Arbeiten: 2024
Dialogue, 2024
HD film, colour (6:15 min.)
Psychological studies suggest that the act of photographing or filming can impair memory retention. Henkel (2014) refers to this as the Photo-Taking Impairment Effect—the tendency to remember fewer details of an event when it is captured through a camera. This phenomenon is also observable in the context of museum visits, where viewers who experience art primarily through the lens of their smartphones may become less deeply engaged with the artwork’s content, structure, and artistic intent. In this context, the act of quickly capturing an image for later use often takes precedence over conscious, present-moment perception.
The video work Dialogue addresses these issues by deliberately adopting a smartphone format (9:16), which has become the standard for contemporary social media. The film presents museum visitors in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, who, rather than engaging directly with the painting, observe it predominantly through their smartphone screens. The use of slow-motion amplifies the absurdity of the situation, as visitors’ movements become exaggerated, while the iconic artwork itself recedes into the background. The accompanying sound work further emphasizes the sense of alienation between the viewer and the artwork, enhancing the disconnection that results from this mediated interaction.
References
Henkel, L. A. (2014). Point-and-Shoot Memories: The Influence of Taking Photos on Memory for a Museum Tour. Psychological Science, 25(2), 396–402.
Happy World, ongoing since 2016
In the eyeball, there is an area without photoreceptors, known as the "blind spot," located where the optic nerve connects to the brain. Since we usually have two eyes and the distance between our eyes and the objects we look at, as well as the angle of vision, constantly changes, the "blind spot" only peripherally affects our vision.
However, the "blind spot" can also be metaphorically compared to our perception of the world. There are things, phenomena, and processes that only some of us are able to recognize and understand. It is said that our world is not the only one, but that it divides, like a living organism, into cells containing millions upon millions of small worlds. Each person lives in their own unique world and perceives things differently from how we do. Our own world is difficult to explain, as it is so different from what other people know, and how can we grant others insight into this world if not through the lens of a camera?
“Doors are holes in walls for entering and exiting. One goes out to experience the world and gets lost within it, and one returns home to find oneself again, losing in the process the world that one sought to conquer.” (1)
In Happy World, Jakob Sinn takes the viewer on a journey through his own visual worlds, showing details that we would fleetingly overlook in passing, and invites us to pause for a moment to look behind the scenes. His minimalist images are marked by a melancholic stillness. He focuses on things that initially seem banal but begin to come together as a whole when you look at them for longer.
— (1) Vilém Flusser »Durchlöchert wie ein Emmentaler - Über die Zukunft des Hauses«, 4.3.1998, Telepolis (Stand 4/2007)
Text by Rosa Roth