Das virtuelle Museum /// 2007 /// Interactive User Installation
/// Martin Burckhardt

The logic is familiar. A 3D space, with which one is familiar from the many online computer games, an avatar in the skin of which one can explore the landscape behind the screen. In this case, however, the rules of the game do not amount to the player proving his readiness to enter battle but are rather essentially left up to him. This is because the virtual space is a museum, which the user is able to equip himself and according to his own design: with texts, pictures, sounds or films – and, naturally, with commentaries on all of these. The “mature user” is himself the program and there is no other instance which prescribes what is and what is not worthy of being placed within a museum. This does not concern stage-managing a new art site but the acknowledgement of a world which produces itself. The main thing this space has to offer is freedom of mobility. Those who inhabit the museum can establish contact with one another via chat, mail or internet-telephony.
The virtualization of the space, however, does not stop behind the screen. This is because, the museum visitors are able to observe how their electronic doubles – now mutated into computer figures – how they can be transported into this virtual space and how they can then meet with the virtual museum visitors – the internet users from all over the world.
(Text: Martin Burckhardt)

Martin Burckhardt (*1957 in Fulda) culture theorist and media artist, lives in Berlin. Teaches at various universities in addition to his work as an artist. He has published monographies on, among others, Metamorphosen von Raum und Zeit (1994), Vom Geist der Maschine (1999), Die Scham der Philosophen (2006). Since 2000 he has been carrying out an intensive examination and analysis of games programming with an emphasis on online communication.

Martin Burckhardt, Das virtuelle Museum, 2007, Interactive User Installation, loaned by the artist