More Life: A loop installation, 1998
Featured in the exhibition Animations 2001-2002 (PS1/MOMA, NY), 2003 (Kunstwerke, Berlin)
The presentation format for this work is a large TV, placed on the floor in the corner of a dark room, mirroring the scene represented in the animation: a TV in the corner of a dark room, broadcasting a “talking head” – a stuffed bear, speaking in a corner of a dark room standing in front of a TV in a corner of a dark room, also broadcasting the same talking head – a stuffed bear, speaking in a corner of a dark room....ad infinitum. More life is a recursive system - meaning a self reflecting system - one that uses itself to build itself – just like those used in the programming languages of thinking machines like the computer.
The sound track is a grab from the 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner, in which Roy Batty, the renegade replicant played by Rutger Hauer, explains to his creator, the founder of the Tyrell Corporation, why he is about to kill him."I want more life, fucker," is what Roy Batty demands of Tyrell, reproaching him bitterly because Tyrell has programmed all of the androids produced by his corporation to have only limited two year life span. "I want more life, fucker," Batty growls, right before he crushes Tyrell's head.
The piece is intended to be both a tragic and an ironic comment on the virtual world generally and specifically, the world of the imaginary, which is animation itself.