For many years, Kirtsen Geisler studied the transitional point between the material and the abstract, between the physical and the spiritual. In earlier installations, she employed the medium of warmth as evidence of a lost physical presence, as a kind of imaginary echo in a material memory. In her video installation ‘Table of memories’ she used a thermographic camera to visualise traces of warmth. Registration therefore, which presented something that was no longer there. In her installation ‘Change’, which was simultaneously presented at the Vishal in Haarlem and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1995, existing video material was alternated with live images of the spectators at both locations, mixed in over an ISDN connection. The spectators materialised in the image, as it were, and then disappeared again. For a short while the boundaries of place and time were dissolved and the spectators were virtually present as part of the installation.

Geisler’s installation ‘Who are you?’ places the physical body in double projection alongside the ideal, virtual body from cyberspace. One image shows the portrait of a young woman looking rigidly into the camera; a second image next to this shows her computer generated, virtual likeness. This computer image is not generated by the usual ‘motion tracking’, but by using the new software which not only permits 3D-modelling but also complete calculation of lighting, space and movement.

After a while, both images look to the side, to each other. They then face rigidly forward again and put the question “Who are you?” The question holds no fear but simply surprise at each other’s presence. It is an attempt at orientation, who and what am I and how do I relate to that virtual world. Just how artificial and present am I myself? Eventually, a kind of triangular relationship develops since the question is just as relevant to the viewer.