Reality Check – Wenn Dinge nicht so sind, wie sie scheinen

ENGLISH

the Wolf of Königsforst and the Maiden, Episode 2, 2024

The multimedia post-photographic installation combines the moral fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf with real wolf sightings in Cologne's Königsforst forest and the associated fear of the unknown with a biting analysis of current political upheavals. The critical docufiction, in which text fragments, AI-generated videos and avatars are cacophonously condensed with video fragments of political speeches, tells a contemporary adaptation of the memorable fable, in which the attribution of victim and perpetrator and of fear and guilt are constantly reassessed.

The starting point is a virtual three-dimensional model of Cologne's Königsforst forest, generated by photogrammetry from Google Earth image data and partially alienated into a mesh representation. In this forest, which can be experienced in Unity and associatively wandered through using a VR headset, a scene takes place between 3D-scanned vintage figurines of the wolf and the girl amidst a collection of video fragments that affect the scene.

The tension between the animal and the girl, which goes back to a story by Carles Perrault from 1697 long before the highly moralised version by the Brothers Grimm, is also present in the additional augmented reality, where it is even animated. Using a QR code scan, an augmented level is superimposed on the real exhibition space on the visitor's own mobile phone, in which the figurines in the forest move semi-fluidly on the edge of a new virtual aesthetic of the 21st century.

An additional layer is formed by a 6-minute film that associatively interweaves sequences from the virtual forest clearing with generated videos, news and statements by contemporary political figures. Populists such as Trump, Höcke, Weidel, Wilders and Gauland are quoted in their endeavours to mark the new unknown as a threat - whereby they expose themselves as being more animal-like than any animal. Meanwhile, avatars quote snippets of text and the fairy tale versions of Grimm and Perrault that make us shudder at the moral compass of a society.

In the various media, VR, AR, 4K film and UV image printing, this installation negotiates not only current social criticism but also aesthetics that are constantly developing as new styles from the constantly renewing tools such as virtual photogrammetry or generative artificial intelligence. Questions of authenticity and association accompany this installation, as does the awareness that such new post-photographic images with their glitches and unrealities have already become part of the depiction of reality.

The work complex has been continuously developed and updated since 2020. The 2024 version contains entirely new aesthetic and content chapters. The version around 2020/21 includes, among other things, an independent film with a different content focus and made the generated environment of the Königsforst with video excerpts and 3D scanned figurines also accessible via a public virtual Mozilla Hub as a meeting point.