Agnes Meyer-Brandis – SGM-iceberg probe, 2006/08

Installation at the entrance to the Dachstein Ice Caves, SGM (sub-glacialis montometer) iceberg probe, monitor, headphones, borehole. Software: Ralf Baecker; Mechanics & Electronic Support: Ralf Wolf, Roman Kirschner. With the support of the NRW Art Foundation, NASA / Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Agnes Meyer-Brandis was born in 1973 in Aachen, Germany. She studied mineralogy, art and media art in Aachen, Maastricht, Düsseldorf and Cologne, where she now lives and works. Her installations and speeches-performances navigate a course along the interface of art and science, and explore the borders between fact and fiction, fantasy and technology. Her works, which have been shown at exhibitions and festivals around the world, have been honored with numerous awards including 1st Prize at the Transmediale 06. www.ffur.de

The Tiefenrausch exhibition isn’t just exploring the urban underground; the depths below an Alpine landscape also occupy its attention. In an expedition tent set up near the entrance to the Dachstein Ice Caves, visitors can use a tactile search device hooked up to a monitor and headphones to visually and acoustically scan an underground region that’s now threatened by economic interests and global warming. The SGM (sub-glacialis montometer) probe is steered through a borehole drilled 120 meters deep, and thus functions as an interface between two worlds. It’s simultaneously a research instrument and a video installation that transports us into fantastic worlds.

In an expedition tent set up at the recently redesigned entrance to the Dachstein Ice Caves, artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis conducts her visual and acoustic research on the interior structure of the Dachstein Massif. The SGM probe makes it possible to study subterranean life forms and ecosystems right up close in their natural settings. The probe is navigated vertically through a borehole and functions as an interface between worlds. It amounts to a hybrid combining elements of a piece of research equipment and a video installation. It mirrors the artist’s great sensitivity on a high technical level and, without being totally invasive, provides access to the complex structures of this underground world. Its medial character identifies the probe as a detection device enhanced by the highly sensitive technical extensions of the human senses. It opens up a mundus subterranus that would otherwise necessarily remain hidden beyond the grasp of our powers of imagination. As a piece of research equipment and a video installation, “SGM Iceberg Probe” makes a sculptural extension materialize underground. And with it, the artist impressively succeeds in bringing about a transformation of technology into art that includes glimpses into never-before-seen geological strata, ice caves and their sub-glacial life forms.