Susanna Flock & Leonhard Müllner, 2019

MORGENERST – ABENDLETZT

audio-video installation, materials from video games and from YouTube Let’s Plays, TV monitors

[sound of steps and heavy breathing]

Wow, that‘s gorgeous!
What?! A Fox! Come here!
You‘re like going through the side of the mountain.
Ah, yeah I think I will be able to get through this, using these paths on the side of the mountain.
Let’s go up.
How close am I?
I’m getting there.

In Morgenerst – Abendletzt is a series of partially buried digital screens that display the journey of celestial bodies – sun, moon and stars – in their paths across the sky from sunrise to sunset. In addition to that, a series of descriptions of people moving through landscapes can be heard. However, these images are not real, but digital renderings taken from the worlds of computer games. Likewise, the travelers are not wandering through physically real spaces, but through virtual territories that they encounter in these games.

In the installation, the digital horizon is the line where the physical world merges with the simulation, marking the meeting point of the digital sky and the soil enclosing the screen.

The sound material was extracted from a specific genre of online video called “Let’s Plays”, in which computer players perform a complete run-through solving an entire game. Overwhelmed by the digital environment, the players share their enthusiasm for the experience in the artificial nature. Their voices form the soundtrack to this media installation about the mediated experience of nature.

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Susanna Flocks (*1988) and Leonhard Müllners (*1987) artistic work is characterized by a conceptual approach and experimental production strategies. The examination of the effects of digitization forms a thematic basis for both of them. While Flock also sees language as material for her work, Müllner often uses public space as an artistic playing field for site-specific interventions.

susannaflock.net & leonhardmuellner.at

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