Peter Welbel Expanded Cinema, and Virtual Environments

top Hans Richter Rhythm 23 1923 16mmfilm b/ w, silent 3 min strip cour tesy CeCi le Starr, New Yor k

bottom Kasimir Malevlch Artis tic and SCientific Film ­ Painting and Archit ectural Concerns - Approaching the New PlastiC r Architectural System 1927 manuscript page from a t hree-page film script priva te collect ion

Avant- garde Film In most hi stories of cinema t he avant-garde f ilm oc­ 1 Kaslmir Malevich, ·Painterly Laws In the Problems of CIn­ cupies a minor and marginal position. In the interwar ema: in Cinema and Culture period of the twentieth century, avant- garde film was (Kino i Kultura), nos. 7- 9, 1929. initially seen as a spin - off or by-product of visual art movements li ke Cub ism, Futurism, Suprematism, Co n­ 2 This history is described and • ,...... C. l . -r ,...... ~ #"I' .. ~ ...... documented In the follOW ing structivism, Dadaism or Surrealism. Linked to these .1" '1>14~. 1",,_ • j,/".",,- "" ~ books: Sheldon Renan, movements were abstract or pictorial animat ions as An Introduction to t he America n Underground Film, well as mont age and kinet ic f il ms by art ists like Fer­ ~ leJ Dutton, Ne w York, 1967; nand Leger, Bruno Corra, Kasimir Malevich,l Viking P. Adams Sitney (ed.). Film Culture Reader. Praeger, Eggeling, Hans Richter, Laszl6 Moholy-Nagy, Oskar New York,i970, Ge ne Young­ Fischinger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Len Lye, Lotte blood, Expended Cinema, Dutton, New Yo rk,1970: Re ininger, Berthold Bartosch, Alexan der Alexeieff and Parl

Bevond, Th e MI T Press, Cam ­ brrdge, MA/London, 1977; Deke Dusinb err e, A. L. Ree s, Film as Film, Formal Experi­ men t in Film 1910- 75, Arts Counci l of Great Britain/ classical cinema, from the camera to the projector, med ia avant- garde, and dominated maj or exhibit ions Hayward Gallery, Lon don, from the screen to the celluloid, was radically trans­ li ke t he Kasse l document a and Venice Bienn ial. In the 1979; Pe ter Gidal, Material­ ist Film, Routledge, London, formed, annih il ated and expanded, The history of same decade, f ilm entered t he f ie ld of digitally ex­ 1989; Da vid E, James (ed,), avant-garde film is a history of interpellations in the pa nded cinema To Free the Cinema, Jonas Mekas 6 The New York sense of Althusser (see my pref ace) on t he basis of Un derground, Princeton the apparatus itself.2 The deficit of the cinematic ap­ Material Experiments Un iversit y Press, Pr inceton, New Jersey, 1992;Kerry paratus theory of the 1970s was that it showed us The subversive explosion t hat shattered t he cine ­ Brougher, Art and Film Since only the ideology inherent to Hollywood f il ms,just as mat og rap hi c code in t he 19605 affect ed all of the 1945. Hall of Mirrors, Mona­ ce lli Press, Ne w Yo rk,1996, in the 1960s Umberto Eco used to exp lain technical and mater ial paramet ers of f ilm, The mater­ Spellbound: Art and Film, James Bond f ilms and t oday Slavoj Zizek uses Lacan ial character of the f ilm itself was ana lyzed by artists Ian Christie, Philip Dodd (eds), SFI Publishing, London, t o exp lain Hit chcock, Neither t heor ist used t he appa ­ who, in stead of exposing t he ce lluloid, scratched it 1996; Jack Sargeant, Na ked ra t us theory rad ica lly in order to demonst rate that (George Landow, Film In Which There Appear Sprocket Lens: Beat Cinema, Creation Books, London, 1997; A. L. the cinematic apparatus and the in scribed ideology Holes, Edge Lettering, Oirt Particles, etc., 19 65/66; Rees, A His t ory of Experi­ can be transformed by making dif f erent f ilms with Birgit and Wilhelm He in, RohFilm, 1968), perforat ed it mental Film and Video. From the Canonical Avant- Garde different technologies in the way done by avant­ with a hole pu nch [D ieter Rot h, 1965), paint ed it [Harry to Contemporarv British garde f ilmmakers. They therefore missed a vital point, Smith used 35mm mat erial, processing it with grease, Practice, SFI Publishing, Lon don,1999; Garrett and f ell be hi nd t heir own t heoret ica l premises, Their pa int , tape and spray, 1947), covered it wit h f inger­ Stewart, Bet ween Film and theoretical work insofar paradoxica ll y supported the prints (Peter We ibe l, Fingerprint,1967) or glued moths Screen. Moderr1lsm's Photo Svnthesis, Th e Uni verSity of hegemony of Hollywood and dismissed the avant ­ t o it (Stan Brakhage, Mothlight, 1963, in which moth Chicago Press, Ch ica go and ga rde movement from f il m to video, from video to dig­ wings and leaves were f ixed between layers of per­ Lon don, 1999; Into the Light The PrQjected Image in it al, as representing a transformat ion of t he cine­ f orat ed t ape and projected). Empt y frames, black f ilm American Art 1964- 1977, matic appar at us, and overexposed material were also us ed (G il J, Wo l­ Chrissie lies (ed, ), e ~ h i b, cat , Wh itney Museum of Ameri­ This transformation took place in three phases. man, L'anti- concept, 1951; Guy Debord, Hurlements can Art, Ne w Yo rk/Harry N, In the 1960s, the cinematic code was extended wit h en Faveur de Sade, 1952; Peter Kubelka, ArnulF Ra iner, Abrams, Ne w York, 2001; Malco lm Le Grice, Experi­ ana logo us means, with t he means of cinema itself. 1960; , The Flicker, 1965) mental Cinema In the Digital Sho rt ly afterwards, new elements and apparatuses At the same t ime, the apparatus offilm, from Age, BFI Pub lishing, Lon don, 2001; Hans Scheu9 1, ErwBlt­ like the video recorder were introduced, and the camera to projector, was t aken apart , reassembled, ert es Kino . Die Wiener Filme cinematic code was expanded electromagnet ica ll y augmented and used in entirely new ways. There we r e der 60er Jahre, Triton, Wien, 2002, Martin Rieser, Andrea Artist s' video - from Bruce Nauman to Bill Viola, from cameraless f ilms, for which unprocessed ce ll uloid, Zap p (e ds), New Screen Nam June Pa ik to Stein a and Woody Vasu lka - was known as clear f il m, was in serted into the pr ojector Media, Cmema/Art/ Narra­ t ive, BFI Pub li shing, Lon don, init ially su cce ssful in the 1970s, but was ha lted in t he (Nam Ju ne Pa ik, Zen for Film, 1962). and films wit hout 2002, book and DVD; Margot 1980s by retro-orient ed paint erly neo-E xpr ession ism, film, in whi ch Kosugi, t o name one example, focused Lovejoy, Oigital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Rout ­ In the 1990s vide o art became t he dominant form of ligh t f rom a pr ojector wit hout film against a paper ledge, London, 2003 Robert Whitman Shower 1964 environ ment 16mm film loop transferred t o video, shower stall, water, wa t er pump install ation view Newar k Museum, New JerseY,1999 collection Robert Ra uschenberg photo cou rtesy Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whit man

Anthony McCall Line Describing a Cone 1973 15mm film b/w, silent 31 m in installatiorl view: Artists Space, New Yo r k, 1974 Wh itney Museum of American Art, New Yo rk courtesy Anthony McCall Simorle Fort i and phot o C Peter Moore; Lucinda Ch ilds in VG Bild- Kurls t, Bonn 2003 Ro bert Wh itman's Prune Flat 1965 perfor marlce view: Exparl ded Cinema Festival, Film-Maler's Cinematheque, Ne w York, 1965 phot o 0 Pe ter Moor e, VG Bil d- Kunst, Bonrl 2003

screen, cuttin g out sections of the screen from the min ant s of t he social codes. In much the same way middle until there was nothing left of it (Film No.4 , that some painters sli ced up t he canvas (Luci o 1965). In zzz:hamburg special (19 68], Hans Scheugl Fo ntana] or used the human body as a canvas (the replaced the filmstr ip with a thread actuall y running Viennese Actionists] in search of avenues of escape t hrough the projector to c reate a shadow li ne on t he f rom the picture, cinema artists were also engaged in screen. In other works, the li ght beam was replaced a quest for ways of breaking out of t he limited f ilm with a stretched length of rope (Pet er We ibe l, Licht­ screen during t he same period seil, 1973], or became the pure and only matt er (An ­ The Vortex Concerts (visuals by He nry Jacobs, thony McCall, Line describing a cone, 1973], Films were Jordan Belson, the Whitney Brothersl 19S7-S9, mixed projected not on the conventional screen but on cur­ mu lt iple f ilm proj ections and slide shows. Kenneth tains of steam wit h running water (Robert Whitman, Anger showed Inauguration of t he Pleasure Dome Shower, 196 4] and on the surfaces of human bodies [1954] on t hree screens in Brussels in 1958 In order (in his Prune Flat, 1965, Robert Wh it man proj ected a to "free f ilm f rom it s f lat and frontal or ientation and f il m onto t he body of a girl wear ing whit e clothing; the to present it within an ambience of total space," 3 f ilm showed her taking off the same clothes; in Andy Milt on Cohen, t he lea ding f igure in the ONC E Group Wa rhol's and Jud Ya lkut's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, had since 1958 been devel­ 1966, the film wa s proj ected onto the f igu res of oping an environment (Space Theatre] for mu lt iple members of the aud ience da ncing to music by the Vel­ pr Ojections with t he aid of rotating mirrors and vet Underground). The history of t hese material ex ­ prisms using mobil e rectangular and triangular per iments is described in Peter Gidal's book Material­ screens. In 1965, Stan VanDerBeek published a mani­ ist Film (London, 1989). festo in j ustif icat ion of real-time multiple proj ection environment s, a kind of "image - flow" in wh ich image Multiple Screen Experiments projection it se lf became the subject of t he perfor­ Many film art ists carried out radica l experiments wit h mance. In the same year he showed Feedback NO .1: the screen it se lf It was exploded and mult iplied, ei­ A Movie Mural. achievin g a f irst breakthrough for ther t hrough division into mu lt iple images using sp li t­ mu lt i-projection cin ema. To realize his idea, he estab­ screen techniques or by placing screens on several li shed a Movie Orome in Stony Point, New Yo rk; a different wa ll s. Thus mult iple proj ections occupied t he va ulted cupola modele d on t he geodetic domes of foreground of a visual culture that was intent upon Buckminst er Fu ll er. Around 1960, t he USCG ("US" li berating itself f rom t he conventional concept of the company] Group associat ed with Ge rd Stern began 3 See Gene Youngblood, Ex ­ pa inting, f rom the t ech nical and mater ial r estrictions workin g on the mult i-prOjection shows on t he east panded Cinema, Dutton, New Yo r k, 1970, p. 371 of imaging technology and f rom the repressive deter- coast of the USA (We are all one, with four 16mm ONCE Group Unmarked Interchange 1965 photo 0 Peter Moo re; VG 8ild­ Kunst, Bonn 2003 live performers interact With a prqiection of Top Hat, starnng Fred Astalre and Ginger Rogers

