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Themesicon: navigation pathOverview of Media Articon: navigation pathNarration
 
 
 
 
 

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criteria that is put to the test here. The user finds him or herself in a state of permanent insecurity, since his/her attempts at creating representations in a conventional way continually fail. He/She does not succeed even for a moment at forming the abstract signatures into familiar representations.

In interactive environments and web works, the user moves through the work and as he/she moves, temporary, fragmentary narrations arise. The situation of the user can no longer be grasped as the cognitive figure of the «implicit reader» (Wolfgang Iser) or the «viewer inside the image» (Wolfgang Kemp), because «being in the work» is coupled with a simultaneous physical experience of the «outside.» It is not only imagined, but instead caused through bodily movement and experienced physically. The user drafts the narrative space as a form open to possibilities, in which alternatives for action can be tested physically. This makes it possible to mediate between physical experience and intellectual insight. A reality that is organized abstractly and symbolically is thus able to be experienced and provides feedback to the body.

 

Cinematic non-linearity

Knowbotic Research, with its assessment that only the negation of prior forms of representation —including prior forms of storytelling—could open the way for bringing forth something new, differs not only from artists such as Shaw, Weinbren, Seaman and Feingold, but also from those who quote narrative strategies in their video and film installations in order to deconstruct them, calling into question their potency at representing reality. These artists include Stan Douglas, Diana Thater, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Aernout Mik and Sam Taylor-Wood. Although it first appears as if the choice of a chronological/ sequential medium such as video or film would represent a step backward in terms of plumbing alternative non-linear narrative structures, upon closer observation it becomes clear that the video installation, oriented as it is upon cinematic practice, is particularly well-suited for focusing on cinema, as a technique inherently dependent upon storytelling and as a cultural dispositive,[20] both reflecting upon it and deconstructing it. The video artists work both with and against the specific

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