The artworks Safe Conduct and Old Food, consisting of multi-channel CGI animations and space-consuming installations, by the artist Ed Atkins are subject to this text. Using the methods of reception aesthetics, this text shows up the extent to which the artworks position themselves in relation to the digital. First, the media reflexivity of the artworks is demonstrated. The analysis examines Safe Conduct against the background of digitalization and digital capitalism – following Shoshana Zuboff’s interpretation of Surveillance Capitalism. The work visualizes the reification of the digital subject. Subsequently, in Old Food with reference to the Uncanny Valley and abjection, the physical as well as the bodies of the viewers are highlighted in opposition to the digital. The resulting accentuation of reification and embodiment within the works show a development from a view to a potential space for action. Through a comparison with the statements of the artist, the positioning of the works in the digital becomes more closely formulated and tangible. Atkins combines the relationship between figuration and literality as well as immateriality and materiality in a digital context. He also seeks to grasp the effects that are rooted in these relationships on life in the digital culture. The ambivalence, that exists between the pairs of concepts and is activated by misapplications, subsists, as it were, in the relationship between the digital and the real space of the
bodies. It is the starting point for the reification of the digital subject and the possibility of embodying the viewer.
Keywords: Computer Animation, Installation, Internet Art, Spatial Installation