The Single Wing Turquoise Bird group in t heir studiO at Vemce, center and bottom California, 1967/1966 Partially opened parachute phot o C Gene Youngblood bec omes Isobe's Floating Theatre for the presentation of Jud Yalkut's Dream Reel intermedla environment at Oneonta, New York, March 1969 photos courtesy Yubhlsa Isobe,

projectors, two Bmm projectors, four carousel pro­ their Theatre of Light of the late 1960s, Jackie Cassen jectors, 1965). and Rudi Stern used self-constructed "sculptural John Cage, Lejaren Hiller and Ronald Nameth projectors" to project multiple images onto pneu­ staged HPSCHO, a five-hour "Intermedia Event" with matic domes, transparent Plexiglas cubes, po lyhexag­ eight thousand slides and one hund red f ilms pro­ ona l structures, water surfaces. and so f orth, Par­ ject ed onto forty-eight windows at t he University of t icularly impressive was a fountain illuminat ed by a Illinois in 1969. Between 1960 and 1967, Robert Whit­ strobe light, a technique that evoked the impression man experimented with multiple plastic and paper of individual drops of water being suspended like screens onto which films wer e projected (The Ameri­ crystals in the air. This effect is today variously re­ can Moon, 1960). In Tent Happening (1965), films, in­ peated by Olafur Eliasson. Toshio Matsumoto showed clud ing a sequ ence filmed through a glass pane show­ his Space ProjectionAKO in a dome in 1969. One note­ ing a man def ecating, were projected onto a large wort hy example is Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966). tent. Beginning in 1965, Aida Tambellini's Electromedia a mixture of split-screen techniques and multiple Theatre worked with multiple projections (Black Zero, projection in which a number of performers discuss 1965) in which, to cite one example, a gigantic black their unusual lives from multiple perspectives and at balloon appeared from nowhere, blew itself up and several different levels at the same time. There were eventua lly exploded. Hu ndreds of hand-pa int ed films monumental mobile projections f r om moving veh icles and sli des were used. In 1968 Tam be lli ni organ ized onto building facades (Imi Knoebel, Prqjektion X, 1972), Black Gate in Dusseldorf along the banks of the Rhine, onto dancing people, onto forests and fields, onto an event featuring projections onto helium-filled, the curved inside and outside surfaces of geodetic airborne plastic hoses and figures by Otto Piene. domes, onto plastic balls, hoses, and so on. Jud Yalkut created Dream Reel for Yukihisa Iso be's Contemporary vis ual practices have returned to Floating Theatre, a gigantic pa rachute he ld by nylon these techn iques of mobile projection or deployment t hreads - a portable hemispheric screen for mult iple of the screen as a window in a moving ve hicle, as in frontal and rear projections. The Single Win g Tur­ Lutz Mommartz' Eisenbahn [Railway] of 1967. The in­ quoise Bird group (Peter Mays, Jeff Perkins, the later teractive installation Crossings (1995) by Stacey video artist Michael Scroggins and others) from Los SpiegelS Rodney Hoinkes simulates a t rain journey Angeles put together light shows for rock concerts in between Paris and , transforming physical 1967 and 196 8. Sponsored by the pa inter Sam Francis, space into the vir t ual interactive space of t he World­ they subsequently con ducted expe r iments in an aban­ Wi de Web. Room with a view (2000), created by Michael doned Santa Monica hotel with constantly changing Bielicky and Bernd Lintermann for Volkswagen's "Au­ images, from video project ions to laser beams. In tostadt Wolfsburg," uses four projectors to achieve a

Mlchael8ieliclcy, 8ernd Lintermann, Torsten 8elschner Zimmer mit Aussicht [Room with a View] 2000 Interactive installat ion still s ZKM I Inst it ute for Visua l Media, Ka rlsruhe C the ar tist s and ZKM I Ce nter for Art and Media Karlsruhe ";: ." ~~-- .-~p ~.

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Michael Snow wi th t he ma chine used for filmin g La Region Centrale [The Central Region] photo C Joyce Wie land

Mi ch ael Snow Two Sides to Every Story 1974 prQJec t ion t wo 16mm f ilms bo t h co lor, sound t wo prqjector s, painted aluminum screen 9 min, dimensions va riab le Installat ion view: Wa lker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1974 Nat ional Gallery of Canada, Ottawa o Michael Snow photo courtesy Michael Snow

Edmund Kuppel Das Planetarium 1990 installation central prqJector. 12 screens, perfect 360 - degree dome projection, with a touch­ tion and live action. In Moviemovie (1967) by Theo steel grabe 800 em 0 screen at the center of the dome allowing multiple Botschuuver, and Sean Wellesley- Miller, inst allation view manipulat ion of the projected images. With twelve films and light were prqjected onto' a pneumatic courtesy the artist bottom r ound screens in a dome construction and one cen­ sculpture on wh ich people moved, Moviehouse (1965) Dss Planetarium tral pr ojector, Edmund Kuppel's Das Planetarium by Claes Oldenburg showed a f ilm theater without a detail (19 90) is an interesting paraphrase of Michael Snow's f ilm. The situation (real people sitting on chairs) was outstanding La Region Centrale (1970]. In the 19605, t he cin emat ic spectacle, a cin ematic ap proach re­ t he screen became in a number of ways mult iple and peated by Jan et Ca rdif f in t he 1990s (Playhouse, mo bil e, as well as f lat or curved, or was even replaced 1997), An innovative project by Markus Huemer (1988) by unusua l materials li ke wa t er, woods and build ings. placed the famous letters HOLLYWOOD on a hill in Import an t ex periment s with material film, multiple Li nz , Aust ria; the idea was later repeat ed by Maurizio projections and expanded cinema were made in t he Cattelan in Palermo (2001), and partially (LYWO] by 1970s by a group of British filmmakers associated Bertrand Lavier in Lyon (2000). with Malcolm Le Grice (After Leonardo, 1974, a six­ projector film) and made up by Dave Crosswaite, David Narrative Experiments Dye (Unsigning for eight proj ectors, 1972), Gill Eather­ Multiple projections of different films alongside one ley, Annabel Nicholson, William Raban and Lis Rhodes. another, one on top of the other, and in all spatial In 1972, Birgit and Wilhelm He in showed a two-scr een directions represented more than merely an invasion film titled Ooppe/projektion I -IV A very early example of space by the visual image. They were also an ex­ of double projection was delivered by the film L'Uomo pression of multiple narrative perspectives. The film­ meccanico [The Mechanical Man] of 1921 by Andre maker Gregory Markopoulos, an early master of quick Dee d, a French f ilm clown who had been making his cuts and complex cross- fading techniques, published "Cret inetti" f ilms in Italy since 1909 and was admired a manifesto of new narrative forms based upon his by the Fut urists. In t his film, a robot f ilmed with a cuttin g technique camer a a furiously f ast police car and t he footage "I propose a new form of narration as a combina­ was sh own on a se cond screen inside t he first t ion of cla ssical mon tage techn ique wit h a more Th ese expe riment s wit h multiple scree ns were ab stra ct system. Th is syst em incorporates t he carried forwar d in t he 1960s by env ir onments wit h us e of shor t f ilm phases t ha t evoke thought im­ f ilm and by f ilm environments wh ich combined projec- ag es_Ea ch f il m phase compri ses a select ion of

"'~ Rodney HOlnkes, stacey Spiegel Crossmgs Annabel Nicholson 1995 Reel Time Interactive installation, 1973 Internet project 16mm f ilm mixed media b/w, sound dimenS ions va riable performance of ins t allation view Indeterminate lengt h o Rodney Homkes. Ann ab el Nicholson o Stacey Spiegel

Charles and Ray Eames Glimpses of the USA 1959 Moscow World's Fair auditorium

specific im ages similar t o t he harmonious unity of art ists also creat ed huge mu lti-vision environments a musical com position. The film phases det ermine (for instance, Roman Kroitor's Labyrinthe) with the other interrelationships among themselves; in intention of developing new forms of storytelling. classical montage t echnique, there is a constant "People," as Roman Kroitor asserted, 1were] tired of relationship to the continuous shot; in my ab­ the standard plot structure." Francis Thompson, a stract system t here is a complex of different im­ pioneer in large-scale, multi-image cinematography, ages that are repeated." 4 present ed his piece We are Young on an arrangement of six scree ns in Montreal. The Czech pavilion fea­ From t he out set , t he extension of t he sing le screen t ured Josef Svoboda's Creation of the World of Man, to many screens, from the single project ion to multi­ a huge (Oiapolyekran) screen on which 15,000 slides ple projections represented not only an expansion of could be shown simultaneously on 112 movable cubes. visual horizons and an overwhelming intensif ication of In these experiments with multiple screens we see visual experience. It was always engaged in the service the beginning of immersive environments, virtual of a new approach to narration. For the first time, worlds and interactive relations between spectator the suQjective response to the world was not pressed and image. The spectator slowly becomes part of the into a constructed, falsely objective style of nar ration system that he observes. Closed - circuit video instal­ but was in st ead f ormally presented in t he same dif ­ lations in t he 1970s really all owed t he spectator to fuse and f ragment ary way in which it was exp erienced. see hi mself in t he video monitor, in t he ima ge cap­ In the age of social revolts, mind-expanding drugs tured by the video camera. At the sa me t ime, mult iple and cosmic visions, multiple projection environments screens broke up the linearity of traditional narra­ became an important factor in the quest for a new tion. Multiform plots, a non-linear narrative matrix, imaging technology capable of articulating a new became possible. Narrative elements could be re­ perception of the world. peated, recombined, or replaced by other elements. In Charles and Ray Eames made very early use of Zoms Lemma (1970) by Hollis Frampton, letters were slide and film proj ections ont o multiple sc reens· replaced by images, and these ima ges t urned into Glimpses of the USA was shown on seve n screens at eve nts. A new form of narration was ac hieve d on a t he Moscow World's Fa ir (1959]. and on fourteen single scree n. The narrative matrix was base d on a screens in t he IBM Pavilion at the New York World's theorem of set t heory (Zorn's Lemma). The narration 4 In Filmculture. no. 31. winter Fair (1964-65). For the Montreal Expo in 1967, several became a multiform matrix, a multi-story machine. 1963/64 «:.. : /\ \: :'. '. :

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~do5 left above Douglas Gordon [; .. ::.::..... ::::: '.< John Whitney Ed Emshwiller 24 Hour Psycho Matrix Skin Matrix 1993 1971 1984 video installation co mput er-graphics animation vide o installation view color, sound color, sound C Douglas Gordon 5 m in 1657 min photo C Do ug las Gordon C John Wh itney video still courtesy Ed Emshwiller Figures f r om John Whitney's article "A Computer Art fo r the Vide o Picture Wal l: in Robert Russet t and Cec il e Starr (eds), Experimenta/Animation Origins of New Art, Da Capo Press, New Yor k,1976, pp.187- 191

In the film Nowa Ksiazka [New Book] of 1975 Zbigniew pe riments (Wavelength, 1967, a forty-five minute zoom Rybczynski used a matrix of nine dif f erent images on through a room; One second in Montreal, 1969; La one screen, showing different pa rts of one narrative Region Centrale, 1970). In his See you later/Au revoir I D;'~,; ~ I and thereby anticipating the four-part screen of Mike (1990), a thirty-second movement (a man leaving his Figgis' Time Code (2000). Before t he t erm "matrix" office) was extended to seventeen minut es and thirty was made famous by Wi lli am Gibson's novel New­ seconds. In Joe Jones' Smoke (1966), the cigarette romancer (1984) and the Wachowski brot hers' f il m smoke streamin g from a mouth is ext ended to six Matrix (1999), it was already serving as a method min utes, The composer Ta ke hisa Kosugi takes thirty GLj] for visual narratives (see John Whitney's computer minutes to take off his jacket in Anima 7 (1966). Peter animation Matrix I, 1971, and Skin Matrix, a video Weibel's film actions The Kiss and To pour (both 1968), \.t{ "~~~:: f antasy by Ed Emshwiller, 1984), which deploy extreme slow motion, must also be v ... :::"'::.... \~ counted among this "slow anthology" (T. Kosugi). Time and Space Experiments In addition to the expansion of t he technical reper­ Social and Sexual Experiments toire t hrough experimentation with projectors and In t he social sense t oo, the contents of these inde­

