"Der Riese (The Giant) is an ominous work structured almost entirely of material generated by video surveillance cameras that monitor traffic and travelers, department stores and shoppers, private property and public parks, collected by Michael Klier in German cities over a period of three years. His work suggests more than the future-shock premise that nowhere escapes scrutiny and nothing goes unnoticed. His is a disturbing premise that our world has become a labyrinth traveled by a mechanical search for life, but the camera is capable of capturing only the signs of life, and in many places warns us that life no longer exists. A compelling videotape...it is constructed in gracefully moving segments accompanied by ambient sound and selected movements of symphonies by Wagner and Mahler, German composers inspired by the dramatic moods of the earth, and man's often trying cohabitation with a hostile environment.... The artist's compilation of episodes creates a unique and penetrating tension.... As a result, the entire world begins to look possibly catastrophic with the isolated viewer the only subjective witness. Through the intimacy of television our position reverses to become the camera." Bob Riley, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston