Inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, the interactive installations Rigid Waves and Liquid Views function as technical mirrors. Rigid Waves visually transforms the acoustic mirroring of Narcissus and Echo. It presents viewers with reflections that deviate from their normal self-perception. Using algorithms and a hidden camera, Rigid Waves captures and distorts viewers’ reflections through movement and proximity. The disjunction between self and reflection in Rigid Waves liberates self-awareness and invites the viewer to explore hidden aspects of the self.

Liquid Views complements Rigid Waves but works by coupling tactile movement with the deformation of reflections. It allows viewers to maintain control over their body-image correlation. Inspired by Narcissus’ discovery in the well, Liquid Views invites the viewer to interact through touch on a multi-touch screen. The dissolution of the image in Liquid Views creates a transition to another realm. It challenges traditional perceptions and emphasizes the poetic and spiritual aspects of the self.

Through a performative interface, Liquid Views dissolves the boundaries between real and virtual. The mirror is transformed from an external image to an internal correlate of the image’s potential. The immersive experience of Liquid Views, facilitated by touch, highlights the fusion of realms and the power of the image as a dimension of real-virtual being.

Both projects are based on interface innovations, the camera-based vision system, and the high-resolution multi-touch screen, both for tracking the viewer and for combining the screen with a miniature video camera in a perceptual plane. They work with new interface paradigms: spatial distance and proximity in Rigid Waves (1993), simultaneous multiple touch in Liquid Views (1992). With this work from the early 1990s, the artists anticipated future design paradigms, such as the spatial position sensing in Microsoft Kinect for Windows (2012), and future forms of interaction, such as the intuitive dragging and swiping of the iPhone (2007) or Microsoft Surface (2007). They have contributed to the invisibility of the Performative Interface , whose functionality is primarily an evocation of the viewer’s performance. According to the artists, this is a necessary condition for meaningful viewer interactivity to open the doors to neural aesthetics and to be able to live with the coming artificial intelligence. It should be noted that the artists’ development of the Performative Interface is also a tribute to the work of Myron Krueger, Bill Buxton, and others. See < https://billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html > See Performative Interface Fleischmann, Monika, and Wolfgang Strauss. New Media Arts – the Thinking Space for Digitality. In Creating Digitality, edited by Anthony Brooks, Springer, London, 2023. p 2 https://www.academia.edu/110757138/ New_Media_Arts_The_Thinking_Space_for_Digitality