'Sensational', 'groundbreaking', 'masterpiece', are the comments of the international press to the inter-media performance D.A.V.E. - digital amplified video engine.
The innovative synthesis of video, body and music was shown so far in 25 countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia.


Transplantation techniques, prothetic surgery, microphysical stimulation of the body: technologies are not longer sent to other planets anymore, but initiate the invasion of man himself who is no longer protected by anything, neither by ethics nor by biopolitical principles.
Paul Virilio


The performance D.A.V.E. deals with the potential future removal of limitations upon the body. This is personified by a performer whose body is simultaneously the stage and the mediator of an utopia, and proclaims that, thanks to futuristic technologies and implantation, mankind will be in a position to eliminate the restrictions upon the natural body. A wide variety of experiences will become possible: a man will be able to find out what it’s like to be a woman, and vice versa. And there won’t be any reason why people pursuing the realization of their individually dreamed fantasies won’t be able to be man and woman simultaneously. It will no longer be just the aging process that will be putting the body through changes; the undreamed-of intervention possibilities make the body itself into an „object of sensation”.








D.A.V.E. switches effortlessly between young and old, male and female; he distorts his body, his limbs. His anus recites biblical passages both profound and ironic with the voice of a child; the body dissolves into streaming worlds of digital images.
D.A.V.E. deals with the manipulation and reformulation of the human body by means of biotech, genetic engineering and computer technology.
D.A.V.E. plays with real and virtual situations and the dissolution of the boundary between these two states, morphs between nightmare, redemption and transformation, culminating in the suspension of physicality.

What’s novel about D.A.V.E. is the concentration of the projections on the body in motion while avoiding conventional spatial and screen projections. You don’t think about the video anymore; it just belongs to the body. It’s a part of the body, or rather the performer is part of the video. The boundaries grow indistinct and are deactivated. Video projection, physical presence and acoustic environment thus blend into a symbiosis and create their own new reality: D.A.V.E. – digital amplified video engine.

... for who knows what is good for a man in life during the few days gone by the wind that he passes through like a shadow?
The Book of Ecclesiastes, Old Testament

D.A.V.E. is based on an idea by the media artist and composer Klaus Obermaier, and was developed in collaboration with the choreographer and dancer Chris Haring.








D.a.v.e. digital amplified video engine

Klaus Obermaier and Chris Haring