Once Upon A Time is a direct follow-up to the Obélisque baroque digital and, like its predecessor, is devoted to the classical motifs of vanitas and transience.

In the midst of a seemingly lifeless wasteland, something begins to grow beneath a glass dome resting on the seat of a weathered wooden chair. Soon it becomes clear that it is a tree.

Its life cycle is directly tied to the duration of the exhibition: while the tree is still growing at the opening, it begins to bloom later – yet the blossoms no longer attract any life and slowly begin to wither. Now the leaves change color as well; the tree loses leaf after leaf, until finally it is the tree itself that passes away.

I decided to realize this as a generative real-time installation in vvvv, calculating every point in time solely from the computer’s system clock rather than using pre-rendered animations. This is also why the sun, moon and stars follow their actual paths above the exhibition site, and why the blossoms, as with a real plant, open by day and close again at night.

This poetry of becoming and passing away, however, is not confined to this one tree but can be found in many places: on the horizon, for instance, lies a distant city that is directly linked to the tree’s fate and slowly decays.

The two chairs, too, were not chosen entirely by chance: as a homage to Dutch Post-Impressionism, they speak of the past, of the irretrievable, and, like their models, draw on the symbolism of their time. Together with their surroundings, a space emerges in which finitude can be experienced as an interconnected cycle.

With Once Upon A Time, a work has thus come into being that asks you to take your time. What at first glance appears to be a perpetual still image is in fact subject to very slow but steady change, which is why even the most inconspicuous moment is unique.