ANNA OPPERMANN The world wide web opens up new possibilities for art studies to answer what can be considered the usual questions of art studies: Reconstruction of artworks, their dating, iconography and iconology, art historical hermeneutics and reception research. Digital media offer art historians, in particular, completely new ways of securing the subject matter, which is an indispensable prerequisite for art historical activity. The research project aims to address precisely these methodological questions of art historical work, which are in a state of upheaval, using the closed, preserved artistic estate of the Hamburg artist Anna Oppermann (1940-1993) as an example. Carmen Wedemeyer and Martin Warnke started this documentary research together with Anna Oppermann herself, shortly before her death in 1993. Anna Oppermann created so calles "Ensembles" that she described as follows: "What is an ensemble? I call an ensemble the documentation of a certain method of proceeding in perceptual and (or) cognitive exercises. An ensemble construction is the presentation of many efforts to recognise a piece of reality, to judge it or also - to get a 'grip' (term) on a problem. The documentation is a visualisation, a securing of traces and a memory aid of psychic processes of different levels of consciousness, different systems of reference - and as such always also a basis for investigation (fixing and making conscious inadequacies) with regard to possible corrections and modifications, which requires a relative openness of the arrangement (. ... wanting to know how, why I, the others, the circumstances, the conditions are like this - ... to what extent are we (am I) externally determined, unconsciously manipulated, e.g. also in the production of art, how does opinion - opinion about art - come about, etc.). In the process, starting from one point (from the relatively simple to the relatively complicated), the radius of the circles of interest becomes larger and larger. On the method: Starting from a real object (at the beginning a found object from nature, e.g. a leaf, later people, incidents, statements of others, etc.) the following state phases develop (or are stimulated): 1. meditation 2. catharsis: this means here, an as spontaneous as possible, partly automatic (also subjective) reacting (and abreacting) and associating to the object in order to provoke unconscious or preconscious utterances and to fix them, as far as possible, in the form of sketches and notes (video or tape recordings would be possible). This is a phase of polyphonic expansion in which everything is allowed - even representations which, measured by common criteria of evaluation, would have to fall under the table (-- depersonalisation - projection - dissociation etc. --). The chaos must be endured. The results of this phase are only made available in excerpts in publicly presented ensembles, since it is inevitably in this phase that most of the personal inadequacies and foolish remarks come to light. 3. reflection (feed-back): Summary drawings and state photos to provoke a distance - in the verbal field: first individual interpretations and associations with regard to possible causes - motivations - collection of quotations from others. 4. analysis (in an attempt to establish an overall reference): Compiling details and intermediate results in groups, confronting and comparing them with different systems of reference, evaluation remapping (interdisciplinary - with texts from the field of psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc.) - formulating an ensemble-specific theme indicating the direction of the problem to be circled and diagrams compressing the method. In the visual field: highlighting through enlargements (large-format photo screens, pictures) and abstraction through summaries (reductions) in the state photo, which makes many details no longer recognisable or comprehensible to outsiders. It must be emphasised that polyphonic expansion alternates with summaries. Time plays a special role, especially in the necessary acquisition of distance; and so the creation and modification of many ensembles extends over several years (-- is theoretically never completed). Through the use of different media - photo - drawing - arrangement in space - colloquial language - intellectual language - etc. and through the juxtaposition of spontaneous, reflective, realistic and abstract levels, meta-levels (expressions) are possible. A summarising photo of an ensemble construction is, as a so-called reference photo, together with the real object, the starting point for further efforts, in application of the method indicated above." The hyperimage software used here was developed to document the highly complex interlinked image and text material Anna Oppermann created in all its structural richness.