..... ; ',' '-' mult iple projections, another mat erial-oriented ap ­ pendent avant- garde and under ground films strayed Ji "::"!:_.~ :.:.::' proach to t he visual expression of a new concept of f rom the familiar terrain of the ind ustry f il m. Images reality, the renunciation of social conventions and a from t he intimate spher e, psycho-dramat ic docu­ new drug-induced, consciousness-expandin g experi­ ments of an excessive ind ividualism were shown pub­ ence emerged, It involved the shifting and distortion li cly in uncensored form. Ta boo sex scenes were acted of t he conventional parameters of space and time out in f ront of the camera (Jack Smith, Flaming Crea­ .."/ )' ':' using techniques designed to extend, slow, delay and tures, 1962/63, a t r ansvestite orgy that triggered a v ....: ~ ..,:: ... . ".,j abbreviate t ime Fil m duration was extended to as scandal even in art istic circles yet became a major much as twent y-four hours (Andy Warhol, Empire sou rce of inspiration f or Warhol's un iverse; Kenneth State Building, 1963), just as later Douglas Gordon ex­ Anger's Scorpio Rising, 1963, which marked t he birt h tended Hitchcock's Ps ycho to twenty-four hou r s, or of Biker Movies and homo - erotic se lf -fashionin g, and ~'/. >:.Q reduced to an extreme of only a few seconds (Paul Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1966). The widen­ " ... ::~.:. " \j Sharits, Wrist Trick, ten seconds,1966). Temp oral di la­ in g of material and technical pa ramet ers went hand­ tions in film and music (La Monte Yo ung) were favored in-hand wit h t he dissolution of social consensus,S as primary means of expression not on ly due to their consciousness - raisin g effects, but also f or composi­ tional and formal reasons, The same was t rue of t ime ­ S Ray mond Durgnat, SexlJal short en ing and aggressive cutting techniques, The Alienation in the Cinema, St lJd io Vista, London, 1972 f ilms of Michael Snow were pure t ime and space ex - ro 8arry Spinello SoundtrBCk 1970 16mmfilm b/w, parts handcolored, sound 11 min f il m strips courtesy Barry Spinello 80th sound and image are produced With handmade gra­ phic effects

So un d Exp eriments and visual imagery.6 Barry Sp inell o's Soundtrack Both for mal and thematic extensions of the cine­ (1970), in which both sound and image are produced matographic code were welcomed enthusiastically in with handmade graphic effects, explored audio-visual the revolutionary aesthetic and social atmosphere of compOSit ional techniques. In Feature Film (1999), Doug­ the 1960s and was, like progressive rock music, sup­ las Gordon reorchestrated Bernard Herrmann's ported by a new, youthful audi ence. Indeed, a large score for Hitchcock's Vertigo and presented on ly number of such underground films were accompanied James Conlon conducting and hearing the film music by roc k (from the Grateful Dead to Cream) and avant­ played by an orchestra. garde (f rom John Cage to Terry Riley) music In these films, the role played by music was much more eman­ The Evolution of the Language of New Media: cipated than in industry movies. Rega rdless of Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments whether mainstream productions use classical or In the course of the 1970s, several avant-garde gal­ popular scores, music serves more or less as back­ leries promoted analytical refinements and develop­ ground sound and a device for controlli ng mood an d ments, rang ing f rom the Structurali st f ilms to spatial atmosphere, for heightening or resolving dramatic film installations. This decade also witnessed the tension. By cont rast, in many avant-garde f il ms music emergence of , with vi ewer-oriented closed­ and sound exercise a determining effect upon the circuit installations that anticipated the observer­ structure of imagery, and images are cut and com­ relative interactive computer installations of the posed in accordance with musical principles. The ten­ 1990s and time -delaye d installations, which pursued dency to industrially exploit and market film images further the experiments of Expanded Cinema. The through linkage with music is clearly illustrated by the market-induced revival of f igurative paintin g in the function of the soundtrack, the serial arrangement of 1980s put an abrupt en d to the development of ex­ existing popular songs and the commissioned piece panded cinematic forms and video art. Broad seg­ that is known as a theme so ng and used to associate ments of visual culture were affected by an amnesia a certain fjjm with a certain musical hit. This usage of as scandalous as it was total, and for which the mar­ semi-prefabricated components in movies and ket alone was not to blame but also institutional art is reminiscent of the accelerated prefab building historiography, which ha d buckled under to the power techniques employed in mass industrial high- rise con­ of the market. Viewed from this perspective, the tri­ 6 See Michel Chlon, Les struction. Instead of compound concret e-and-steel umphant return and revival of t he t end encies of mus'ques electro-Bcous­ tiques. INA -GRM, Aix -en construction, the rapidly mass-produced industrial 1960s Expanded Cinema in the work of the 1990s Provence. 1976; Michel film made use of a compound sound- and-music con­ video generation is all the more astounding and grati­ Chlon. Le son au cinema, Cahiers du CIn~ma, Paris. struction. In contrast, t he avant-garde f ilms of the fying. However, we still fa ce the problem t hat most 1985; Michel Ch ion, L'audiovi­ 1960s employed a highly differentiated approach to art historians and writers, being oblivious to the his­ sion, Nathan, Pans, 1990; Michel Chion.la musiqua au the development of new relationships between sound tory of avant-garde f ilm and vi deo art, cannot make a cinemB. Fayard, Parls,1995 -'" David Lamelas Filmscnpt 1972 inst all atIOn vie w Wit te de With, Rott erdam photo C S, Goed ewaa gen

De nn iS Oppenheim Jane and Loui se Wi lson Echo St8si City 1973 1997 film installation four-channel Video Installat ion f our 16mm film loops color, sound transferred t o vid eo 29 min b/w, sound in stallat ion view inst allation view Whit ney co llec t ion Pa mela and Richard Mu se um of Ame rica n Art, Kramlich New Yo rk. 2001 courtesy Thea Wes t reich Art collection of the artist Advisory Services C Denr'lls Oppenheim phot o C David Allison

