Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, 2011:
"Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss undertook their joint, creative actions in combined fields of art and science in late 1980s. (...) We can say that the art of Fleischmann and Strauss has developed in parallel to the development of computer and internet environment, depicting dynamics of this network and inscribing with the undertaken issues, in the circle of problems generated through out a development and transformation of accompanied cyber-cultural concepts. The structure and the range of problems of works created by them, under certain, often-crucial circumstances, were ahead of theoretical findings shaped by the world of science. It concerns especially the character and the status of their field of intervention – the person in cyberspace. Interactive installations of Fleischmann and Strauss didn't propose to its viewers drowning in depths of alternative, separate worlds, but offered interactive experience of beeing between connected worlds, experience connecting in hybrid entity real and virtual environments.
Viewers become integral components of these works, the intelligently working components. As a result, perceptive experience of Fleischmann and Strauss installations takes transgressive shape; it is an activity overtaken in one environment but bringing effects in another, and the results reflexively are coming back to the functioning interactors, building a developing context off interactions, motivating their further behaviors and co-creating in this way, the structure of interactive work-event. Both these features: real-virtual fluctuation and interactivity shaping its rythm and dynamic, together add to most of the Fleischmann/Strauss works hybrid character, and together ascribe them the feature described as Mixed Reality. These works prefigured in this way more advanced phases of cyber-cultural theories. (...)
These first, joint realizations of Fleischmann and Strauss: Berlin – Cyber City (1989-91), Home of the Brain (1990-1992) and Liquid Views (1992-93), as well as later installation Murmuring Fields (1997-99), in spite of the fact, that they were still made and located out side of the internet, also share some kind of network structure. They own this to the extended arrangement of interactive connections appearing between experiencing these works viewers-users and extended, multidimensional resources of materials (also virtual), consisting for these works. Hypertextual organization of an access to these materials makes receptive experience of these works with its navigational character, similar to Internet experience. (...)
Interactivity appears to be a very important and at the same time a uniquely characteristic feature not only in these early, presently discussed realizations, but above all in other works created by Fleischmann/Strauss duet. This feature, by Lev Manovich perceived as the obvious attribute of digital media (Manovich, 2006), from the Fleischmann and Strauss perspective appears not only (and not above all) as a feature of a medium, but as a structural indicator of works created by them, as an expression of deep logic of these works, finally as a basic system determining viewer’s experience. Second, not less important than interactivity, attribute of work of these two artists is, already mentioned earlier, the tension and fluctuation of their works between real and virtual reality. Both these features: real-virtual fluctuation and interactivity shaping its rhythm and dynamic, together add to most of the Fleischmann and Strauss works, already described before, hybrid character, and together ascribe them the feature described as Mixed Reality or Augmented Reality. Inevitably in this environment Fleischmann and Strauss locate viewers of their works. Consequently, viewers become integral components of these works, the intelligently working components. As a result, perceptive experience of Fleischmann and Strauss installations takes transgressive shape; it is an activity overtaken in one environment but bringing effects in another, and the results reflexively are coming back to the functioning interactors, building a developing context of interactions, motivating their further behaviors and co-creating in this way, the structure of interactive work-event (Kluszczyński, 2010). ...
Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, excerpt from: Living between reality and virtuality. Remarks over the work of Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss. In: Performing Data, 2011
https://www.academia.edu/4470107/Living_between_reality_and_virtuality._Remarks_over_the_work_of_Monika_Fleischmann_and_Wolfgang_Strauss