Technological Effects
As the MoMA Catalyst class wraps up, it has become apparent to me the extent to which technology has infiltrated the art world and become pervasive in our greater cultural landscape. Being a participant on the super information highway of the web is no longer an option in our continually connected community. It is the way of modern life, and practically impossible to communicate without it. I certainly use my smart phone the most of all my technological devices, and am logged on regularly. I do know some folks who are still rebelling against these modern times, there are those who don’t own cell phones, or participate in the daily use of computers. These folks are living in the dark ages, and this resistance is futile, although a personal choice one can freely make.
I use the web to educate myself, explore the world, the arts, discover new artists, and other interests. I use the web to promote my work to audiences I would never be able to reach otherwise. The connectivity has broadened our view of the world, and brought people together in real time. The technological advances of this ‘hyper-communication’ does require people to use critical skills to navigate the space, and filter out that which is not needed, the constant distractions must be avoided to keep one from missing the useful and productive information. The future is now, however, and to shy away from the advances is only a reclusive behavior, the ostrich’s cliche of burying ones head in the sand. It is a denial of our modern times. To be fully engaged, it is a requirement to participate, to whatever extent.
There is a discipline needed in technology use, and an active ‘turning off’ that is required for myself to maintain a true connectedness to those in my immediate surroundings. The ‘flesh and blood’ world of the here and now. When socializing IRL, I give the person in front of me my full attention, and feel shorted in the exchange if I do not receive the same respect. To try to have a conversation with someone constantly checking their phone, or their Facebook or Twitter stream seems a futile endeavor. If they chose to be in the online world vs the face to face real world of our moment together, the interaction is flawed. Being present to the moment is necessary for true communication. To feel valued and understood, I need a person’s full attention. Multitasking has been shown to not be effective, so I would rather give my attentions fully to a real moment, respect the person I’m speaking with, and let the media distractions wait.
For my art making, I prefer the analog approach. A true ‘Old Schooler’, I enjoy playing around with historical techniques, the lost arts, and continuing their histories into the future. This is my mission in my art making. So I value the historical technology found in my vintage Polaroid camera. I am thrilled that the Impossible Project is bringing this old art form back to life, and there is a large counter culture that thrives in all things vintage and historic, including real film photography, vinyl records and Polaroids, just to name a few.
The technological advances have made things easier in many respects, but the historical methods and ideologies are still valid as well. We live in a modern time when all forms are valid, and ideas can be rapidly distributed through out the world.
STEINA – Orka Combined
I was lucky enough to witness this amazing video installation at the Colorado State University Art museum in the fall of 2011. Unfortunately, at the time, I was unfamiliar with this artist, and didn’t appreciate the significance of the work until now.
Catalyst introduced me to the 70’s era Steina Vasulka, a young vivacious Icelandic, living in NYC, playfully experimenting with the newest technologies of those times. In Sound and Fury (1975) she has placed two cameras in a ‘duel’, the self reflecting machines programmed to record at alternating rhythms, witnessing, creating and recording the duality that exists in everything. The artist has a disorienting dance with herself, Steina moves about between the two lenses, her experimental movements becoming a performance. The work began as a test, Steina states in this video interview, (see ~22:00) she had no intention of exhibiting the work, however, the results of her experiment were so surprisingly delightful that the work had to be seen, the phenomenon of seeing both sides at once, an early meta moment of the ‘selfie’. The media teaching the artist what it could do.
Orka Combined was a new interpretation using some of Steina’s earlier works, recycling and layering the videos, creating a new exhibit. The university gallery had been transformed into a full sensory immersive environment with several videos projected on large round screens, taking up the majority of the space. The viewer is invited to enter and “meditate on the relationship between our bodies and the cosmos”. Steina has combined the complicated high tech machines, cameras and computers, with life’s most basic organic elements, the close up images of earth and water, making “matter matter”, her work, less narrative, more a focus on human experience, and appreciating each second for what it brings. The short videos, the darkened room, the close spaces, the large scale environment, all theses elements encouraged the viewer to experience the work with their full bodies, the rhythmic sounds and switching clips mimicking the patterns of our own circulation and respiration. The work makes “the digital imagery behave in the manner of human memory: able to pack loads of info into the small space of the mind’s-eye,” and lures the visitor into the “sensual mysteries” of our physical world. (Quotes from exhibition essay by Los Angeles Times art critic, David Pagel)
Steina states, “to show what cannot be seen except with the eye of media: water flowing uphill or sideways, upside down rolling seas or a weather beaten drop of a glacier melt. The idea is that perhaps the audience could feel a part of this creative trance, living for a moment in a mental world where they have never been.” The work takes you there.
Here is a link to a video installation work that is similar to what I saw.
