A Parallel Image

A Parallel Image is an electronic camera obscura. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the contemporary principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered. The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using approximately 2,500 individual cables.

The work is an excellent example of the notion of atemporality, in its supposition of a parallel timeline, in which the technologies of today, don’t exist. In this parallel timeline, a technique of the past is required to create an effect which is oddly futuristic in its sensorial impact. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, A Parallel Image is technologically transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.

A Parallel Image was made in collaboration with Franz Büchinger, supported by Fels-Multiprint.