Heat Images
The title «Heat Images» triggers associations with photographs
that are taken of buildings in order to demonstrate heat loss.
My heat images visualise the emotions of a city.
Heat image Moscow | 2006 © | 60 x 100 cm | analog
Alexander von Humboldt¬Ýattempted a physical description of the world
with the aid of sextants, travel reports and drawings,
whereas my heat images create a kind of
emotional mapping.
When I was studying as a guest in St. Petersburg for six months, I asked myself whether and how it was possible
to portray that city with its architecture and emotions using an objective reality. I decided in favour of questioning
the inhabitants¬Ýand chose 12 different coloured drawing pencils as a medium with which to hold onto their
emotions. The inhabitants judged their city subjectively, using colours as the expression of feelings. These
colours create the warmth that they feel. The heat images give the city a space, as a place that is structured.
Each heat image starts out from a question posed 80 times: «What colour do you associate with your city?»
This is linked with a request to sketch the answer on a piece of white card. 80 answers, i.e. 80 cards with
hatched lines in different colours, create a joint picture when overlapped and digitally processed: the additive
colour combination creates an individual colour spectrum for each city and makes it possible to experience the
sensually perceptible space visually. The heat images are evidence of an emotional identity that actually exists
and is shared by this city’Äôs inhabitants.
The isolated experimental set-up gave me the idea of subjecting cities, together with their different cultures, to a
comparison via the medium of colour.
Subsequently, the digitally summed up heat images (left) are reduced to images of colour averages (right).
