UK 2008 | DVD | Colour | Stereo | 01’34 Min
Courtesy Edition Medienturm, Graz

The term “pattern” is little short of summing up a graphical and conceptual genre in new media – traditionally one might simply say swatch or ornament as well. In electronic arts the term describes a process driven by a structured formula, whereby a fluid matrix emerges through the repetitive assemblage of single elements.

David Muth breaks with this common practice, and he does so by working with this story in a pictorial and humorous fashion. Muth photographs patterns of industrially manufactured covers that adorn the seats of public transport and obviously don’t promise any additional artistic value – to a greater degree their masking abstracted compositions seem to be precondition for diverse usage, resistant against contaminants. In close-ups Muth zooms into the encountered graphical structures and blends them into each other, as if he would like to invoke a discursive massacre. Applied arts meets fine arts, abstraction meets the real life.

Text by Sandro Droschl.

 
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ZKM, Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany