousness of insight as a process, as a temporary state mutates into a collective processual art. From art, the method of posing questions metamorphoses into science, the sole task of which is to test questions. Communication as a method of gaining insight forces its way into art as a discourse in the service of an increase in objectivity. Implicit in this are the replacement of the creator with the initiator and - in accordance with cognitive theory - the replacement of subjectivity with objectivity. In science, progress occurs as a process of construction employing available materials; to an increasing extent, art also replaces its conception of an avant-garde oriented on primary objects with "derivation from previously generated results." (10) Of sociopolitical importance in this process are not only the shift from individually obsessed knowledge to a "public good," but also (at least according to theory) the consequences effecting the marketing of art, since this transformational process opposes the interests of commercialization and thus, of course, also artists' social interests that have been valid heretofore! As an experimental design and work-in-progress, *Liquid Space* is dedicated to designing a model of this shifted paradigm in media [systemic] art as well as, at the same time, to testing this model by means of publication (and discussion) of its methods and real (monetary, social, technological) conditions.
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