CARGO

Reality itself is becoming the medium. An extreme kind of becoming that is, accessible all over the world, as it is being produced on a daily basis by so many news channels on tv, on mobiles and on the Web. Warum 2.0, in fact, adds a demonstration to this becoming. It makes it transparant and explicit. It stages the apparatus itself. It makes visible the instant imaging it produces. And literally, by means of a group of hosts, it enacts and performs the physical actions of the users. Together they will handle the tools on the arena and mimick each others body positions and gestures. As a stage then for  ‘reality as medium’, Warum 2.0 illuminates previous grand fantasies such as the ‘world as theatre’, the ‘book as mirror’, ‘nature as creation’.

HUMAN TETRIS

One of the four stations of entry and enactment to the Warum 2.0 arena is based on a research experiment Stefaan Decostere conducted together with a group of TU Delft/Architecture students. The experiment was called ‘Space out of E-presence’ (the letter ‘E’ stands for ‘extreme’). Starting from a selection of pictures of extreme human body positions, the students were asked to think of specific spaces and environments which could generate exactly these positions.

One of the ideas they came up with was based on a Japanase tv-show, called Human Tetris. On the Warum 2.0 arena floor then, they built a series of tetris models with cutouts of falling and shooting human figures, in which hosts and visitors could be invited to position themselves. Sensors were added to the modules, generating effects of ‘massage’ of shots Daniel Demoustier recorded of American soldies shooting and  jumping in and out a landing helicopter in the Iraq desert.

Thanks to Rene Kroondijk, Aydin Koyuk, Ayhan Aygun and Rik de Ruiter.