Basically, reality - or what we think it is - cannot be reproduced. How often do I experience an enthusiastic recapitulation of a stirring impression when another voice classifies the same thing as not very memorable. As if both were at a different event or saw or heard different things. It is similar with the claim and expectation of a comprehensive truth, or rather the loss of truth of the remembered object.

When attempting a media translation of the original, this loss is inevitable, since the original event presents itself as an unrepeatable moment of perception and is composed of a sensory impression consisting of an unquantifiable amount of details, observations and evaluations. Even in the case of a subject that is unchangeable as an object, a painting for example, we always see things differently according to our current mood and constitution, without the object under observation being different.

To compensate for this sensory impression is then incumbent on our ability to read the new medium, i.e. to recognize and interpret the systemically immanent non-representational possibilities. Dealing with these surrogates is an everyday occurrence and usually receives no special attention. However, a significant deficiency appears in the aesthetic context, i.e. in the sensual reproduction as an image or as an acoustic reproduction.

In this context, the painter complains about the impossibility to imagine the effect of his wall-sized painting when looking at a reproduction of this work in a catalog. The photographic representation of the complex three-dimensional object of a sculpture or sculpture in space appears even more abstract. Interestingly enough, we know most works of art through illustrations, and we can guess that the reality conveyed by the media in books and magazines only reveals its information content through the ability to read these illustrations. In this sense, there are of course better and worse photographs that can be questioned especially with regard to the interpretation of spatial aspects. In other words, there are illustrations, or better, there are captured glances that already represent self-interpreted perspectives. Thus, the aestheticized world of goods is certainly the largest field of experimentation for dramaturgical image effects in the sense of diversely optimized sales strategies. Also, the reference of photography described by Roland Barthes, composed of reality, the past and the assumption that the object was there, is only a partial aspect of the knowledge of decoding pictorial effects. The workability of digital image worlds and the ability to read out information after almost two hundred years of dealing with this medium. But what do we actually see? Or to extend the problem directly to the reproduction of audio-visual processes, or to pure listening: What do we actually hear?

Art forms that can be characterized by visual and acoustic practices, such as a site-specific sound installation or kinetic sound objects with repetitive loop structures or randomly dependent interaction sequences. They are usually filmed as video with sound in their documentary post-processing, in order to enrich an artist's website as a work example.

This widespread practice illustrates on the one hand the self-evident use and exploitation of digital storage procedures, especially for time-based forms of artistic expression, but also shows on the other hand the helpless handling of the loss through media. Anyone who has ever had the opportunity to experience a sound work in public space, in nature or as an architecture-specific intervention on site knows this experience of the abundance of unique moments and listening moments, the short-lived nature of a particular perception of sounds/images and the dependence of such events on a myriad of influencing, simultaneous other factors. That which is conveyed and solidified as an impression then corresponds more to a dynamic experience content and a special concentration on very fast passing observations than to a static sequence of events. The challenges of the sensory impressions that arise remain untransferable, the human ear hears differently than a microphone, and the human eye sees differently than a camera lens.

Sometimes, however, documentary moments are created in images or sounds that come very close to one's own experience, for example through photographs in which a remembered experience has culminated and been captured in a special way, or through a sound recording that seems so real in its authenticity that the listener immediately feels transported to another time or place. But these examples remain exceptions to the fundamental question of the depictability of an art form, in which the receptive conditions become an important aspect of the artistic concept. The moving image document then relates to reality in the same way as any section of a story line, in which the props remain recognizable, but whose textual context becomes unrecognizable or mutates into something entirely new. Heiko Wommelsdorf's attempt to document an exhaust air shaft is a good example of the special nature of the problem:

In the assembly hall, an exhibition room of the HBK Braunschweig with enormous size and ceiling height, he installed an exhaust air shaft, within the wall panelling as a contribution to an exhibition above head, at a height of four meters. This unit corresponds exactly to the range of commercially available ventilation technology as found in wet rooms and bathrooms. Only the occasion of an exhibition and the danger of confusion with a picture, which seems to have jumped out of the presented hanging height of the neighboring positions, suggests that this is an artistic strategy. What else would an object of this kind be doing at this place? Every now and then the front grille moves, stimulated by a ventilated wind draft, producing subtle rattling noises. The object thus fulfills all the characteristics that correspond to the everyday perception in other places and uses of such an aggregate, only to be overlooked or overheard there as a rule. Here, the exact opposite occurs, and even more so: not only does the presentation of the object in this exposed manner transpose it in its function and reinvention to a perceptual occasion of a special kind, but an extraordinary constellation of events is created. Making this exhaust shaft the starting point for a rarely intensive listening experience.

The active fan behind the grating produces not only a wind movement and a random rattling noise, but also a permanent resonance hum of the entire wall covering. Only now does the unusual placement on the large surface become obvious. Here, at this point of the drywall construction, there is apparently a transmission point that sets the entire wall in vibration and creates a sound that seems to be out of proportion to its cause in terms of its size and volume. Interestingly, however, the acoustic event remains in a conclusive relationship to the optical object. The exhaust air shaft, which is small in proportion to the total wall extension, remains the optical point of origin from which everything seems to emanate, although it is perceived in an almost surreal proportion to the acoustic extension. In addition, the situation experiences a special dramaturgy in that the volume ratio to the size of the room is perceived as rather quiet and permanent and is thus quickly overlaid by the background noise of the visitors talking to each other. Only sometimes it appears and then suddenly, in the spatial unfolding of its context, it becomes an extremely intense audiovisual challenge for the senses.

Wanting to document such an artistic statement in its entire experiential content seems impossible. What a moving image sequence can capture as video, for example, would not even begin to be a viable piece of information about the location and its specific situation without commentary. A selective sound recording may be helpful to enable (or to let arise) an idea of the size of a room, but already the differentiation of the resonance sound of the wall to its spatial expansion and distribution as spatial sound shows the limits of acoustic representability. Certainly, in these grey areas of documentability, other strategies are more appropriate. Perhaps it might be helpful not to rely on the moving image medium's apparent and, under other circumstances, superior action proximity, but to abandon the principle of real representation in favor of an associative approach. This could consist, for example, in stimulating the imagination of the recipient rather than operating with actual set pieces of a media here- and now-reality. Of course, this would create apparent inaccuracies in conventional understanding. But isn't it much more intensive and also more revealing for every reader of a text and viewer of photographs to associate their own idea of the causal relationships? Then the description of a vibrating exhaust air shaft becomes the individual questioning of an animated recollection of all auditory phenomena similar in memory and certainly some are very close to this resonance.

Norderheistedt, Mai 2013