A R C H I V E1 9 9 7  
15th
  Fabio Itapura de Miranda & Gisela Domschke
Bound
  France 1996
Cd-rom, colour, mono
 
Bound begins with a VR image of an American canyon through which you can navigate - the height differences appear at the bottom of the image. You can also zoom into the cracks and tears, all using a simple mouse gesture. And yet, the simple opening of this cd-rom is in stark contrast to the rest. The content is not in fact literally about panoramic vistas of overwhelming nature. If there has to be a connection then it could be in a metaphorical sense: a panoramic report of an age. Using a kind of interactive games, you can call up images from the turbulent sixties. Fragmentary monochrome interview bites with the Beatles, Lennon and Ono in bed at the hair peace performance in Amsterdam, but politically charged happenings as well, like the May riots of 68 in Paris and the Algerian conflict. What you notice is the poor quality of the television images of that time. That deficient aesthetic makes the production like a sort of alternative Reader’s Digest from a strange era. The atmosphere is not actually nostalgic, but the design breathes a trendy retrosphere. We see stills of women with bleached afro hair-do's and glitter tops, creamy psychedelics and op-art-like trance images, as if the cd-rom wants to make it seem plausible that the culture breach that was manifest then, is current once more, albeit nestling in a new medium.

– Willem van Weelden

Top