The Medium Is 4/4/07

The Medium Is is a collection of works from the 1970’s, which explore the instantaneity of video and its presentations through unique techniques. Lynda Benglis’ Now muddles the ideas of “live recording” and pre-recorded material. In the 12 minute video from 1973 the words “now,” “start recording,” “do you wish to direct me?” repeat constantly while a woman’s face is visible facing itself in a colored background. It is unclear what is going on or how the scene is shot; it seems as if there is a monitor behind the woman who is showing pre-recorded material of the same woman doing similar actions and saying the same words. The action of the “live” woman right in front of the camera do not match up with the actions on the screen—they are the same but do not occur simultaneously, meaning the live woman is copying what is happening on the screen. So it is unclear what is live and what is pre-recorded.

Richard Serra’s Boomerang was shown in which, as we’ve seen, Nancy Holt has headphones on and can hear her voice after she speaks her words, not simultaneously. It was almost painful to watch her deteriorate again as she begins to slow down and feel like she has lost control over herself. At the end of the video, right as Nancy is at her final breaking point, she reveals her thoughts on the pollution of TV: it “cuts [us] off from reality as we usually experience it.” This reminds me of Verilio’s argument about ecological pollution by video technology and that it causes a hybrid man, a transhuman, to emerge who neither roams the world in a journey or is sedentary in an urban environment; this new man experiences the world, and motion through immobile devices such as TV without having to actually move himself. Thus, our reality, real time is completely different than of the people who existed before TV, and media was invented. Furthermore, just like this video experiment caused Nancy to break down, maybe TV is slowly doing the same thing to our senses and creativity.

Two Faces by Hermine Freed was a really interesting eight minute video from 1972 in which a prerecorded image of the artist was flipped and was courting her own identity. It began with two heads facing each other (it looked very real) and they were moving into each other and back—emerging from within each other. Then they began to do other symmetric movements, and later they began tongue playing and kissing. I had to remind myself that it was all just one person playing with mirrors, images and video, not two identical women. Although the artist has a doubled image in the video, she herself seems very alone because in reality she is touching her mirror image; her actions are between herself—the reality, and the mirrored double. However, I had some trouble figuring out the overall theme or point of the video, I just really enjoyed the artist’s creativity in using and video technology.

Dan Graham presented a 23 minute video called Performer/Audience/Mirror that dealt with just that—a performer, the audience, and the mirror. In it a man walked into a room with a mirror in the back and a group of people sitting on the floor facing the mirror. The man began talking about his position, posture, and balance; he described his movement by describing every specific action of every part of his body. It was interesting to think about if he was acting out what he was saying or if he was describing what he was doing. Nevertheless, he kept switching from facing the audience to facing the mirror and from describing himself to describing the audience. People began looking at themselves in the mirror and began to look like a unit, a collective, not individuals. I think what the video might have been trying to show is people’s fixation with TV. As the audience kept listening to the man speak, they looked into the mirror at themselves so the mirror became the screen and the audience became a unifying image. Also, everything the man was commentating on was happening right there and then, his speech was not premeditated; the people’s reactions, movements, and expressions provided him with ideas as a sort of feedback loop—he spoke, they reacted, and then he spoke again based on their reactions. In turn, this mirrors how TV and the media work showing that the audience (us) is their inspiration and consumer.

The last video by Peter Campus called Three Transitions was my favorite because of its special effects. He creates three self-portraits with technological aspects and then destroys them. In the last scene a hand is holding a piece of paper with the image of Peter on it and then it is set it on fire. As the paper burns the image disappears with it. It raised the question of where do these videos go after they are shown? It is as if the people shown on TV disappear, burn away when their purpose is finished and the video is shot, and shown. Moreover, it reminded me of Verilio who argues that the nomad is dissipating because the journey is no longer necessary for the intake of information; thus, it is needless to go in search of information because it is provided through the transapperant horizon. This video might hint at the fact that as quickly as we gain information, as quickly we can lose it because of our reliance on machines. The video image of Peter was destroyed by nature, by fire; this shows the dominance of nature over technology because in the end, fire can destroy anything. If we continue to rely on optoelectronics we will forget how it is to be in motion on a trajectory and search for information the “old” way.

