Single-channel video and a real-time MAX/MSP installation variant.
Experimental video · 2006–2008
AUTRMX
An experimental video that recuts the language, gestures and shifting moods of Authority into a study of power in motion.
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Project typeArtwork · Installation / environment
ThemesSpeculative & critical design
FormExperimental video / interactive version
Developed2006–2008
EditingMAX/MSP and linear video editing
ContextPower, discourse and incomprehension
01 · Proposition
Authority is never fixed in one image
AUTRMX transforms the recorded performance from Authority into a fragmented moving-image portrait whose emotional register continually shifts.
The police officer moves between calmness, indifference, anger and nervous intensity while speaking a nonsensical text. Repetition and re-editing make the instability of his gestures visible, turning the film into a metaphor for Michel Foucault’s description of power as something that circulates rather than remains fixed.
The project was edited with MAX/MSP alongside conventional video software. It exists as a single-channel video for screening and as an installation variant in which MAX/MSP can re-edit the material in real time for a monitor or projection setup.
02 · Experience
Record, fragment, recombine
- 01
Perform
Manuel Klein delivers an invented text while moving between calm, indifferent, angry and nervous states.
- 02
Fragment
Expressions, phrases and gestures are separated from the original Authority performance.
- 03
Recompose
MAX/MSP and video editing reorganise the footage as a fixed film or a real-time installation.
03 · Reflection
A voice without nationality
Incomprehension is shared across audiences because the officer’s speech does not fully belong to any one language or nation.
The dialogue borrows the disrupted rhythms of Dadaist language associated with Kurt Schwitters and Ernst Jandl. Meaning is carried less by literal words than by cadence, repetition, posture and intensity. AUTRMX shifts the encounter of Authority from an interactive room into montage, preserving the uncertainty of who controls the exchange while letting the image itself become unstable.
Screened or broadcast in Austria, Greece, Spain, Portugal, the United States and Thailand.
International festival, cinema and broadcast circulation.
Credits & archive
Project record
- Concept, direction and editing
- Ricardo O’Nascimento
- Performance
- Manuel Klein
- Shooting support
- Jona Hoier and Andreas Zingerle
- Music
- Moby, via Mobygratis
- Make-up
- Fabiana Shizue
- Development context
- Interface Culture, Kunstuniversität Linz
References
Documentation from the project archive.
