29/4/07
Enter_Unknown Territories International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art

I was keen to discover how other artists were using new technology to produce artwork that had the capability to be shown within a public sector. This festival was an opportunity to meet these artists, experience their work and discuss the techniques used.

Aerial Phonography, by artist Simon Keep was an example of how sound and video could be used together to create a sonic experience using a handheld controller and headset. Visitors followed a route via video on the handset previously recorded by Simon from a hot air balloon and listened to sounds recorded from the hot air balloon via headphones.

Aerial Phonography by artist Simon Keep
Catalogue blurb
"When you listen to the wind in the trees, it is not the wind you are hearing but the sound of air moving against the leaves. The opposite is true for a hot air balloon: the balloon is carried by the wind, so when you are flying you do not hear or feel the wind." Rediscover familiar sounds as you follow the invisible path of a past hot air balloon flight. Face the challenge of pedestrian streets, private college grounds and the river Cam, as a pilot of your own sonic experience using a handheld controller and headset. Prior to the festival Simon will take flight above Cambridge recording the sounds of the city below.

8/4/07
Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff first became known by her attempts to facilitate altered perceptions through “sound walks.” Using binaural audio technology the recording can achieve incredibly precise three-dimensional sound to create an experience of physical immediacy and complexity.

It is easy to get caught up in Janet Cardiff’s narrative of spoken word and sound, I listened to Missing Voice (case study b) and it made me think about what was going through her head when she recorded the sound of the environment and how her private thoughts seeped into the public sector when the participant was able to listen to her comments on the people and buildings around her.

Karen Messer, Office Manager for online magazine Ascent experienced Playhouse (1997) and didn’t want the illusion to end. “I felt dizzy walking back through the curtains into the art gallery. What had I just experienced? What role had I played? Was I just an observer? I felt tricked. I remember being quite captivated by the possibility of there being something under my chair – something that would allow the illusion to continue.”

Interview with Janet Cardiff and project curator Kelly Gordon, July 2005:KG: How do you create such intense three-dimensional soundscapes?

JC: The technique that I use is called binaural audio. I record right on the site, following the exact route that the participant will eventually take. The recording system is made from two microphones mounted in the ears of a dummy head. Because of the head's shape, it captures the way we hear. I get many looks and comments from people as I wander around with this blue (hairdresser's dummy) head held out in front of me.

KG: Can you describe what techniques and strategies you use in Words drawn in water to give participants a kind of out-of-body experience?

JC: Sound has an innate ability to transport you out of your body, so if you give an audience various soundscapes, you can transport them through their imagination into many different places. For example, the sound of ghostly people talking around you can be startling, or the sound of horses going by can give you a sense of the past. I include simple but effective elements such as a fly buzzing your ear, passing musicians, or a helicopter flying overhead to take you out of your body into different imaginary spaces.
http://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/description.asp?Type=&ID=20escription.asp?Type=&ID=20

23/3/07
Susan Hiller, Witness
As visitors enter ‘Witness’ whispering voices can be heard coming out of hundreds of suspended speakers. Gallery visitors wander around the space holding the speakers to their ears, listening to fragments of people’s stories, whether fictional or real life encounters of the third kind. ’

Susan Hiller quote: 'I wanted to make a work that would be seductive and beautiful so that even if you’re a non-believer in these kinds of experiences you somehow have an experience yourself that makes you a little more sympathetic. And at the same time put you in this position (which I feel I’m in myself), of true ambivalence. I believe these people are telling the truth, but I don’t believe that they saw what they describe.’
I feel that this work is about an experience and i think the intimate installation between listener and speaker creates something for the viewer to explore in any way they want to, it doesn't force the viewer to think or feel a certain way by telling them that the stories are real or spoof.

6/3/07
Daniel Gustav Cramer

German photographer Daniel Gustav Cramer has plunged from dark uncanny forests to submarine seascapes. But says Charles Darwent, his work is still concerned with themes of concealment, where what is shown in the light may be more baffling than what lurks in the darkness. It is this sense of sublimity and the element of the uncanny that surrounds Cramer’s work that fascinates me. The question that nags at you when you walk through Cramer’s Sylvan woods is where? Why here? Why this tree? And the realisation dawns on you that these photographs aren’t just about revelation but equally about concealment. Similarly my work deals with what cannot be seen and is readily left up to the imagination of the viewer.

I received a very nice message from Daniel, it seems that he had found my blog and informed me that his work was showing in London. He also sent me a catalogue of his work.

