Jordan Crandall
Documenta X
by Suzanne Prinz and Paul Sztulman

It is often said that we are currently undergoing the second major technological revolution. The first brought us the acceleration of traffic, the railway system, the automobile and, finally, aviation. The current revolution is riding on electromagnetic waves and has led to such an acceleration of communications that information is now available in real time -- that means immediately, no matter where it comes from. With the aid of equipment such as computers, mobile phones, scanners etc., people can call up this information any time and be present everywhere, as long as they are in a position to use the media and analyze the information. This means that the patterns of reception have been more or less reworked, in order to adapt them to the patterns prescribed by technology. As electronic proximity does not require physical contact, a new sphere has emerged that no longer distinguishes between the private and the public. Jordan Crandall's multimedia installation *suspension* observes this space created by the mediation of a variety of technical networks as "a dynamic combination of reality and virtuality," inquiring into "alternate modes of access, navigation, and inhabitation" of electronic space. "Suspension explores the ways in which viewing agencies, bodies and inhabited spaces are mobilized and cross-formatted through various 'protocols' and 'vehicles.'"

The interactive system of video cameras, video players, projectors, computers, digital image processors, scan converters, animations, and various adjustment facilities automatically catapults the exhibition visitor into one of those new hybrid spaces of simultaneously real and virtual (distributed) presence. Voluntarily or not, the visitor begins to exert an influence. "The installation is crisscrossed with networks of projections and multiple agencies both local (within the Kassel exhibition space) and remote (via the Internet). Inhabitants simultaneously originate and interrupt the projective flow. The location of viewing is multiplied and mobilized, dispersed and re-routed. The interference patterns generate fields of competing orientations, which prompt calibrations no longer measured in terms such as distance and magnitude." Rhythm and speed of events determine the changes within the system of suspension in which matter and energy (in the sense of electro-optical or electromagnetic power) influence each other reciprocally and force the user/viewer into constant reorientation between changing protocols and viewpoints. Jordan Crandall's artistic activities are complex and interdisciplinary. For example, he has been performing under the name The X-Art Foundation for some time now. In this role, he explores other forms of authorship connected with new technologies. In 1990, under the name Blast, he launched a project addressing the transformation of conventional patterns of perception and reception in reading and seeing. On this basis, changing forms of production in the field of publication and various techniques of systematization and regulation are being studied.