connection between the generations and ther efore and technologies of 1960s Expanded Cinema. In a se­ exaggerate contemporary achievements. ries of interactive computer installations, including The new gener ation took its cue less from the On Justifying the Hypothetical Nature of Art and the achievements of 1980s video artists, whose art was Non-Identicality within the Object World (1992) or Cur­ subordinated to the sculpture and painting of their tain of Lascaux (1995-96), Peter Weibel realized vari­ • t ime. In pu rsuing t he development of a specif ic video­ ous virtual worlds in wh ich t he observer played a piv ­ based language, video artists in the 1990s deliberately otal role derived from his closed circuit video installa­ "•E < focused on the expansion of image technologies and t ions of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The observer ~ ., social consciousness that took place in the 1960s. We became part of the system he observed, articulating < w f ind surpr ising evidence of parallels, sometimes ex­ the immersive image system, and changed the behav­ ;;; tending even to the finest detail, not on ly in style and ior and content of the image by his actions. The L" ;; technique, but in content and motif as well. For the Br it ish group Blast Th eo r y's Desert Rain (1999) sent u < most part, 1990s video art is also shaped by an in­ six visitors on a mission in a virtual environment made •o tense interest in multiple projection and the con~ up of six rooms. The virtual worlds were projected u• ;; comitant new approaches to multi-perspective nar­ onto a curtain of streaming water. Each visitor had ration and multiform plots. Numerous representa­ thirty minutes to complete his mission by communi­ tives of t he 1990s video generation, including artists cating with the other five virtual environments and like Jordan Crandall, Juli a Scher, St eve McQuee n, Jane t heir inhabit ant s. However, 1990s video art ist s pur­ and Louise Wilson, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, sued the deconstruction of the cinematographic Johan Grimonprez, Pierre Huyghe, MarUke van code in a much more controlled, less subjective man­ Warmerdam, Ann - Sofi Sid en, Grazi a Toderi and Aero­ ner, applying strategies more methodical and more naut Mike, now work within the context of a decon­ closely oriented to social issues than those of the struction of the technical "apparatus" outli ned here. 1960s. In the video art of t he 1990s. experiments with Many computer artists of the sam e decade, among multiple projections were employed primarily in the them Blast Theory, Jeffrey Shaw, Perry Hoberman and service of a new approach to narration. Video and Peter Weibel, have also returned to the tendencies slide projections onto unusual objects were used by

• Stan Douglas Win, Place or Show 1998 two-channel vide o project ion color, f our channel soundtrack 6 min video stills courtesy Ga lerie David ZWlrrler, New Yo r k photo 0 T. Mills

top St an Do uglas Blast Theory Evening Desert Rain 1994 1999 three- channel video in stallation VR envirOrl ment co lor, sound f or performance min 20 installation views. ZKM I Installation view: Rerlaissance Center f or Art and Media Society, Ch icago, 1995 Karlsruhe, 1999 courtesy Galerie Oavid Zw imer, o Blast The ory New Yo rk photo C Franz Wa mhof photo 0 TMilis bottom Sam Taylor-Wood Third Party 1999 install ation seven 16mm film pr Q)ec t ions, artists ranging f rom Tony Oursler to Honore d' O Pro­ defendants. Enhanced by t he possibilit ies off ered by t ransferred t o OV O jections onto two or more screens are f ound in t he t riple projection and multiple viewpoint achieved installatiorl view photo C Jay Jopling, wo rk of artists li ke Pipil ott i Rist, Sam Taylor-Wood t hrough t his formal montage technique, t his new per­ London (Third Party, 1999, seven prOjections], Burt Barr, Mar­ spective intensifies t he hidden violence inherent in cel Odenbach, Eua - Liisa Ahtila, Shirin Ne shat , Samir, t he socialization of t he in dividual. In a similar way, t he Doug Ait ken, Dryden Goodwin, Heike 8aranowsky and t r iple prOjection in EUa-Lii sa Ahtila's TODAY/Tanaan Monika Oechsler, Split-sc ree n techniques are charac­ [1996/ 97) enormously enhances the possibil it ie s for teristic featu res of t he art of Karin Westerlu nd and complex li nkin g of image and text element s indepen­ Sam ir, Multiple- monitor environments are employed dent of the narrat or's per spective. Only rarely do the by Ut e Friederike Jurss, Mary Lucier and Cha ntal Ak ­ texts match the faces an d genders. Texts and images erman (O'Est, 2002, twenty-five monitors). do not ident ify each other; instead t hey distin gu ish each other, f loating alongside one another and f orm­ Multiple Monitors and Screens, Multiple Projections ing moving nodes in a network of mult iple relat ion­ and Perspectives, Multi-perspective Narrations ships which t he viewer must creat e himself. Free ­ and Plots f loating cha ins of signs, be t hey images or texts, are These mult iple projections take advantage of t he op­ int erwoven to f orm a un iverse without a cent er. Yet port un it ies mu ltiple perspective offers for a depar ­ it s core harbors t he cat astrophe of a fat al accident ture from f amili ar ways of lookin g at social be havior t ha t has obvi ously eradicated all possibility of a co ­ On t hree screens projected in alternation, Monika herent, li near narrat ive . Only disparate f ragments of Oechsler's High Anxieties of 1998 sh ows the co n­ memory are presented in strangely obj ective f ashion struction of f em inine identit y as it begin s in childhood, by t he passive, knotted subjects [the title of a book by illustrating how even girlf riends of t he same age con­ Eli sabeth Bron fen, 1998). The story of t he catast ro ­ trol t he formation of the in dividual as agents of soc i­ phe no longer follows t he linear track of rat ional ety. The changin g cin ematic perspect ive ca ll s to mind t hought; in stead, the irrational essence of the cata­ the f am iliar cinematic codes of courtroom dramas in­ st rophe is released (from censorship) by disorder ly, volving prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims and cent rif ugal, mul ti-perspective na rrative trajector ies, Manna Gr2:lnlc. Alna Smld Troubles with Sex, Theory and History 1997 interactive CD-ROM screenshot C Marina Grlinic. Aina Smld

