Category: Video Art

Eternal Hunting for Avalon

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
2025, video with sound, animation, 4:31 min

This endless loop references Avalon (from Gallo-Indo-Germanic abal = apple), the mythic island from pre-Christian lore once seen as a paradise.

In an undefined space and timeless state, we circle around two faceless avatars from changing perspectives. Who – or what – are they? Projections of real people, intelligent machines, or something in between? Can machines develop desires, dreams? A golden apple floats between them, its reflective surface expanding the real space. All their efforts revolve around the golden apple – and yet it remains out of reach.

Metamorphosis

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art

A real existing space runs through a “what-if” of infinite possibilities, thought up by me, visualised by an artificial intelligence. This work was produced for the event “…WILL BE EATEN BY THE RAVENS” at the Stadttheater Neuburg a.d.Donau (16.06.2024). This video was accompanied by a live performance of the piece Nocturne by Lili Boulanger (for flute and harp).

Cycle of Prayer

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art

2025, Video with sound, trailer 1:59 min

Forces of nature mingle with landmarks of civilization and do not depict glorified places of longing. In the frenzy of speed, the moment evaporates and yet always returns – like the seasons.

All the videos are looped – without beginning or end, and seemingly endless – like the return of the seasons or the collective murmuring of a rosary.

Following on from the romantic landscapes of the 19th century, this video cycle in 4 parts shows landscapes of the 21st century, oscillating between real and artificial.

Spring, 3:21 min — Spring is dawning, but nature has not yet awoken – bare trees pass by. Here and there a car. Memories echo in the distance.

Autumn, 3:11 min — Rain pattering on a window. The landscape behind it seems strangely alive. Is it breathing? Is it raging? A harbinger of imminent death – in winter!

Summer, 4:24 min — A sandstorm bathes the passing landscape in warm yellow. Beautiful and terrible. Terribly beautiful.

Winter, 10 min — “Home” passes by. Will it come again? The monotonous rolling noise on the old railroad tracks makes you sleepy, and a white oblivion covers your thoughts.

Sleep Well, My Love

Posted on | by Erika
2024, video with sound, 7:37 min

Is this a bedtime story? Hardly. The starting point in “Sleep well, my Love” is an old family photo album. With the help of artificial intelligence, the photos in it come to life in an uncanny way. Over these disturbing images, a child whispers “The Willful Child” by the Brothers Grimm – a fairy tale about a mother who literally beats her child into the grave out of love because it is disobedient beyond death.

“Mother” stands for care. But what makes a “good” mother? Although we like to believe that there are universal truths, the concept of motherhood is profoundly shaped by changing social norms and cultural expectations.

Inspired by the photo albums and the fairy tale, this experimental short film questions idealized notions of motherhood. What begins as a nostalgic exploration becomes a disturbing reflection on memory, identity and the narratives we inherit.

UT: German, English, French, Romanian

Language: German

Post Mortem

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
2023, Video with sound, 5:31 min

“We all carry a dead child within us.“ Christian Boldtanski quotes Tadeusz Kantor

An abandoned house*. The rooms bear witness to the fact that people once lived here. Reality and fiction, present and past merge here. We wander through the rooms like in a nightmare and are repeatedly confronted with an old class photo. On the back of the real-life photo is written: “Class of 1911”. Who were these people? Does anyone still remember them? I lend them my eyes and bring them back to life post mortem. An artificial liveliness.

I (Erika) sit in the middle of these children as a link between yesterday and today and think aloud about the fear of disappearing.

Polaroid, Screenshot aus der Videoarbeit Sandbox

Sandbox V

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
2023, Video with Sound, Animation, 5:36 min, and 15 Polaroids

Sandbox is on the one hand a sandy playground for children, on the other hand a term originating from software development for an “isolated area within which any action has no effect on the external environment”. (Wikipedia)

We are sitting in a large virtual sandbox that is anything but isolated. There are many toys in it that we don’t know what they are for. And new ones are added every day. We explore them playfully and in the process we come up with ideas – good or bad….

One such toy is Dall-e 2, one of the most celebrated AIs of 2022, which can create realistic images and even artwork from a text-based description in natural language. This creative act is new and unique, and must be judged as the next stage of evolution.

The works Dall-e generates are almost perfect, and yet she generates strangely disturbing outputs in response to seemingly innocuous keywords. It begs the question, is this the toy we would give our children?

Conditio Humana II

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
Conditio Humana II, 2023, video with sound, 4:48 min

Based on the work Conditio Humana I, the question of what the conditio humana is is continued here. If we consider the highest art form of human movement – dance – it is a combination of absolute body control, elegance and emotionality. This is contrasted here with a “dance” by the humanoid robot HRP-4C, as it was presented to the world public in 2010.

Dancer: Dominik Feistmantl

Rabbit Hole 4.0

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
2020, 3D-Animation, 9:45 min

Suzanne is lured into a seductive virtual dream – guided by flashing buttons and a calming voice assistant promising relief from insomnia. Unbeknownst to her, she is part of a behavioral experiment designed to manipulate her actions through algorithmic control.

The film rejects traditional narrative in favor of a fragmented, immersive loop that mirrors the disorienting logic of digital platforms – addictive, cyclical, and subtly coercive.

Social networks now shape a global economy in which attention is the most valuable resource. What appears to be free access conceals a deeper cost: constant surveillance and behavioral conditioning by tech corporations using Attention Engineering – a system that combines persuasive design, gamification, and AI, grounded in psychology.

Rabbit Hole 4.0 explores the loss of personal agency in a world where algorithms anticipate needs before we are aware of them. It reflects on the illusion of choice, the commodification of behavior, and the quiet erosion of self-determination in an era of total digital recall.

At its core, the film poses a simple but urgent question: in a world shaped by invisible influences, do we still have control over ourselves?

Learn more.

Conditio Humana I

Posted on | by Erika
Start ► Video Art
2024, video with sound, 3:40 min

The conditio humana refers to the conditions or circumstances of being human in general, usually in contrast to animals. What makes a person human? Is it language? Is it the imagination? What is the conditio humana in relation to artificial intelligence? In a monologue, I let a (fictitious) AI discuss this here.

The starting point for this work was a report on a new milestone in the development of artificial intelligence: In 2019, researchers succeeded for the first time in developing an AI that won a poker game against five real professional players. All in all, this requires special skills that catapult artificial intelligence to the next level of evolution.

Is an AI the better human in the end?

Dancer: Dominic Feistmantl

Premiere: Façade projection in Buenos Aires / Argentina on December 17 2022

Homunculus

Posted on | by Erika
2022, video with sound, animation, 6:34 min

The term homunculus (Latin for “little man”) refers to an artificially created human being – and stands for mankind’s dream of being able to construct a being according to its own imagination and with the help of the latest technology. In literature, this idea has already been processed in many ways, for example in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Today, we are closer to this dream than ever before, but in the age of deep learning, it is neither alchemists nor scientists, but programmers who teach artificial intelligence to generate human-like faces independently and deceptively realistically. Ingenious, scary or dangerous?