Daniel Gustav Cramer Underwater 1

19-22/2/07
Paris Trip
The Museum of Modern Art turned out to be the most influential place during the whole trip.
I was surprised to see digital artworks and video installations by contemporary artists.
Douglas Gordon's artwork was on display through many TV monitors within an installation space. I had previously gone to see a retrospective of his work in Edinburgh in January. Even though this exhibition didn't include all of his work and no large projection screens, I found this second chance to view his work a valuable experience.
I took photographs and video footage showing the positioning of monitors and wires of the TV screens and video players, as well as the footage displayed on the screens (Galleries in Paris seemed to have a laid back attitude to documenting artwork).

24 hour psycho was on display on one of the TV monitors and I found it uncanny and amusing that I witnessed the exact same point of the film (with Marion Crane driving her car after stealing from her boss) when I was at the retrospective Superhumanatural in Edinburgh

Douglas Gordon's artwork displayed on monitors in the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, 2007.




Nam June Paik
The stacked monitors in the shape of a human interested me because of the sheer amount of monitors and height of the artwork. The 40's/50's style TV monitors appeared to be balanced on top of each other with no technical stability. I have created a short video that shows the work from all angles and close up. I didn't like the netting and flowers positioned in the middle of the monitor, as if coming from the heart of the structure, I thought that these looked tacky and was unsure of their purpose. At closer inspection the TV monitors were showing 80's style visual mixing of bright, flashing objects and abstract shapes. I have mused with the idea of stacking monitors on top of each other to show the viewer different view points of themselves via CCTV.

Nam June Paik's L' Olympe de Gouges in the electronic fairy, 1989.

10/2/07
Bill Viola
Seven metal barrels are filled to the brim with water. They each contain a black and white monitor positioned on the bottom. Each monitor shows a recording of a person's face while asleep. A different person appears in each barrel, and they remain isolated from each other. The soft light from the video screens emerges from each barrel and diffuses in the room. This video installation had to have another floor fitted to hide the wires from the monitor. The positioning of the monitors and how to display technical equipment (hiding or showing wires and what this says about the work) is an important element that I am experimenting with and discussing with other artists.

As Chris Townsend says in his introduction to The Art of Bill Viola the sort of emotional charge with which Viola's work is imbued could not be possible without the actual presence of the spectator; to appreciate Viola, you have to really get involved, physically experience all the sights and sounds of his installations.

The Sleepers, 1992 Video Installation

1/2/07
Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup

Search
A synchronised walk in Newcastle-upon-Tyne city centre, recorded on a 16- camera surveillance system installed recently by Northumbria Police.
The resultant edited footage consisted of 20 ten second sequences transmitted during the commercial breaks on Tyne Tees Television between 21st June and 4th July 1993. The result in an eight-minute video documenting a synchronised walk or 'enactment' undertaken by the artists throughout the city.

Through Search the artists have demonstrated and articulated two features predominant in contemporary culture, namely paranoia and voyeurism in which certain technologies of (male) power (systems of surveillance and representation eg. television) become part of the ideological social totality, which as Foucault has argued, we have created for ourselves.
I felt that by using CCTV cameras as a tool of observation could explore different narratives; social power, surveillance and a male society, voyeurism, self observance and altered perceptions of reality. The quality of CCTV has improved and isn't as grainy as it used to be. It can be used almost anywhere and hidden in the smallest of spaces, it is an easy and accessible to buy and more and more people are using it to guard and watch over their property.

Search, 1993

18/1/07
Dan Graham
His work explores various themes, including inter-subjectivity, the mirror and the double, time delay in videos and performances, the relations between subject and object in space, the alteration between transparency and reflection through architecture, control systems, ephemeral forms of communication.
The artist commented "I'm interested in inter-subjectivity, exploring how a person, in a precise and given moment, perceives him/herself while at the same time watching other people who in turn are watching him/her." "When I was fourteen, I read Jean Paul Sartre's book Being and Nothingness and I realised how, when we are young, we develop the notion of Ego the moment we feel that someone is watching us. "

In Video Feedback 2 When observers see their image immediately, continuously replayed on the screen through videotape loops, their self-images, by adding temporality to self-perception, connect their self-perceptions to their mental states. This removes self-perception, as in the mirror image, from the viewing of a detached, static image. The use of video time-delay in conjunction with the mirror allows the spectator to see what is normally visually unavailable: the simultaneity of his or her self as both subject and object.
Dan Graham's work is very inspiring, his technical technique and knowledge of architecture is fascinating. During the 1970's/80's he managed to show delayed live footage to his audience using analogue. His viewers observe themselves and others within his video installations using mirrored walls and cameras, these are the techniques that I am interested in using. I have purchased three CCTV cameras and intend to set up a series of experiments that mirror his work and other artists as a starting point.