Only in this way can the catastrophe be experienced low-ratings TV, the subject can make its choice and as such - through the refusal of image and text ele­ posit ion itself, as long as it can take the pressure of ments to merge and fit together. Narrative struc­ the respective social code. This relationship between tures of this kind, which employ the irrational charac­ the subject as a real possibility and the imaginary ter of dream and the human psyche as plot elements, subject option is expressed as a synecdoche in Sam clearly reveal associations with the early films of Ing­ Taylor-Woad's Killing Time (1994). Like several other mar Bergmann (for example, Wild Strawberries, 1957). artists, Taylor-Wood works with "found sound." Inter­ The interactive CD-ROM Troubles with Sex, Theory estingly enough, her work confirms the theory of the 6 History (1997) by Marina Gr~inic and Aina Smid ana­ dominance of musical structure as the determining lyzes aleatoric, combinatoric and recombinatoric re­ narrative structure. It is not the visual image but lations between images and text, based on a selection sound that dictates the behavior of the actors. The of works by Grzinic and Smid between 1992 and 1997. f our pe rsons shown in t he quadruple projections lis­ Shirin Neshat presents in Turbulent (1998) t he ten to Electra by Richard Strauss, waiting for cues for binary opposition of man and woman in a patriarchal their assigned voice parts. Like Shirin Neshat's wor k, c• society on two screens positioned opposite one an­ t he f ilm sequence is a synec doche for the range of ava ilab le (social) roles and the role of the voice in so­ •E ot her. The woman has a voice but neither words nor c listeners. She has on ly sound and her ability to ciety.? The theater of sound opens a view to t he the­ ~ ., scr eam. The man possesses the words, the culture of ater of subject positions. In comparison, Pipilotti Rist c w language and an audience which rewards him with fre­ tends rather toward the structure of semi-prefabri­ ..o netic applause at the end. The exclusion of woman cated components in her work. She uses pre­ ~ ., from the building of civili zation and society can hardly recorded music, which she illustrates with her pic­ u c be illustrated more vividly than in this binary juxtapo­ tures, or the music illustrates her pictures according •o sition of projectors and positions. The device of the to coded schemes of the kind we see on MTV. She re­ u• synecdoche (used here in the representation of the mains within the codes of the subject option and the 5 violence inh erent in gender issues and the politics of industrial narrative prescribed and accepted by soci­ identity) is typical of many of the best works of video ety. We find a differently interesting adaptation of art, which deal in a methodological-analytical manner the relationship between sound and image at the nar­ with the eradicated power mechanisms of the social rative level, since remembering is one of the functions code, as opposed to t he predominantly subjective ap­ of narrat ive, in A Capella Portraits by Ute Friederike proaches of t he New American Cinema of the 1960s. Jurss. The videos of Sylv ie Blocher, Gillian Wea ring, Modern society offers the real subject a number Sam Tay lor-Wood combine in a very complex way of dif f erent role models and possibilities for role be­ mise-en-scene, documentary, sound s, ima ge s, masks 7 See Kej a Silverman, Tile Acoustic Mirror. The Female havior. On a scale of mult ip le po ssibilit ies defined by and screens t o serve the deconstruction of t he world Voice in PsvchoaneJvsis and the cu lt ure industry in media ranging f rom popu lar as a multiform script Cinema , Indiana Univ. Press, 8 1oomlngton, 1988 movies to highbrow opera, from slick magazines t o '" Geor ge Legrady Perry Hoberman Slippery Traces The Sub- DiVIsIOn 1996 of the Electric Light interactive CD - ROM 1996 screenshot CO -ROM courtesy screenshot George legrady o Perry Hobe r man

Found Image and Sound, Found Film Experiments as a whole is exposed as a ready-made object for Just as artists of the 1960s made use of "found im­ analysis. Consequently, observation of the world gives ages" and "found footage" (George Landow and oth­ way to the observation of communication. The uncon­ ers). contemporary video and film artists like Douglas scious character of the visual code becomes evident Gordon, Marcel Ddenbach and Martin Arnold employ in a kind of symptomatic reading. found material as well. Perry Hoberman uses in his in­ In Doug Aitken's installations employing multiple teractive CD-ROM piece The Sub-Oivision of the Elec­ screens, the narrative universe is broken down into tric Light (1996) found slides and 8mm film and old individual, autonomous film frames and series of ef­ projection instruments. Erkki Huhtamo uses a selec­ fects of the kind familiar to viewers schooled in video­ tion of found vaudeville rides, mostly computer-gen­ clip techniques: detailed shots, blurred motion, tech­ erated to imitate on a simulation platform a journey nical modifications achieved with the camera, digital on virtual vehicles through the highlights of historic image processing, short cuts and dilations of time cinematographic rides in his piece The Ride of Your Narration is not on ly broken apart spatially through Ufe (1998). George LeGrady in his int eractive CD-ROM projection onto multiple screens but in chronological piece Slippery Traces (1996) uses about two hundred t erms as well. post-cards for a non-linear narration bu ilt on an al­ Shifts and distortions of conventional pa rameters gorithm, navigating through a data bank. Mart in of space and time playa significant role in the new Arnold de constructs his found footage to the ex­ narration. As in the 1960s, these experiments with treme in order to make hidden semantic structures time emphasize the technological time of the cine­ visible through gradual repetition (Piece toucMe, matic order as opposed to the biological time of life. 1989; passage a /'acte, 1993). Found footage is re­ The focus is on artificial time rather than "rediscov­ assembled, looped, partially re-filmed and visually es­ ered time," on time constructions as visual symptoms tranged in its entirety. The use of found film is part of of a completely artif icial, constructed reality. In his a general strategy of media reflection and appropria­ triple projection L'Ellipse of 1998, with Bruno Ganz, tion. When Marcel Odenbach, Gabriele Leidloff, Samir, Pierre Huyghe illustrates the difference between in ­ Isabell Heimerdinger, Andrea Bowers, Burt Barr, dustrial time (the use of time in the industry film) and Pierre Huyghe and Douglas Gordon allude to familiar personal time (the use of time in Pierre Huyghe's own films, including such classics as From here to Eternity film). He uses found footage or found f ilm, film as a (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) and The Godfather (Francis ready-made work of art, which he deconstructs by Ford Coppola, 1972) or to popular television images subjecting it to chronological manipulation: When ranging from cheerleaders [Andrea Bowers, Touch of Bruno Ganz is of f screen in t he industry film (The Class, 1998) to scenes from the f uneral of Diana, American Friend by Wim Wenders, 1977), t he projec­ Princess of Wales (Gabriele Le idloff, Moving Visual Ob­ tion of his personal film begins an d int errupts t he ject, 1997). then what we have are media-oriented ob­ projection of the industry film. Huyghe plays with the servations of a second order, in which visual culture cinematographic technique of cutting from one scene David Blair WAXWE8 (WAX or the Discovery ofTe/evisionAmong the Bees, e hypermedIa versIOn) 1994-2000 video, r ealtime, 30/html scr eenshot courtesy the art ist

