▸ video works


Telluric Force

Computer animation, stereo sound, plasma display, wooden frame, 90 x 150 cm, 2012.


Telluric Force addresses a recent geological orientation that is rapidly gaining acceptance: human activity has been a driving geophysical force since the beginning of the industrial era. After millions of years, a biological actor thus entered the stage of the earth development whose environmental impact is of such significance that ecologists and geologists felt impelled to introduce a term for a new geological era: the Anthropocene. The core premise of the Anthropocene thesis is that human activity shapes nature. This term therefore heralds a paradigm shift in the natural sciences. Serving as a supplement to collective consciousness by conceptualizing an era of responsibility, it consequently requires new models for science, culture, politics, and everyday life. The video work Telluric Force shows a mechanical metronome—a compound of the Greek words metron (measure) and nomos (law, consensus). The ticks of the swinging pendulum, however, are not regular pulses caused by the wound-up spring system. Telluric Force displays arrhythmic, non-metrical, and seemingly random amplitudes generated by a specific choreography created by the artist in collaboration with the composer Szely.
To visualize the new era of the Anthropocene, Eckermann replaced the metronome's musical frequency scale with a geologic time scale that includes the "metric" of human influence on the ecosystem. Thus, Telluric Force reflects a new order of time and nature whose complex, multifarious, and hence obscure "measures" are rendered audible by the amplified ticks of the metronome's pendulum. Even though these swings seem erratic, they are in fact constructed.