The Helix-Spiral by Eichinger or Knechtl

The Helix-Spirale by Eichinger or Knechtl is an implementable suspended spiral comprised of a few modules that can be repeated indefinitely that was statically defined and determined by Büro Werkraum. The data of the real spiral were used by Virtual Real-Estate as the basis of a digital visualisation whose rendered images were in turn used for inserts in daily papers. Like cellular automatic machines, the modules of the spiral reproduce infinitely in space and in this way form a kind of channelled network of nodes and connecting lines. This is why the spiral can be taken as a metaphor for a network. The idea for the exhibition is in principle the localisation of art in the global network of the media (from the print media to the electronic media and vice-versa). World Media Network itself is a network of currently 21 daily papers (America, Africa, Asia, Europe). Three network concepts, then, overlap in the form of loops. An artwork in the form of a network (the spiral) is part of an exhibition in the form of a network (the global media space) which, in turn, takes place in the World Media Network. The helix spiral, then, forms the interface between the exhibition concept of Art and global media and one of its carrier media – the World Media Network.

In order to visualise this idea of network overlapping, only an excerpt of the World Media Network will be shown in 11 daily papers. In order to prevent the excerpt from becoming unrecognisable, the whole spiral will be presented as a logo. After the individual exhibition of fragments of the spiral in the various newspapers has ended, a bulletin will be produced that will show all pictures in all daily papers at the same time and thus reveal the networking of the World Media Network participants itself. The interplay of the totality of the spiral with the respective excerpt in a daily paper shows this daily paper as part of the whole. This whole is the network of World Media. Artistically, the presentation of the logo of Art and global media is thus adjusted to the network structure of the World Media Network. By means of the artistic intervention, the network of the World Media Network is actually made visible and thus becomes an artistic part of the exhibition Art and global media.

(May 1998)