Scanner++ (12 scanners, computer, video projection, Internet, 1998) by Joachim Blank & Karl Heinz Jeron is a hybrid project that incorporates the Internet at the same time as it extends into "real" space by means of an interactive installation. Via a "walk-on" scanner, "real" bodies enter the virtual realm, their physical mass becomes information, "traces of bodies"; compatible, globally retrievable and archivable. The principle of the search engine, actually an industrious, invisible software program scouring the Internet for information, is here lent almost obscenely material form as a symptomatic object now superimposed over real space, which it proceeds to systematically scan.
1. Price "ComTechArt", Dresden 1999 "Viper", Luzern 1999 "Prix Ars Electronica", Linz 1999 "European Media Art Festival", Osnabrück 1999 "comm-x-change", Basel 1998 "Neuer Berliner Kunstverein", Berlin 1998