Harun Farocki

(B.1944, Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), Czechoslovakia // D.Berlin, 2014)

Deep Play, 2007

12 channel video installation, color, sound (German with English subtitles) 100 min. Ed. 2/3+ 2 AP
First Screenig: XII Documenta Kassel
PDF

Deep play is made of various perspectives on the final of the 2006 World Cup. Farocki uses raw material from various television networks alongside with many soundtracks: ranging from the police radio to the unfiltered words of TV production teams from all over the world. We see individual players on both teams, but the computer also generates abstract representations of the flow of the game. The network of relationships among the players is one that absorbs spontaneous individual decisions as well as tactical ideas and habits rooted in the culture of the game.

 

Track 1: The live recording (“clean feed”) delivered from Infront Sports & Media AG, Zug (CH) to the television broadcasters. Bar charts Ascensio, Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU) showing the players’ average and top speeds. Vector survey of the players’ bodies in relation to functional efficiency, reaction time and torque, University of British Columbia, Visualization of Human Kinetics, Vancouver (CA). Sound: voice of the worldwide broadcasting director, Wolfgang Straub.

Track 2: Outside the Olympic Stadium; filmed by the artist from the neighboring Corbusier Building. Sound: police radio.

Track 3: Playback from a high-angle camera; relationship of each frame to the pitch. Penalty shootout; movement of the Italian goalkeeper, Munich University of Technology, Aspogamo (DE).

Track 4: Playback from a camera tracking one Italian player respectively. Graph of his speed of movement, Ascensio, Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU).

Track 5: Dynamic representation of the back four, the playmakers and the paths, Ascensio. Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU).

Track 6: Playback from a camera tracking one French player respectively. Graph of his speed of movement, Ascensio, Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU).

Track 7: Simulation of the clean feed (track 1); simulation of the tracking of a French player (track 6); ball-oriented version, Ascensio, Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU).

Track 8: The Italian and French trainers in alternation. Schematic representation of the passes, Ascensio, Match Expert, Nizhny Novgorod (RU).

Track 9: Automatic translation of the course of the game into words, Center for Computing Technologies, Spatial Temporal Analysis of Dynamic Occurrences, Bremen (DE). Semantic interpretation using neuronal networks, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Dycos GmbH (DE). Sound: course of play and interpretation rendered by computer voice.

Track 10: Notation of the game for statistical analysis; service of Impire AG, Ismaning (DE), for use in the press. Representation of fouls and moves in Laban notation, Folkwang Hochschule, Kinetography, Essen (DE). Analysis of the game by football trainers of the German Football Association, Frankfurt (DE), for strategic purposes.

Track 11: High-angle fade-ins of passes, dribbles and drives (track 3), Munich University of Technology, Aspogamo (DE).

Track 12: Security cameras in the Berlin Olympic Stadium

Partial views of exhibition at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal.

Partial views of exhibition at DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal.

Partial views of exhibition at Documenta 12, Kassel