How do we approach that which eludes our understanding? This is an exploration of interfaces – instruments, practices, technologies and places – through which we attempt to gain access to the inexplicable and non-material. From space spectroscopes to dark matter detectors to shamanic journeys of consciousness: they all serve as bridges to something that lies beyond our everyday understanding—the invisible, the incomprehensible, the unnameable. This photographic research project moves along these lines of tension.

For millennia, humans have been grappling with the mystery of existence. It is perhaps precisely the fact that this question can never be answered that makes it so incredibly compelling. By its very nature, it leaves boundless room for all manner of ideas.

In particular, the conviction (or perception) that the material world is not the whole truth—that there are other dimensions behind it, above it, outside it, or in between—seems beyond question for many. There are many names for this non-material realm, and just as many points of contact and approaches to it. Ist das, was ist? (german for "Is that, what is?") is a documentary, research-based project that takes a transmedia approach to exploring human ways of engaging with the intangible, the invisible, and the non-material: everything we cannot directly perceive with our human senses or understand rationally. In doing so, the project examines both scientific and spiritual methods and focuses on “interfaces”—that is, devices, machines, and instruments, as well as practices and rituals—that function as points of convergence. In what ways do we extend our feelers? Or: What attachments do we build for our feelers? And what, exactly, is an interface?