Scanning
Robot-installation

I

A shadow is moving on the wall...up and down...forward and backward.
The object by itself is motionless... in the space.
A powerful source of light, moved and animated by a robot, scans objects and slides the object’s image along the wall.
“Reality is primarily the way in which the world appears to the individual in the actual moment.”
The phenomena of reality are hardly to be trusted.
A white wall in the white room turns jet black when the light changes the side.
We speak of perception, but the physical senses with which we attempt to perceive the world are able to throw us into thorough confusion.
The complexity of this seemingly simple process emerges as soon as the inner and outer images are separated from each other’s reality, through the fact that the robot does something different when it seems to scan, light throws shadows as third dimension on the wall.
Even in this reduced arrangement of objects reality is so complex, that the percipient has to approach it perpetually anew.

Remarks by Andrea Gern

II

"In this condition, however, instability supports us”

In a three-dimensional coordinated system, a source of light is moved by a programmed robot. The light scans fixed objects, such as edges, tubes, objects and tiles of plexiglas. These are simple geometrical shapes, squares and circles, which cast their shadow on the floor, the wall and the ceiling of a white room – an expressive vocabulary that is sharply outlined and visible. The equipment of Joachim Fleischer brings the geometry of the room, the lines, the surfaces and the proportions of the architecture into movement, so that they blend with the shadows of the scanned objects, which suddenly bounce off the walls. An unforeseeable complex system comes into being through a simple projection of a source of light, an object and a projection of a shadow, which examines our conventional perception and casts it into question. In the installation of Joachim Fleischer light and room appear to be the main actors of his play. Just as it is on a theatre stage the room is only the scene of the action, which can no longer withhold from the objects within. For the artist light means first and foremost movement; his objects of light force the viewer to observe time, which is necessary to understand the room.

Joachim Fleischer, who works with light as material, builds or uses machines in a certain aesthetic way, but only utilizes them functionally as a means of transportation for light, as well as a means of transportation for his stratagem and doubts regarding his constructions and their perception. His machines reveal a certain technique that is easily overlooked. The lightness of the machinery goes together with the movement of the immaterial source of light, and at the same time with the motionless objects that appear to be weightless. Fleischer’s machinery produces an image of an aura which is not recognizable at a first glance, but which turns more acute the longer it is looked at, because it can only be perceived as a shadow and not in its material reality.

In this case people are not present in Fleischer’s installation: elements, light, room and movement work mechanically. They remain neutral elements free of pathos or action in contrast to the movement of dancers on a theatre stage. However in the complex cycles of the robot and the constellations which open up between light, room and shadow, this special condition which according to Paul Valéry "must not continue and transfer us outside or far away from us; in this condition, however, instability supports while stability only occurs by coincidence. He gives the impression of another existence which is capable of our rarest moments and which is composed of our limits and capabilities.”
(Paul Valéry, Degas Danse Dessin)

A few remarks on the work of Joachim Fleischer by Jean-Baptiste Joly