Sound as Art | Art as Noise
From the MoMA Catalyst class:
“John Cage talked about all sound being equal, whether “musical” or not, people thought he was a musical prankster. Nowadays, we see sound becoming more and more prominent in the arts, not just as a musical form, but in the visual arts: in museums, galleries and festivals. Do you agree that sound (and noise) can be appreciated as an artistic medium for studio artists? Does it make sense for visual artists to embrace sound as a sculptural form? Or should sound be relegated to the musical world, the sole province of musicians.”
Absolutely, sound is art. There are really no boundaries any longer about what can be art. Sound in particular is quite an enjoyable and touching addition to creative projects, or powerful when on its own. If an artist uses sound as medium, any sound, recorded, created or experienced live, then that sound becomes art. The audience may not be as familiar with artworks that feature auditory stimuli, but their bodies are prepared and ready to integrate the experience into their art voyage. It is just a matter of listening.
Sound project with only words: family reunion July 2014
I was awakened by the sharp slam of the back porch screen door. My cousin, his wife and their 4 children have just arrived to the creaky old summer house on the lake. The kitchen filled with relief from the drone of the drive, exuberant to be out of the car, welcomed by the 5 or 6 other kids of cousins eating their syrup dripping pancake breakfast at the round table, the clatter of their bickering that drifted into my early morning half dozing, halted momentarily, to mutate to a surprised welcome full of hellos, hugs, and questions, everyone talking at once, the small space amplifying the noise, tunneling it straight into my small room. Laughter mixes with commands from my aunt, manning the sizzling griddle, directing the next taker of the hot pancake to come and get it, and ‘Cliff, grab some cups for the coffee’, she bellows in the other direction, the clattering kitchen a pot full of sounds.
Ah, my MoMA class, I think, as the light breeze from the open window at the my head brings in the rustle and twitters of the morning air. The multiple layers of sounds I’m experiencing make me crack a smile. As I roll over and sit up in the tiny vintage twin bed, the springs creaking their concerto, adding another layer to the mix. I reach for the iPhone, tap in the lock code, and fire up the microphone app. I click ‘record’, the light blinks but the seconds don’t progress. Time clicks but doesn’t click. I jab at ‘stop’, ‘new recording’, and rap the ‘record’ … still nothing.
I listen, recording the sounds into my memory.
I slide my fingers along the crisp glass surface, groaning in agony at the loss of the moment, my inability to capture the sounds ringing in my head with all its glorious failure, a bitter layer to the soundscape. Again, I sit quietly and listen. The climactic moment of the arrival, now mellows into a rhythm of getting things done, banging the screen, bringing things in, moving on with the day. The kids are off, scraping clean their plates, clearing them to the sink, running out to play. Someone starts the water to wash. It’s time to get up.
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Barbara London (former Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art) in August of 2013 opened the exhibition Soundings: A Contemporary Score. She speaks about the work by Luke Fowler and Toshiya Tsunoda, “Ridges on the Horizontal Plane”. It is an installation that features a film playing on one side of a cloth and a slide show projected on the opposite side, the cloth moving by blowing fans in the space, triggering a piano wire at the horizon line of the projections to make sounds. Fowler and Tsunoda both talk about how our memories are stored as still images. London states that “we live our lives in time, but we remember in still [images]”. So I ask, how do you form a still image of a sound memory?
0.1.1.0. – the duality of the digital medium and video art : thoughts on Global Groove
Having been looking at Nam June Paik’s “Global Groove” (1973), made at the adolescence of the video art age, there is apparent an overriding rhythm to the medium. 0 then 1, or 1 then 0. It’s here or there.
In Paik’s Global Groove, he is critical of the medium (TV) while utilizing it (video) at the same time. There is a push pull with history and modernity, classical and contemporary times, an old vs new game as old as humanity.
John Cage also references his observation of this duality with his sensation of two distinct sounds he experienced in a silent room, which he was led to understand as two integral manifestation of his body. “The high sound is that of the nervous system in operation and the low sound is the blood in circulation.” (John Cage) He has recognized the duality that exists within all bodies.
There is a very experimental quality to these early works, as the artists are playing around with the medium to see what it can do. Many of the early works are not saying much beyond the medium itself, and sometimes feel gimmicky. In Global Groove, there are the interruptions between the clips, and the Pepsi commercial as an actual intermezzo, one an overt commentary on the television watching habit of channel switching and the other stating the now obvious omnipresence of advertising. I often wonder if these visual candy pieces are no more than a psychedelic drug age phenomenon. [They do still continue however…but that’s another post (I’ve read the syllabus).]
I am especially lost at the end as the cellist justifies what she is doing and then politics enter into the work. As the Catalyst course instructor Randall Packer has stated, Paik is examining the “effects of the medium on our psychic condition”. It seems pretty bleak to me, circa 1973.
I have barely begun to mine the idea that is swirling around in my head, I will follow it along and further explore these ideas of duality in future posts, mentioning artists including Joan Jonas, Bill Viola among others.
Be sure to come back, y’all.
Cofrin Contemporary 