Mobile Phi
Carsten Höller
Carsten Höller
Mobile Phi, 2004
Installation with five light boxes, neon, white and red plexiglass, aluminum construction, dimmboxes, control unit
46 x 46 x 46 cm (each) 250 x 564 x 100 cm (overall dimensions)
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
Installation view: Modus Operandi, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria, 2004
© VEGAP, Madrid, 2026 | Photo: Angelika Krinzinger
- Date
- 2005
- Medium
- 5 light discs with neon tubes, aluminum, perspex, plexiglass, electronic circuitry, cables
- Dimension
- 250 x 564 x 100 cm 250 x 564 x 100 cm Each disc: 46 x 46 cm
- Credit
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection
- This artwork is part of the donation and long-term loan from TBA21 to the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Details
Mobile Phi is based on a phenomenon discovered in 1912 by the Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, which he described in his famous essay on apparent and real movement. The phenomenon concerns the perception of motion, arising as the result of watching a rapid succession of individual static images – the principle of the cinema film. From this phenomenon Wertheimer concluded that the perception of the whole (in this case the moving figure) must be completely different from the perception of its parts (the individual images).
The basic principle of Gestalt psychology – "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" – thus radically called into question the prevailing theories of structuralism and behaviorism. Mobile Phi, which, in contrast to conventional mobiles, only functions two-dimensionally, expands on this phenomenon: Five dots are projected next to each other at random in rapid sequence, causing the observer to "see" an imaginary ball jumping between them. Exploring ideas of reconstructed perception, Mobile Phi suggests that linear time is not as "real" as we believe it to be and that our senses, by their very nature, create the time frame we inhabit.