"Time Delay Room 2" (1974)

16/1/07
Janet Cardiff
There is a sense of wonder and shock when events and scenes described on the CD coincidentally happen in the real physical world, as they often do. Cardiff's walks usually circle around the same themes- memories, displacement and desire.

Cardiff in effect creates virtual spaces anchored in reality. She takes her participants to the crossroads of fiction and reality, the actual and the virtual imagery come together in hypnotic and emotional intensity. The artist comments "I always appear as a voice in my work. Your thoughts are your own, establishing a mix between the private and the public".

Cardiff's works involve the conventions of cinema and science fiction and explore the complexity of subjectivity in today's highly technological world.

Ghost Machine: Three layers of reality interact in these walks: the spectator moving through the rooms, the modified image of the rooms on camera display, and the soundtrack guiding the visitor via headphones. In Ghost Machine the theatre itself becomes the narrative. When visitors taking the tour reach the stage curtain they become actors. They receive applause, and the myths and fears addressed are theirs as well. But the applause comes from a box behind the visitor that is clearly empty. At the end, you wake up as though you've been daydreaming or sleep walking.

I think that the intimacies between Janet's voice and the listener is vital to create an environment of trust and to make the walks work. I want to explore the balance between reality and fiction by altering the viewer's perception of themselves by showing them several altered live images of themselves via CCTV, and mixing them on a visual mixer.

4/1/07-6/1/07:
Douglas Gordon Exhibition ‘Superhumanatural’
I went to see a retrospective of Douglas Gordon’s video work in an exhibition entitled ‘Superhumanatural’ in Edinburgh.

I had been looking forward to seeing 24 hour Psycho (1993), a slowed-down version of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho. I wanted to see which scene I would be a part of, by walking into the space when it was being played. Watching a silent Marion Crane driving away from the crime scene, struggling with her emotions of guilt and happiness, I felt as though I wanted to fast forward to the death scene, so that I could experience the impatience, tension and anxiety, as this scene was causing extreme agonising suspense boarding on the absurd.

I thought that I would be able to see things that I hadn't noticed from watching the film at a normal rate. I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed with what I saw, but I would have liked to have the chance to walk in on the exhibit on another day to try and catch the infamous death scene.

One particular video installation- Minnie, caught my attention. I had saw images of this video in books and monographs, but hadn’t used it as a focus to validate or influence my practice because I felt that the video didn’t directly relate to my choice of medium or context. However, when I had the chance to see this work, I realised that it explored the notion of struggle and observation and the feeling of uselessness through not being able to help.

Minnie was displayed on two huge screens that the viewer could wander in between. I got to see Minnie lying down and struggling to stand up, as the camera panned around her body, trunk and feet it gave me a sense of being tiny in comparison to the elephant. I sat and watched as Minnie stood up and laid down and stomped around and wandered what it would be like to sit in front of a real performing elephant.

The exhibition has given me a better insight for how to display my work, the entrance to the National Gallery of Scotland was packed full with TV monitors that were grouped together and stacked on top of one another. Each monitor had a different video on it and it was hard to watch just one at a time. I wanted to see all of them without being distracted by another.

Divided Self (1996) was shown on two TV monitors with other monitors positioned around, on top of it and underneath. The videos of Divided Self feature parts of the artist's body doing something or having something done to them. The works display a fascination with doubling, mirroring and reflection. The artist is shown turning against himself - wrestling, constraining, disfiguring. I felt that this work would have benefited from being shown on a large screen, so that every detail of the struggle and twisting of skin could have been highlighted and inspected by the gaze of the viewer.

5/1/07
Bruce Nauman
Language has always played a central role in Bruce Nauman's work, providing him with a means of examining how human beings exist in the world, how they communicate or fail to communicate. Nauman comments "This investigative activity is necessary."
Frustrated by the human condition, Nauman approaches art making as if creating an ongoing series of experiments in which all the diverse areas of human activity – including written and spoken language, and physical behaviour – are tested. At present the practical work produced using CCTV cameras is developing similar issues as Nauman's because of the way he tests human activity. Through watching human behaviour and testing their awareness to certain environments, I feel that my work would benefit from such experiments because I would like to see how the viewer reacts to certain stimuli so that I can receive a desired reaction when creating video installations. Audience interaction and response has always been the main issue with my practice, so I would like to focus more on these areas.

