Carlos Katastrofsky - stimulus/response :: October 5, 2007; 7 p.m. :: Projektraum Sonnensegel, Pressgasse 28, 1040 Vienna, Austria :: Until October 19, 2007; Mon - Fri from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Viennese media artist Carlos Katastrofsky (a.k.a. Michael Kargl) exhibits works created since 2004, including Net Art, Software Art and interactive installations. Katastrofsky deals with New Media Art as well as with the pure conceptual analysis of contemporary forms of communication and interaction and thereby scrutinises its contributions to current cultural productions. Point of departure for the exhibition titled stimulus/response is Pavlov’s experiment demonstrating the conditional reflexes of animals as well as humans. The exhibition concept is dedicated to the notion of the input / output-pattern on different levels, transferring the pattern to well-known everyday acts of communication.

Induced by the common assumption that there always has to be a cause for any act, the artist investigates technical environments regarding their usability in the creation of artistic works: the photo series “entropy” ,for example, deals with the physical concept of entropy and expands it by means of inclusion of dislocated net images. These Images are produced by translating thermodynamic acts in “fleshspace” with web-cams into the production of net-pictures. The concept of locality within the context of global networks, in connection with the ongoing trend to overall surveillance is illustrated in an unconventional manner by manipulating time and space.

This surveillance, read as some kind of public voyeurism, ties in with the pseudo-pornographic work stimulus/response and functions as a leitmotif for the exhibition. With this “porn machine” the viewer is involved into a game that hints at the underlying market mechanisms of seriality and repetition. The interactive installation and its economic implications refer to the auspicious messages of the capitalist system which constitutes the basis of the net and is also examined in the work “objects of desire” within a conceptual as well as applied setting.

Contradictory to these structuring principles of the web is the prevailing unstructured mass of infinite data. SINS - a work consisting of five videos, each of approximately one minute length ? deals with the discrepancy between order and chaos by condensing randomly collected audio-visual material. The generative video-installation welcometothejungle, on the other hand, produces data images in a self controlled manner. Based on a continuous black and white overlap this piece can be seen as a digital 0/1 phantasm in the shape of a simulated Perpetuum Mobile.