Stefan Baltensperger: “baltensperger.dyingpixels”
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Stefan Baltensperger: baltensperger.dyingpixels
baltensperger.dyingpixels
Multimedia installation (monitor, computer, picture frame, 3 x oil and oilpastelchalk on canvas), 2011
Global communication and the sharing of information in the Internet lead to structurally determined standardisations and normalisations spanning all cultures and languages. The price paid for this globalisation, mobility, and flexibility lies in the neglect and marginalisation of a variety of means of expression and representation establishing cultural identity. Media artist Stefan Baltensperger is very much aware of this phenomenon and makes it the back- ground of his project baltensperger Computer language, he says, is the epitome of modern, standardised language. Programming languages usually are based on simplified English and standardised terminology and concepts. This system does not know any cultural identifications, e.g. inherent in languages, no regional or local specifics.
The artist counteracts this assimilation inherent in the system by coming up with his own programming language, called baltensperger, written in Swiss German, his own dialect. Commands like “Programmteil wo_immerwider_gmacht_wird”
(“repitition”) or “Feischtergroessi” (“window size”) can be seen as an artists digression attaching personal identity to a code. His intervention, referring to a universal operating system actually encompassing almost all our social acting and communicating, can be seen as an attempt to counteract this encompassing.
The installation baltensperger.dyingpixels is based on a code written in baltensperger.The code, which is the basis of the digital self-portrait of the artist that is displayed on the wall in a frame, can be read on three black canvases. The portrait shows black spots, i.e. missing pixels. The artist programmed the self-portrait in a way that every 15 minutes one more pixel will be deleted so that the portrait will have vanished exactly one year after the – statistically pre-estimated – death of the artist. Stefan Baltensperger chooses the self-portrait, a traditional topic in art referring to the search for one’s identity and the questioning of one’s mortality. He adapts this historic motif to the media culture of our times in which the questions regarding the archiving of digital data, programmes, and cultural goods becomes more and more urgent and virulent. Stefan Baltensperger ponders these questions appropriately provokingly and humorously, and less fatalistically than it may seem at first sight.
/ www.stefanbaltensperger.ch
/ http://stefanbaltensperger.com