It is often said that we are currently undergoing the second major
technological revolution. The first brought us the acceleration of
traffic, the railway system, the automobile and, finally, aviation.

The current revolution is riding on electromagnetic waves and has led to
such an acceleration of communications that information is now available
in real time – that means immediately, no matter where it comes from.
With the aid of equipment such as computers, mobile phones, scanners
etc., people can call up this information any time and be present
everywhere, as long as they are in a position to use the media and
analyze the information. This means that the patterns of reception have
been more or less reworked, in order to adapt them to the patterns
prescribed by technology. As electronic proximity does not require
physical contact, a new sphere has emerged that no longer distinguishes
between the private and the public. Jordan Crandall's multimedia
installation *suspension* observes this space created by the mediation
of a variety of technical networks as "a dynamic combination of reality
and virtuality," inquiring into "alternate modes of access, navigation,
and inhabitation" of electronic space. "Suspension explores the ways in
which viewing agencies, bodies and inhabited spaces are mobilized and
cross-formatted through various 'protocols' and 'vehicles.'"

The interactive system of video cameras, video players, projectors,
computers, digital image processors, scan converters, animations, and
various adjustment facilities automatically catapults the exhibition
visitor into one of those new hybrid spaces of simultaneously real and
virtual (distributed) presence. Voluntarily or not, the visitor begins
to exert an influence. "The installation is crisscrossed with networks
of projections and multiple agencies both local (within the Kassel
exhibition space) and remote (via the Internet). Inhabitants
simultaneously originate and interrupt the projective flow. The location
of viewing is multiplied and mobilized, dispersed and re-routed. The
interference patterns generate field of competing orientations, which
prompt calibrations no longer measured in terms such as distance and
magnitude." Rhythm and speed of events determine the changes within the
system of suspension in which matter and energy (in the sense of
electro-optical or electromagnetic power) influence each other
reciprocally and force the user/viewer into constant reorientation
between changing protocols and viewpoints.