A Parallel Image is an electronic camera obscura, an installation by Gebhard Sengmüller, in collaboration with Franz Büchinger, supported by Fels-Multiprint. This media-archaeological, interactive sculpture is based on the fictive assumption that the currently still valid principle of electronically transmitting moving images, namely by breaking them down into single images and image lines, was never discovered.
The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using about 2,500 cables. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, A Parallel Image is technologically completely transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.
Gebhard Sengmüller is an artist working in the field of media technology, currently based in Vienna, Austria. Since 1992, he has been developing projects and installations focussing on the history of electronic media; creating alternative ordering systems for media content; and constructing autogenerative networks.
His work has been shown extensively in Europe, the US and Japan, among others in venues such as Ars Electronica Linz, the Venice Biennale, the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, Postmasters Gallery NYC, the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, the FCMM Festival Montreal, or the ICC Center Tokyo.