Within the framework of the project www.collective-view.ch Mathias Kaspar (CH, *1984) places a camera in the laundry room of an apartment building and, thereby, invests the camera with a social function; one that benefits all the residents of the building, as they are then able to see whether their laundry is already done. With this he is referencing the first implementation of webcams. What is considered to be the first webcam is the Trojan Room Coffee Pot Camera, which sent pictures of a coffee machine in the computer lab of the University of Cambridge to co-workers from 1991 to 2001 and from 1993 on also to the web. He then projects the Internet site, www.collective-view.ch, which contains this material, as part of an exhibition which he has curated. The exhibition space is called Doppeldecker and is the balcony segment of Mathias Kaspar’s flat. The balcony section is on the first floor and faces the inner courtyard, making it visible to the public from a shared terrace on the same level. Thus, the public is the recipient, but they are also subject to observation from the surrounding flats. The picture of the laundry room as a semi-private space is exposed to a public situation. Since these two projects Doppeldecker and www.collective-view.ch, begin at the same time and mutually activate each other, a paradox situation results in which there is no clear trigger. The temporary fusion of the two projects reveals the field of tension between the private and the public space.
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