Side by Side
Virgil Widrich
16 mm film, HD video, black and white and color, silent, 1 minute, 16 mm film projector, digital projector, screen
Austria 2017
"The installation Side by Side by the Austrian media artist Virgil Widrich points to the fundamental creative and perceptive differences between digital and analog film: the material's grain and physical presence are literally placed side by side with the clean, computed rigidity of the digital image. A 16 mm film projector, the amateur's analog choice, is contrasted with a digital projector for home use. The found-footage fragments edited together by the artist raise the question of what the recent changes in the media landscape mean for the language of film. While the term 'film' originally denoted the flexible carrier material – the film strip – it now marks a set of creative possibilities, an artistic form where the carrier material has been rendered the data medium." (From the catalog of the exhibition Analog_Digital. Media Exchanges, curated by Eva Fischer and Anna Högner, METRO Kinokulturhaus, October 3, 2017 – January, 28 2018, Vienna, Austria.)
Virgil Widrich, born 1967 in Salzburg, lives and works in Vienna.
