The installation reverses the customary relation between public and artist. The artist keeps his eye strictly on the visitors, therefore the public is being looked at by the installation instead of the installation being looked at by the public.
Bill Spinhoven playfully displays well-known topics: the phonetic equalness of I and Eye, the psychological implications for the forming of the Ego through seeing, the classic variation of the video-installation that involves a closed-circuit and refers to the important aspect of surveillance as well as the aesthetic component of interactivity, Here the audience is an integral part of the work of art completing it by personal intervention. And yet there is an unforeseen abyss of speculation circling around: the personification of a "higher being" (would that be the artist?), the depersonalizing of "the mirror of the soul", the eye as the embodiment of the abstract, the radical closeness to the l/Ego of a disembodied other. The artist vanishes, binding the onlookers to their metaphysical fear of an omniscient surveillance. Bill Spinhoven is dealing with video essentials.
I camera, 1 monitor,
1 computer