Metadata

2016, HD video, 11:01 min custom display monitors, Raspberry Pis, network switch, sound system Christopher Meerdo’s research and work incorporates data provided by new consumer and prosumer technologies and the potentially misconducted representation of the information they yield.

The multi-dimensional installation Metadata is a multi media installation, consisting of eight connected screens that are vertically arranged, reminiscent of an exaggerated smartphone screen format. The screens hung from the ceiling are tilted in an arch-like shape, seeming to imply a dissent between 2-dimensional videos of the digitally captured 3-dimensionality of real life events, by their physicality. The networked screens show a compilation of various montages and fragments of video footage, as well as text.

By means of using footage of different perspectives due to a variety sources like drone scapes, 3D modeling environments and clips from protests, the moving images compile an eclectic inventory of information and communication methods, intriguing the viewer by an alternation of tension and relief between a drone’s-eye view and the insight of digital datamosh structures. Amid the constant switch between long shots and closeups, real and virtual processes, the viewer is alternating as a passive or an active protagonist of the seen content. The dramaturgy of video sequences diverges in its presentation of time by abrupt changes between day- and nighttime sequences. The effect is enhanced by different angles and resolution of recordings as well as the accentuating musical arrangement by electronic composer Elise Macmillan.

The textual elements of the video change just as ambivalently between personal and impersonal, as the given perspectives of the single sequences convert the viewer from prey to predator: An automated voice is followed by a text, overlaid on the moving image which constitutes a direct personal appeal. Seemingly directly addressed to an unknown recipient, the text adds a subtle narrative dimension to the video.

In the nonlinearity of its single elements – ambivalent in their presentation of public and intimate events – Metadata represents the complexity of our visual reality of actual and virtual informations and their perceptions.