Scheidegger & Spiess Jules Spinatsch. Vienna MMIX -10008/7000: Surveillance Panorama Project No. 4 - The Vienna Opera Ball

Jules Spinatsch ranks among the foremost contemporary Swiss photographic artists. Many of his projects, although controversial are thought-provoking and internationally recognised. Since 2003, he has been working on his Surveillance Panorama Projects; shot with network cameras, these works create awareness for social habits and show the sometimes striking discrepancy between illusion and reality. In Vienna MMIX, he focused on the famous Vienna Opera Ball; from the opening of the doors at 20:32hrs, until the end of the dance at 05:17hrs, using 2 cameras to complete duel rotations, capturing an image every few seconds, an incredible 17,352 in total. Jules Spinatsch. Vienna MMIX-10008/7000 presents this fascinating social study in two volumes. Volume 1 shows 10,008 images, combined into a single chronological sequence; panoramic views that recreate the entire space, yet show only fragments of events. Volume 2 presents a selection of 70 images, documenting single moments of great intensity or intimacy, in fascinating close-up detail. It is a striking collection, documenting a range of human behaviour in a public space, over a relatively short period of time, in a very specific arena. Review "The Vienna State Opera House has a state-of-the-art camera surveillance system. In 2009, for the Vienna Opera Ball, they ceded control of that system to Jules Spinatsch. . . . Vienna MMIX is a remarkable document of every image taken by each of those cameras, an anthropological study in class constructed."-- "British Journal of Photography" About the Author Jules Spinatsch, born 1964 in Davos (Switzerland), taught himself as a photographer and attended the documentary photography class at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York 1993 94. He lives and works in Zurich and Vienna and also teaches at the Haute Ecole d'Art et de Design (HEAD) in Geneva.