Terminal
- the data display


Large screen, construction from mirrors. UST projector
Linux programming output in Xterm. 40h While loop,
for Palace, Düsseldorf, Worringer Platz .


We are strangers,
and we are the stars.
Sometimes in the sky,
But always in war.

 

(Is that all that will be?
Or is that the most terrible torment, H A P P I N E S S?)

 

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Number and digit codes, commands.... Keyboard shortcuts determine everyday life. Inhabitants of a matrix incessantly emit signs that are not reflected and not received. There is nobody who could understand, consequently nobody who understands. Someone from outside has to penetrate, decode and manipulate, until understandable works are elicited from the salad of signs, and finally: Dante "The Divine Comedy" .

Line by line, letter by letter is written into the terminal. 

Three chapters, one hundred cantos, 14,233 verses.

Each preceding line is overwritten by the following one and then erased forever. This does not destroy the content. Once all the verses are written and everything is said, signs and words form again, a resurrection of context, each sense experiencing its reincarnation.  And again each sentence overwrites its predecessors. And this happens to infinity....

Exhibited in a public place, the Worringer Platz, the text is read. Not by one person, but hundreds of people passing by take up one or a few lines.

Thus they become part of a reading collective and carry Dante's text/legacy/... through time and space.

 

Installation and video: Nolle Woida

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Photo: Christian Ahlborn 

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