1. Abstract
Interaction and representation in Installation
Today images are part of consumption. Pippilotte Rist, the performance and installation artist, states ‘people spend an increasing portion of their waking hours now looking at moving images created by pixels; but most of that imagery is created under commercial pressure to sell things or support advertising, we need artists to create a bank of other kinds of imagery as a counter balance. (NY Times Magazine 2009)
My proposed research seeks to continue and expand upon this statement working with moving image and interactivity in an installation context.
My intention is to create a practice-based study for social participation where I will create an environment that will feedback on itself from the ‘users’ interaction with it.
The purpose of this is to confront the viewers consciousness of their participation and passive acceptance of mainstream realist narratives through their own participation, mirrored and distorted and disrupted through the signs, signifiers and broken narrative expectations.
2. Research Context
This research project would look at how theorists, philosophers and artists have previously tackled the subjects of representation, cognition and consumption of media; how installation may differ from other forms of artistic spaces, utilising an historical evaluation, through the evolution of analogue to digital media, as well as positioning this culturally through accessible technology, hacking and collaborative working.
‘Our representation of things as they are given, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but (that) these objects as appearances conform to our mode or representation. Immanuel Kant (Critique of pure reason, trans. Smith, 1965)
Lev Manovich wcites “new media appropriates old forms and conventions of different media, in particular, cinema” (2001) astutely demonstrates that any visual medium, at the level of code, of la langue, operates within the cultural logic of representation. New media may give rise to unprecedented, original aesthetic forms, but they are still constructed from within the cultural interface of the frame, as with cinema, television, theatre, photography, etc before it (the language New Media).
But the screen is not a mirror, and, while there was some magic in passing beyond the mirror there is no magic at all in passing beyond the screen. Its impossible anyway - there is no other side of the screen. No depth - just surface. No hidden face - just an interface – Baudrillard (Art and Artefact, 1997)
Erwin Shrodinger suggests that... ‘The reader of the text is called to be involved in the invocation of the idea / spirit, which ultimately holds the prize of intuitive understanding, a truth which is untaught. This can only be experienced on an individual basis as consciousness is not plural. Consciousness is ‘never experienced in plural, only in the
David Bordwell (1985) identifies these representations as similar to objects / actions in the per- ceiver’s reality as ‘mimetic’. Although the screen is merely two-dimensional and an illusion, the perceiver can relate situations, objects, actions as displayed as similar to their physical world, a reflection. Mimetic theories take as their model the act of vision; ‘an object of perception is presented to the eye of the beholder’.
as Lev Manovich states ‘Cinema, the major cultural form of the twentieth century, has found a new life as the toolbox of the computer user. Cinematic means of perception, of connecting space and time, of representing human memory, thinking, and emotion have become a way of work and a way of life for millions in the computer age. Cinema’s aesthetic strategies have become basic organizational (sic) principles of computer software. The window into a fictional world of a cinematic narrative has become a window into a datascape. In short, what was cinema is now the human-computer interface.
This, as described below, can be a way to bring the audience closer to the realisation that they are the creator of the artwork; especially in an autonomous space outside of the established arts institution
The artist Ilya Kabakov states - the installation desires to recreate an entire world, redefine space, engage the public sphere, and complicate the separation of art and life. which is echoed by Nicola Oxley, writing in installation art in the new millennium (2004)
“The authorship of the work passes from the artist to the viewer.”
This addresses the same intention as the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez who, as an innovator of Kinetic / Op Art shifted his attention to a shift in the object viewer relationship which brought the spectators moving body directly into the work; this was a way to look at the viewers physical involvement as a way to demystify it to simple human activity through colour, light and space.
this would be a continuation of my own artistic moving image work where previously I have employed surrealistic and non-linear devices, to highlight and direct the viewers attention towards their participation in the formulation of the work.
3. Research Questions...
If as Lev Manovich critiques the move since the 1990’s towards a more Realist aesthetic in mainstream media, as mirrored in Pippilotte Rists opening statement, then the question I would like to address is as ‘readers’ of the synthesised moving image world how will we address any other aspects beyond commerce as these reflections or authoritative voices compel our actions and behaviours?
How to critically engage with different demographics?
4. Methods...
my research will include collaboration, as it is an important part of my interdisciplinary practice, working with other specialists in their field who can bring their own specialisms to the work. e.g. digital musicians / programmers, computer hackers, performers (for pre filmed / test footage) and public intervention.
To record and acquire feedback through workshops, test groups with audience participation, questionnaires...
Practical Tools will inc: Computer(s) running interactive software e.g. Isadora, pre-filmed moving image footage, appropriated footage, projectors, multiple screens, live camera feeds, sensors e.g. hacked Xbox 360 camera; as well as utilising old technology t(o investigate the aesthetics of representation).
5. Schedule:
Year 1: research proposal / review of the field / review of my own practice
Year 2 project 1 & 2 (testing audiences) and related text / writing
Year 3 Final art project exhibiting, review and writing
6. bibliography..
Brougher, K, Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900, Thames & Hudson, 2005
Bordwell, D, Narration in the fiction film, London, Methuen, 1985
Shimamura, A., Experiencing Art - in the brain of the beholder, Oxford University Press, 2013
Olivera, Oxley, Petry, Installation Art in the New Millennium: The Empire of the Senses, Thames and Hudson, 2004
Manovich, L. The Language of New Media, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press, 2001
Various, Precarious Visualities : New Perspectives on Identification in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008
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