delocalization from 28 February till 18 May 2008




48° 12' 13" N, 16° 21' 28" live cam picture of the Imachinations at MUMOK Vienna, digital projection, ca. 3,10 x 2,90 m

Es entstehen in einer Sequenz digitale Bilder, die in ihrer Prozesshaftigkeit und Flüchtigkeit in einer Tradition der seriellen Kunst und der frühen Computergraphik stehen und die spezifischen Bedingungen von 'Digitalität' befragen. Michael Rottmann

The Imachinations were presented from 28 February till 18 May 2008 at the exhibition Genau+anders - Mathematik in der Kunst von Dürer bis Sol LeWitt, Museum für Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. On 31 March 2008 Imachination N° 500 appeard at the museum in Viena. Since 2002 the web based image cycle has been presented in 9 leading institutions from art & science from 5 countries in and out of Europe.

Michael Rottmann, the co-curator of the exhibition, wrote about the presentation on the MUMOK's webcam page

“The web-based projection of the Imachinations by the media artist Tim Otto Roth shows a chronological sequence of images that have been generated by an algorithm.

What is thereby created is a series of digital pictures that are processual and fugitive. They are thus embedded in the tradition of serial art and early computer graphics and raise the question as to the specific conditions relating to the definition of "digital": what is the picture we perceive and where does it originate?

Every day at regular intervals the changing condition of the projections of these calculable and ephemeral images is filmed in situ – always double, as if they were layers in a painting. They are then transferred to the exhibition website and can thus be seen simultaneously worldwide. The work also registers the visualisation strategies of present-day science and mathematics because it is set against a background of making structures visible – the colouration and form of the individual pictorial layers is generated on the basis of the irrational number pi, or, more accurately, using always 14 digits of the irrational number.“


the webcam on the MUMOK's web page (click to see a larger screen copy)

installation situation at the 8th floor: left Day 479 right: cabinet with mathematical models at the installation's entry