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01-08-2018

FNE AV Innovation: TX-Mirror: Swaps Time and Space in Cinema

By
    Virgil Widrich Virgil Widrich

    VIENNA: Real-time installation by Martin Reinhart and Virgil Widrich, 2018

    tx vfx dreh 0014 11In the 1990s Austrian inventor and filmmaker Martin Reinhart had an incredible idea shaking a foundation of cinema: what if one could swap the time and the space axis in a movie? What if every frame of a film would not show a single moment of time but every moment in a small slice of space instead? And what if the next frame would not be the next moment, but the next slice of space? After a series of analog photographs created by Martin Reinhart using the new principle (and scissors) I entered the scene and in 1998 we published a digital short film “tx-transform” and a real-time installation named “tx-transformator”. Both projects were enthusiastically welcomed by film theorists, film and media festivals. 

    Link: tx-transform (1998) by Martin Reinhart and Virgil Widrich

    tx 04Twenty years later and with very different possibilities in computer processing power Martin Reinhart and I are updating our project: The real-time installation tx-mirror is a magical mirror with a camera where one can look at oneself and explore the laws of a universe in which time and space have been reversed. The installation also pays homage to the Polish video artist Zbigniew Rybczynski, whose film The Fourth Dimension has inspired an entire generation of artists.Peter Weibel im tx mirror 1

    Link tx-mirror (2018), by Martin Reinhart and Virgil Widrich

    tx reverse foto Alexander Grennigloh DSC8639There will also be a huge 360°-installation and a short film titled tx-reverse to be presented at the same exhibition at Exhibition Art in Motion. 100 masterpieces with and through media at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 14.07.2018 to 10.02.2019

    Link to the project website, to the film documentation on YouTube and to the tx-transform technique (1998).

    About the Author:
    Filmmaker and Director of Virgil Widrich Film- und Multimediaproduktion Vienna
    www.widrichfilm.com