After the end of the digital revolution, we now live in a post-digital world, where digital modes of production, presentation, perception and interaction have become so commonplace that they also co-determine our analog modes of communication and behavior. At the intersections of reality and virtuality, Alexander Schubert’s works, which may be more concert-like, theatrical, participatory, or installation-like, move. The composer, who was born in 1979 and studied computer science, is not a devout soldier of fortune in cyberspace, despite his fascination with new technologies, but a differentiated observer of current transdigital processes, whose projects invite us to experience them with equal precision.
His “Sleep Laboratory” in the DuMont-Kunsthalle, which has been empty for decades, distributes the audience in pairs to treatment rooms separated by pink curtains, where one takes a seat on a stool and couch like a doctor and patient. Through headphones, a gentle computer voice tells you to put on your VR goggles and not to worry, because everything is fine and you can relax and enjoy all the beauty to come. You see the real environment on the display as an aseptically cleaned computer animation via integrated gaming motion sensors. In it, you appear as a pink avatar with a faceless, metallic smooth body, which actually lies on the bed like you and moves in the same way.