MARKUS WINTERSBERGER · 1994 / 1998 / 2026
Entflachung
PATHFINDER ⇄ THE BODYBOX
De-flattening · the body as map – the map as cargo
A 2026 re-version and experimental AV translation of two works that build on each other: PATHFINDER, digital image montage 1994, and THE BODYBOX. Sculpture in Motion, installation 1998. The 1991 full-body scan – some 350 black-and-white photographs taken under projected striped light – is read for the first time as what it technically is: a measurement.
DRAG THE MEASURING LINE · CLICK SWITCHES LAYERAV 2026
4K · 16:9 · MP4Measuring light
STRIPES 1991 → PHASE 2026Measuring light. Every surface of this work becomes legible only when a red measuring line passes over it – just as in 1991 the projected stripes first made the body legible as form.
The stripes bend with the skin: every curve is height information – structured light, the principle of today’s 3D scanners. In 2026 a monogenic signal (Riesz transform, log-Gabor filter) recovers the local phase φ of the stripes for every pixel: the wrapped phase appears as gold-leaf sawtooth, its sine as corrugated aluminium relief, its zero crossings as red isophases.
The palette is reduced to black, aluminium (the container, the aluminium-mounted digital plots of 1995), gold leaf (the head unwrappings of 1994) and one red line; type is Overpass, a free interpretation of motorway signage, and Space Mono for data. No generative image AI – all images come from the 1991–2012 archive; motion, geometry and sound are computed in custom code (Python · NumPy · Numba · FFmpeg) in dialogue with Claude (Anthropic).
Chapters
LONG 6:24 · TRAILER 2:44
Opening
LONG 0:00 · TRAILER 0:00A red measuring line passes over the head: the striped light of the 1991 full-body scan becomes phase; the title rises out of the phase.
I · Striped light
LONG 0:28 · TRAILER 0:12Eight body segments, line by line: photograph → wrapped phase φ → aluminium relief → isophases, with the live intensity profile along the line.
II · Unwrapping
LONG 1:18 · TRAILER 0:30The unwrapped gold head rolls up into a body, is circled, entered, everted into space (κ < 0) and flattened again – until the camera sinks into the pixel.
III · Body landscape
LONG 2:18 · TRAILER 0:52The simulated camera eye scans the body nets as a height field: up close a flickering pixel image, at a distance the picture reveals its content.
IV · Carrier surface
LONG 3:23 · TRAILER 1:162D map for 3D box: the net folds into the 720 × 265 × 250 cm industrial container; the rear wall lowers, inside runs the 1998 computer animation »pathfinder«.
V · 100 km/h
LONG 4:28 · TRAILER 1:38Vienna Aspang – Südosttangente – Krems – A1 – Linz – return: the static pixels of the video frames are accelerated to 100 km/h.
VI · Digital scattering
LONG 5:13 · TRAILER 1:58The self as dense scattering (Flusser): particles condense into the face, scatter, become a sphere – and the sphere lands in the landscape (1994–2012).
Credits
LONG 5:52 · TRAILER 2:20Credits, references, links – over a slowly drifting aluminium relief.
Play
INTERACTIVE
The works
1994 · 1998PATHFINDER · digital image montage 1994 · photography, animation, video. A body divided into segments is photographed step by step in macro and assembled on the computer into a homogeneous surface. The unwrapped body becomes the subtly graded surface of a landscape, scanned by a simulated camera eye; zooming in and out produces closeness or distance, sharpness or blur.
THE BODYBOX. Sculpture in Motion · installation 1998 · truck, container, animation, video, performance, photography. An industrial container (720 × 265 × 250 cm) covered with the digitally alienated body surface, with a computer-animated flight over the unwrapped head projected inside, travels from Vienna via Krems on the A1 to Linz (O.K Centre for Contemporary Art, “Natürlich Künstlich”, 1998) – at 100 km/h its static pixels dissolve into a dynamic pixel flight.
Pages
Entflachung 2026 · PATHFINDER 1994 · THE BODYBOX 1998 · 3D-Rekonstruktion · Spielmodell · Streifenlicht-Labor