Phenotypes / Limited Forms

This book is an extension of the interactive installation Phenotypes/Limited Forms. The installation encourages visitors to pick their favorite subjects out of a total of several hundreds of displayed photographs, rearrange them, name their sequences, and print them in the form of a fanfold. The publication analyzes the 30 000 sequences selected by the public. A detailed demonstration of the applied algorithms helps us to understand the connection between the photographs, the number of times they were chosen by an individual visitor, and how the visitors named their personal selection of images. The book traces the creative processes and the interaction of the visitors with the material of the installation as a work of art highly dependent on the involvement of the audience. Essays by curators and art historians discuss the subject on a theoretical level while examining the aspects of participation and emancipation as well as the question of the autonomy of images.