Transilient Minds

The Screen as Architecture Olga Venetsianou University of Thessaly (Greece) Abstract the screen. The argument will be presented through a series of case studies that are This paper deals with the spatial properties of located between architecture and non- the cinematic, television or computer screen architecture, dating from the beginning of in multimedia installations. Through a series the twentieth century until now. The of case-studies dating from the interwar selected works use a diverse range of avant-garde movements to contemporary expressive means, materials and multimedia installations, we will attempt to techniques, thus breaking down the barriers illustrate the way that the screen surface is within the arts. transformed from flat and frontal to a three- dimensional space of visualization. Artistic Expansion and Multiplication of experimentations, in particular the expansion and multiplication of screen space and the Screen Space encouragement of audience participation, In regard to media art, two underlying assisted by the evolution of technology from currents are identified. The first may be analogue to digital, marked the introduction of described as an audiovisual experience immersive environments and interactive constrained by a bounding border, which relations between spectator and image. In separates fictional from real space, i.e. the digital culture, the screen functions as a frame of a painting, the proscenium arch of communication space for events and a theatre, the casing of a television, the scenarios. Moreover, contemporary border of a cinema screen. The second multimedia installations use the strong group of artworks is characterized by the illusionary powers of the moving image and attempt to discard the frame, so that the the notion of interactivity in an attempt to created space is released as an immersive converge all modalities of perception in a experience. The development from the conjoined space-time of real and virtual theatrical proscenium arch format to the formations, creating an immersive narrative panoramic screen enlarged the cinematic space with various levels of embodiment. frame until it virtually disappeared. Architectural design thus becomes an integral part of an installation, in terms of both virtual The quest for the expansion and and physical space. multiplication of the cinematic frame is traced back to the avant-garde movements Introduction of the beginning of the twentieth century in the context of the discussion on ways of While facing an artificial light image, the liberating visual arts from the conventional viewer is confronted with its dual quality: the contemplative way of viewing a painting. As materiality of the screen and the immateriality Walter Benjamin mentions in his essay The of the image. Instead of describing the use of Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical architecture within the filmic or television Reproduction, the Dadaists intended to image, the following account will consider the destruct the aura of their creations, making screen itself as architecture. We will attempt it impossible for the viewer to contemplate to highlight the way in which the emphasis on before them. Their artworks are thus architectural space rather than the image gradually fragmented in a group of gradually established an interactive dispersed items that surround the viewer, relationship between image and viewer. This introducing the concept of the environment development has three major aspects: The and the installation. most important is the attempt to expand and During the same period, thoughts of multiply screen space. The second is the challenging the fixed rectangular format of tendency to hold the audience responsible for the cinematic frame are found in the work completing the artistic proposition, thus of László Moholy-Nagy, who proposed large encouraging active intervention instead of spherical screens and simultaneous passive absorption and contemplation. projections in a poly-cinema.1 In 1930, Audience participation is the forerunner of Eisenstein proposes the ‘dynamic square’, a interaction, which is the third aspect in the screen with changeable proportions of the changing relationship between the viewer and O. Venetsianou projected picture.2 Certain artworks of this Botschuyver and Sean Wellesley Miller, period may be singled out as a reference to films and light were projected onto a later multimedia installations. Nagy’s kinetic pneumatic sculpture which spectators could sculpture Light Space Modulator (1930) used move. Thus the screen became in a number the concept of motion, not only within the of ways multiple and mobile, as well as flat work itself, but on the part of the viewer, as or curved, or was replaced by unusual well as the innovative use of the light beam. materials like buildings, geodetic domes, As it moved, the modulator created shadows plastic balls, helium-filled plastic hoses and on the back walls that resembled an abstract so on. These experiments aimed at the film with no frame. The quest for the intensification of visual experience, at the expansion of the cinematographic frame is same time drawing attention to the spatial depicted in Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927), and architectural dimension of the screen. which was filmed with three interlocked The notion of variable and dynamic cameras. The final composition created either screen space is used in mainstream an expanded panoramic view or a triptych of projects, such as corporate pavilions in two separate actions that framed the central international exhibitions, in particular the one. The resulting complex spatial and 1958 Brussels Expo. Josef Svoboda, a Czech temporal relations between the three screens artist with a theatrical set design are in line with the cubist quest for depiction background, presented the Laterna Magika, of a subject through multiple viewpoints. which was based on the notion of The experimental cinema of the interwar interaction between physical and image period, in particular works of Fernand Leger, space. In the same exhibition he presented Viking Eggeling, László Moholy-Nagy, Oscar the Polyecran, an audiovisual project that Fishinger, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, aimed at creating space through film served as the source of inspiration for projections on eight screens placed innovative post-war film production. However, throughout the space and was based on these films were generally considered a by- rhythmical links between sound and film. product of the modern movement, whereas The interwar avant-garde concept of making the independent filmmakers of the 1960s abstract moving image films according to were very conscious of creating a new branch musical principles was taken a step further of art. In the fall of 1965, a survey entitled in the architectural design of the Philips ‘Expanded Cinema’ was screened at the Film Pavilion by Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis. Maker’s Cinematheque in New York. This The architectural design of the pavilion, survey initiated its development as a mass composed of hyperbolic paraboloids, was movement, inviting large audiences and inspired by Xenakis’ musical composition introducing specialized publications. Extensive Metastasis (1955). Between corporately experimentation led to a complete sponsored projects and ‘Expanded Cinema’ deconstruction of the cinematic apparatus, i.e. performances, multiple screen projections the camera, the projector, and the projection became a marked visual display practice of surface. This resulted in the production of the 1960s. In an age of renunciation of films with unprocessed celluloid (Nam June social conventions and mind-expanding Paik, Zen for Film, 1962), or films with a drugs, multiple projection environments thread instead of film (Hans Scheugi, zzz: embodied a new imaging technology that Hamburg special, 1968). In other works, the would articulate this new perception of the light beam became the sole matter of the world. artwork (Anthony McCall, Line Describing a In the 1960s, the cinematic code was Cone, 1973). extended with analogous means. Shortly The projection screen was exploded and afterwards, the video recorder was multiplied, either through division into introduced and the cinematic code was multiple images using split-screen techniques expanded electromagnetically. As video was or by placing screens on several different introduced as an emerging art medium, a walls (Henry Jacobs, Jordan Belson, the large group of artists – Nam June Paik, Whitney Brothers, The Vortex Concerts, 1957- Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, Gary Hill and 59). In experiments with the projection others – used multiple monitors or split surface, films were projected on curtains of screen techniques to experiment with the steam with running water (Robert Whitman, fracturing of time and the spatial qualities of Shower, 1964) or on human bodies (Robert the video image. The shift from the Whitman, Prune Flat, 1965). From 1958 composition of the image to the composition Milton Cohen developed the Space Theatre; of space was enhanced by the introduction an environment for multiple projections using of notions such as the human body, mobile rectangular and triangular screens. In movement, events and scenarios into MovieMovie (1965) by Jeffrey Shaw, Theo architectural thought, mainly in the writings 122 The Screen as Architecture of Bernard Tschumi. further spatial and temporal dimensions. The fluid and dynamic character of digital Audience Participation space gives birth to a new mental experience, that of interactive navigation.

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