The opening is a fuzzy image that needs to be focused. Then you see the reverse of a picture postcard that is completely filled with writing. The sweet words, like a postal tiramisu, lie in layers on top of each other. The card is living proof of the strata of time, of the various moments that it was picked up to be written on. You can't write on it any more now, but you can click on it. Then you end up on a series of picture postcards from Legrady's collection which he made over the course of years. On the cd-rom there is a web of 230 cards that have been classified according to literal and metaphorical qualities. Each card has an average of five hot-spots, cut-outs on which you can click again to gain access to the rest of the series. At the bottom, you can click on the index of the series and then you get the sequence of the cards in miniature. A couple of examples of the various series are: the future, military, colonialism, moral tales, nature/culture, industry, making the other exotic, etc. Some images cannot easily be placed into categories and Legrady had put these into the closest group. This leads to an interesting broadening of the 24 categories. The looser the connections, the more narrative and exciting the associations. By wandering through the series and paying special attention to the details in the photographs, an associative world image arises. Each detail of what is in fact a random photographic representation, allows connections with images which would never fit into more conventional arrangements. This game with the categories of our perception provides a commentary, a sub-text about the contents of the images, the ‘lingual’ meaning of the images and the context placed upon them. The connections become filmic and narrative, but not unequivocal, because explanation and clarification are never given. It is precisely the 'neutral' quality of the interface that brings out the patterns of your own image interpretation. The evocative qualities of each view in combination with the navigation make this random series of images into paragraphs in a social critical essay. The monitor, the new window onto the world, becomes a cut-out from a larger whole that begs to be reunited with the world upon which it is forced to look out on in a categorizing way.
– Willem van Weelden
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Production Zentrum für Kunst- und Medientechnolgie Karlsruhe / Artintact 3
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