Gyula Domián Changing Coordinates Interactive installation with surveillance camera, 2003 Technical assistance: András Sarkadi
Thanks to: Profitech Ltd., Farmelco Ltd., Secutron Ltd.

As a sculptor, the concept of space is of key significance to me. The perception and cognition of space is inconceivable without perambulating it, i.e., without motion. Accordingly, the viewer can lower a camera on cables stretched traversely between two points in the exhibition space. The camera - as "objective" electronic eye - records the condition - valid for the moment - taken from the given viewpoint in the given space. However, it is not just the triggering of the camera that offers the chance for interactivity. The viewer can set the viewing angle of the camera, can intervene in the velocity of lowering it on the cables, or can even set the moving camera in the middle of the trajectory, thus participating in the formation of the film in the making. We can view the recording transmitted in real time on the monitors placed at the endpoints. At the upper endpoint, there is also the possibility for the viewer to watch the film produced during the camera's sliding down, with various - as chosen by her/him - decelerations, or even to watch the film "frame by frame". Walter Benjamin, in fact, alludes to this as a negative - as the "loss of aura": the fact that in the case of film, there is no way to survey the individual images, as they roll continuously. ("Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed.")