“Gegenort - The Virtual Mine” , an artistic experiment on ourselves

To its initiators the research project constitutes an emotional and artistic experiment in
which they themselves are the test subjects.
Dealing with artistic concepts found at different places on the earth may result in the
creation of virtual artist personalities. The installations realized at Gegenort will serve as
a practical basis to discuss the question in how far a work of art can be assigned to its
creator in the multimedia world. A field of tension is created around the questions:
Who stands for the work? - Whom does the work stand for?

The experience gathered by the initiators of the project during their experiment will
provide important information about how virtual art can be judged. The point is to answer
the question whether and to which extent virtuality dissolves the personality and the
human character of an artist.
Should avatars, virtual artificial characters, be treated like human artists? Will the
question of authorship become less important? To which extent will a work come to the
fore in virtuality - until its creator is obliterated? Who is the creator of a work of art? Will
the possible creation of a virtual artist personality become part of the work itself? Will
these questions be of any importance at all in the virtual world? Where does imagination
begin and where does it end? How will the relation artist - work have to be defined?

The experiment of the group will bring all these questions into focus and - in line with
the objectives of scientific research - will deliver results which might be evaluated in a
way to find a new definition of the notion of artist in the virtual world. Besides the
questions referring to the relation between artist and work (a kind of intimate dialogue in
an inner sphere), the experiment will deal with the field of tension around the relation
between work and viewer (a public discourse in an outer sphere). The many
observations to be made in this respect will mainly refer to the question: How does the
viewer respond to a work in/out of the virtual world. Or, to put it briefly: How does
virtuality influence reality?

At this point the experiment leaves the sphere of pure art and touches the domains of
sociology, psychology, politics and economy.
The achieved results will deliver important information enabling the evaluation of this
highly relevant and topical problem complex. A detailed documentation will record the
processes taking place in the inner and the outer sphere and will constitute a first
attempt to evaluate them.