Combined audiovisual installation and 268-pages book
The World Mountain Machine shows architectural morphology as a historical process and translates it into a visual language. The spectator is offered a view of a process that develops over the course of the whole exhibition: A world mountain (a mythological expression of world “as it is” in its cosmic order in form of a concrete architecture) is created that transcends through different stages of evolution based on the sensory input coming from the venue of the exhibition and methods derived from computational biology and fractal geometry. The spectator thus becomes the active participant of the evolution of the architecture that is presented to him while at the same time he is only displayed a snapshot of the whole development. The work highlights the ephemeral nature of a historical process while at the same time creating an abstract mathematical model for process morphology throughout the exhibition. It shows the ongoing development of the architecture that will be completed on the last day of the exhibition.
Ulrich Gehmann (Dipl.-Biol., lic. oec. HSG et MA History) is founder of the working group »Formatting of Social Spaces« at University of Karlsruhe and editor-in-chief of the journal »New Frontiers in Spatial Concepts«.
Martin Reiche is an audiovisual artist living and working in Berlin. http://www.martinreiche.com
Work premiered at:
Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design ETDM, Tallinn, Estonia (May 2014 - August 2014)
Also see in this issue of Interartive: Ulrich Gehmann And Martin Reiche, "The World Mountain or The Construction of the Virtual Real"