Studer / van den Berg
filter: mille miglia

Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg are among Switzerland’s pioneers of media art. The three so-called filter works were created between 1996 and 1998. "Filters are snippets," the artists explain, "whose subject is the changing perspectives when moving in and through the Internet. Like a toddler who learns that moving forwards can mean more than simply following a straight line to reach a goal, we should find different terms for different ways of moving in a nonlinear system."

Like filter: four letter words, the second work – filter: mille miglia – expands on the game principle. Here the reference is to the old board game Labyrinth: Ein lustiges Autorennen (Labyrinth: A Fun Car Race) as well as to a dice game involving a vintage-car race through Bavaria and Austria. Connected via hyperlinks, an interactive picture card is generated by Studer / van den Berg; this can then be "traveled." Here the hypertext link is transferred to the picture, as a precursor of what will be shown in the artists’ later work in the movement of a point-and-click game mechanism.

(Text: Sabine Himmelsbach)