to another by deleting the time and space in between sical parameters of narration, fall victim to a multiple which technique is called "elliptical." Douglas Gordon perspective projected onto multiple screens. Asyn­ suQjects industry films to similar time manipulations. chronous, non- linear, non- chronological, seemingly He also works with found films (from Hitchcock's Psy­ illogical, parallel, mu ltiple narrative approaches from cho to Ford's The Searchers), expanding them to re­ multiple perspectives projected onto multiple spectively twenty-four hours or five years. screens are the goal. These narrative procedures comprising a "multiform plot" have been developed Computer Film with reference to and oriented toward such rhi­ Made with the help of an IBM 1620-21, Marc Adrian's zomatic communication structures as hypertext, "as­ film random (1963) was probably the first computer­ sociational indexing" (Vannevar Bush, As We May Think , aided f ilm made by an art ist in Europe. The Whitney 1945J, text based "mu lti-user dungeons" (MUDs) and Brothers opened the field of the digital film (John other digital techniques of literary narration. 9 Gilles Whitney, Permutations, 1968). In 1971, John Whitney jr. Deleuze's definition of the rhizome as a network in made his first digital film Terminal SelF, a title that which every point can be connected with any other was later recalled in that of Scott Bukatman's book point is a precise description of communication in the Termina/ldentity (1993), which simultaneously echoed multi~user environment of the World-Wide Web and a line from Willi am Burroughs: "The entire planet is the allusive, open-ended image and text systems de­ being developed into t erminal identity and complete rived from it . These narrative systems and scripts surrender."s Michael Whitney made the digital film have a certain algorithmic character. Narration be­ Binary Bit Patterns (1969). John Stehura (Cybernetic comes a machine, a plot-machine, an engine. As early 5-3,1965), Lillian Schwartz and Ken Knowlton, Charles as 1928, Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his famous c Csuri and James Shafter (Humming Bird) belong to study Morphology of the Fairy Tale t hat t he 450 fairy · the early avant-garde of digital film. David Blair's tales he analyzed could be reduced to 25 basic func­ •E o tions and narrative events, or narrative morphemes. E WAXWEB (1994 - 2000) laid a foundation stone for web cinema. These twenty- five morphemes form a kind of algo­ >o w rithm, which generates an endless string of new , "c Navigable Ah izomatic Narration plots through new combinations. With its audio-visual ;; The narrative universe becomes reversible in the field narrative techniques, contemporary video art breaks ~o of digitall y expanded cinema and no longer reflects down holi stic f orms into t hei r basic morpholog ical • the psychology of cause and effect. Repetitions, components. These are then reassembled using the •o ~:;; the suspension of linear t ime, temporal and spatial multiple methods described above. These new narra­ asynchrony blast apart classical chronology. Multiple tive techniques render t he complexity of social screens function as fields in which scenes are de­ systems lucid The crisis of representation, which picted from a multiple perspective, their narrative painting averted during the 1980s by resorting to a thread broken. The accusation once leveled at new restorative repetition of historical figurative and music - t hat it had cut the link t o t he listener, since ex pressive conditions, is be ing overcome in contem­ the listener could no longer reconstruct or recognize porary video art through the revival of narrative 8 William Surroughs, Nova Ex­ press, Grove Press. New the principles of composition - can now be addressed conditions anticipated by the historical avant-gardes Yor k,1964 without reservation to the advanced narrative tech­ of literature, theater and music: from the French 9 See Wa lt er Grand. Oer niques of contemporary video art . They have severed OULlPQ (Ouvoir de Litterat ure Potentielle] group to Erziihler und der the link to the viewer, who can no longer make out the the Group. The interactive installation Pas­ Cyberspace. Haymon. Inns­ bruck. 1999 narrative structure. Linearity and chronology, as clas- sage Sets/ One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue Bill Seaman Passage Sets/ One Pulls Pivots at t he Tip of tile Tongue 1994-1995 Interactive IIlstaliatlon mixed media C Bill Seaman

(1994-95J by Bill Seaman refers to t he automatic writ ing techniques of the Surrealists, but is act ed out by a computational random access algorit hm. Texts and images are networked in this way of aleator ic comb inations. In Frank Fietzek's interactive inst alla ­ tion Tafel [Black Board] (1993). a moving monitor in front of a big blackboard reveals hidden words like a palimpsest. The banishment of narration by abstraction led to the reject ion of narrative as an obsolete historical phenomenon. This Modernist dictate of recognizing only the purely visual and banishing the verbal was overturned by postmodernism in favor of a more in ­ tense discur sive orientation. Thus even the postmod­ Frank Fietzek ern visual language of contemporary media art be­ Tafel [Black Board] 1993 comes increasingly di scursive, the more it makes use IIlteractlve IIlstaliatlon of avant- garde narrative techniques. Unlike techni ­ dimenSions varl8ble cally ponderous film art, the digital technology of Installation view ZKM I Center today permits more complete control of cinematic for Art and Media Karlsruhe C Frank Fietzek resou rces and thus promotes a more stable develop­ me nt of the cinematic code. The advantage of today's video and digital technology over yesterday's film technology li es in the improved logistics of it s techni ­ cal repertoire. What was once virtuall y impossible and susceptible to problems as wel l is now much easier to reali ze and entirely reliable. Thanks to this technical stability, the possibilities for new narrative tech­ niques based upon multiple large- screen projections, perhaps the most striking feature of contemporary video art, can now be explored extensively for the first t ime. And so the video and of today has taken up the lance left behind by th~ cinematic avant-garde of the 1960s and developed one step further the universe of the cinematic code.

A short verS ion of this essay first appeared under the title "Narrated Theo ry: Multiple Projection and Multiple Narration" in New Screen Media. Cinema/ Art/Narrative, Andrea Zapp and Martin Rieser (eds). SF I Pub ­ lishing. Lo ndon, 2002

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