Ruta Remake
sign system, amplifier, surround system, cables, light system, computer, theramidi / Secession, Viena / 2003
As the term „remake” suggests, the work is programmed to subvert existing narratives to operate within a further scenario. The construction site of Ruta Remake in the Secession provides an opportunity to reconstitute the piece by accepting the challenge of symbolic language inherent in Olbrich’s architecture. Ruta Remake defines its own space as a perceptual model that joins together the grounded symptomatic mechanism of the Secession to breed a new scripting pattern.
The victory celebrated by the laurel tree growing into the foliage of the dome over and above the building itself, is undermined by the digital strategy of a feminine Ruta plant. The Ruta grows through the cables and wires to the ceiling of the Kreuzraum to return as a reading of the laurel cupola. The voices that chart the walls of the unfolded notation system, perform the polyphonic operation that works through analysis of the institutional architecture.
The control apparatus of the dome is superseded by a set of mechanisms performed by film light, theramidi device, and computer-generated audio pattern as agents which deconstruct the cinematic apparatus from the inside out. A user’s hand moving up into the light and down into the shadows turns the narrative into the script and the place into an operation.
The weaving structure of the Ruta pattern instigates and controls the behavior of the notation system that transforms the space into an informational model. The script-based logic operating through a midi-controlled apparatus replants the roots of the organic world to transgress the hallucinatory scenario suggested by the underside of the laurel leaves.