20 Seconds into the Future

Carrying on our investigations into physical narratives, '20 Seconds into the Future' presents a glimpse into the workplace of a mathematician and the effects of his work. '20 Seconds into the Future' is a room installation that investigates the identity of mathematicians and the all-too-human desires to transcend the limits of humanity and mortality. The visitor is initially confronted with a simple question: where is the protagonist? In the process of browsing the scene, they receive more insight into the character and motivations than a real confrontation could possibly provide. With various interests presented in parallel, a visitor might choose to experience his personal history, mathematical games, science fiction, philosophical motivations or other ideas presented in the room. The work '20 Seconds into the Future' investigates, on a formal and aesthetic research level, the possibilities of removing a basis narrative guide in the form of a given video base and creating multiple parallel loops of linear narrative to be investigated by the visitors. The formal slide-show presentation of mathematical ideas, family photos, computer generated visualisations, annotated posters, a talk-back radio interview, half written letters, messages on the answering machine, emails arriving, physical devices and the results of his experiments: this collection of objects, found- and exploreable in an conventional office of an university form aspects of the narrative and character background between which the visitors can freely hop in order to develop their own understanding of the story. In this sense, 20 Seconds into the Future investigates the possibilities for narrative in ways that are very much in tune with the ways and means that contemporary society goes about understanding the world in its multiplexed causal plurality.