The video work Where we once aligned explores the historical and epistemological foundations of landscape surveying. Its starting point is the geodetic work of Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose 19th-century surveys shaped the image of a rationalized, mathematically quantifiable world.
At the center of the work is the Desenberg near Warburg (North Rhine-Westphalia)—not a primary survey point, but an auxiliary point that enabled Gauss’s large-scale triangulation of the Kingdom of Hanover. In the work, this location once again becomes the site of a survey: a person moves toward the hill with a modified survey wheel. The instrument registers the unevenness of the ground and translates it into acoustic signals, which are generated in real time and recorded on tape.
In this way, the work links historical methods of scientific precision with a contemporary, sensorially expanded surveying practice. While Gauss transformed space into coordinates through mathematical abstraction, here a singular auditory cartography of the terrain emerges—a soundscape that makes physical reality tangible as a process and a form of resistance.
Where we once aligned reflects the tension between objectivity and experience, between scientific representation and physical presence. The work demonstrates that every measurement of space is simultaneously an embodied form of knowledge—a situated act in which perception, technology, and landscape temporarily resonate with one another.
Zweikanal-Videoinstallation, Vermessungsapparatur. 30 min (Echtzeitaufnahme) – offener Sound, 2 min (Detail-Loop) – stumm. Maße variabel.