Bruce Nauman. Going Around the Corner Piece, 1970

23/11/06
Trampoline- Performance by Frank Abbott:
Frank's live performance used video projection and sound to reflect a memory. The audience was essential to his work as a spectator of this memory and to witness his past movements (for example- mowing the lawn)- Frank would use the projector as a vehicle to shown his past movements of mowing the lawn, each time projecting an image on to the wall or floor.
Through the action of moving the projector and sharing his memories of everyday usually banal tasks, he recreates these tasks with visual, sound and movement. He invites the spectator to remember his memories with him and from this performance; to create their own private personal memories and nostalgia to take away after the performance has ended.

16/11/06

Cindy Sherman

By turning the camera on herself, Cindy Sherman has built a name as one of the most respected photographers of the late twentieth century. Although, the majority of her photographs are pictures of her, however, these photographs are most definitely not self-portraits.

By titling each of the photographs "Untitled", as well as numbering them, Sherman depersonalises the images.

For the first time in her public career, Sherman was not the model in all of the images. Shot from 1985 until 1989, these images are far more grotesque than Sherman's earlier work. Often intentionally dressing to look scary and deformed, Sherman sets herself in strange, indefinable settings which often feature oddly coloured lighting in shades of blue, green and red. At times, Sherman employs dolls parts or prosthetic body parts to substitute for her own and many a scene is strewn with vomit, mould and other vile substances. Sherman's intent is to explore the disgusting, yet these are things that she admittedly can find beauty in.

In the History Portraits Sherman again uses herself as model, though this time she casts herself in roles from archetypally famous paintings. Using prosthetic body parts to augment her own body, Sherman recreates great pieces of art and thus manipulates her role as a contemporary artist working in the twentieth-century.

A self-proclaimed lover of horror films, Sherman draws on the characteristics of this genre as well as the visual motifs established as a still photographer.

The photographs she creates especially the horror collection of her dead and using other body parts are my favourite. The way in which they are taken presents a crime scene investigation for the viewer to analyse. She juxtaposes her self with body parts of dolls and distorts the way in which she is viewed. I agree that her highly saturated photography looks like it belongs on a film set, because the way in which she narrates each shot and uses feminine cliches to expose the male gaze and herself.

Below:Cindy Sherman, Untitled (for Mark Morrisroe), 2000 C print 24 x 20 inches Ed: 75. Far below: Cindy Sherman Untitled (Disasters), 1988

26/10/06
Tony Oursler
Eye in the Sky features a fibreglass sphere onto which is projected a single eye watching television. Although the rest of the body is not visible, we can hear the sounds of compulsive channel surfing. Without the emotive clues of facial expressions or gestures, we focus on the eye as an orifice, twitching as it gulps weather forecasts, commercials, sitcoms and game shows.
For Oursler, the fragmentary nature of the piece the disembodied eye, the reflected television screen and the rapidly changing channels parallels features of mental illnesses that signal the disintegration of the personality and the inability of the individual to identify with and function in the real world.
Oursler breaks down the traditional boundaries between media by creating a freestanding video sculpture.

Eye in the Sky, 1996

13/10/06

Broadway Cinema Talk:

Mariele Neudecker, Kindertotenlieder (exhibited in the Bonington Gallery at NTU).

The video installations reveal how she sets up technical equipment. She doesn't hide anything from the viewer because she believes that by hiding cables, wires and the back of installation spaces with black cloth and gaffa tape turns the work into something theatrical.

She shot the footage in this installation on 16mm film as this method gives less pixelation and a better quality when enlarged rather than digital.

Past artwork explores the use of tanks by creating miniature worlds that have been referred to as folk - like German fairy tales, because of the way in which they have been constructed and how the viewer has a sense of actually entering this environment.

Her hot air balloon video shows Mariele gathering footage by hanging a video camera over the side of the balloon basket and filming within people’s houses (some houses in Luxembourg do not have roofs- so this was a very voyeuristic act.) I was most interested in this video work because of the way in which it intruded on people's personal lives but at the same time was a document of observation.

Mariele Neudecker I Don't Know How I Resisted The Urge To Run 1998