Reminders

The reading for next week is Vivian Sobchack's article, "The Scene of the Screen", which is the last item in your reader. (And Monday night we will have a screening.)

At the end of next week you'll need to post a proposed idea for your final paper on the blog, so think about films, videos, or digital media objects that you would like to write about...we're open minded, as long as you can investigate some aspect relating to time.

Talks, Films, & Events (Repost)

A reminder of upcoming events...

You are required to attend the 4/22 dance performance on campus as well as TWO other events. One must be a film, the other can be a film or lecture. Post a response and evaluation for both the events you choose to attend. Please start a new post if you are the first to respond to an event. Then other people who also attended can post their responses as comments to the initial response. The responses should be similar to reading responses, describing the film a bit for those who did not see it but focusing on your ideas rather than on summarizing, doing some thinking about relationship of the event to themes in the course.
More events may be added to this list as they are announced. You may attend up to three extra events for extra credit (extra events 10pts each, required events 25 each except April 22 event counts double for 50).

Websites for More info about locations, tickets, etc:
Yerba Buena http://www.ybca.org/
Berkeley Art, Technology, Culture Colloquium http://atc.berkeley.edu/
Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
California College for the Arts http://www.cca.edu/calendar/



TUESDAY APRIL 3 PFA
7:30 Anthology Film Archives: Recent Preservations
Andrew Lampert in Person
Lampert, archivist and programmer at Anthology Film Archives, long a key institution on the East Coast arts scene, presents classics of 1960s and '70s avant-garde in fabulous prints that you'd normally have to travel to New York to see. Program includes:
Film Number 16 Oz: The Tin Woodman's Dream (Harry Smith, c. 1967). Zenscapes (Marie Menken, c. 1957). Note to Colleen (Saul Levine, 1974). Nine Variations on a Dance Theme (Hilary Harris, 1966). Five 8mm Films (George Landow, 1961-62). Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1964-67)

Wednesday April 4
7:30 The Medium Is, works by Lynda Benglis, Peter Campus, Hermine Freed, Dan Graham, Richard Serra
With its instantaneous feedback and image manipulation, video technology creates a nowness of perception along with the distraction offered by any good spectacle. In Now, Lynda Benglis’s first color tape, the eponymous word is repeated, questioning the currency and the command. Then, over-driving the color image, Benglis collapses the notion of the medium as neutral. Wearing headphones in Richard Serra’s Boomerang, Nancy Holt repeats phrases that are heard, then heard again in delay. The effect is of feedback effectively devouring its own message. Using a split screen in Two Faces, Hermine Freed faces herself, caressing her mirrored image. Suspended between images, Freed exists as a doubled person, alienated and adrift. Recorded in San Francisco, Dan Graham’s Performer/Audience/Mirror is a study of mediated relations, a mirror standing in for the TV as the artist describes the audience before him. The circularity of the exchange captures the phenomenology of feedback. In Peter Campus’s seminal tape Three Transitions, inherent properties of the medium become potent metaphors for the depiction of internal states and the breach between reality and illusion.—Steve Seid
Now (Lynda Benglis, 1973, 12 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From VDB). Boomerang (Richard Serra, 1974, 10.5 mins, B&W, DVD, From The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Two Faces (Hermine Freed, 1972, 8 mins, B&W, Mini-DV, From VDB). Performer/Audience/Mirror (Dan Graham, 1975, 23 mins, B&W, DVD, From EAI). Three Transitions (Peter Campus, 1973, 5 mins, Color, Mini-DV, From EAI).
• (Total running time: 59 mins, U.S.)


Thursday April 5, Friday April 6 PFA (counts as one event)
Thurs April 5 7:30 Tropical Malady, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand/France, 2004, 118 mins)
Fri April 6 7:00 Tropical Malady: Shot-by-Shot, Discussion with Apichatpong Weerasethakul
(Sud pralad). The agreeably irrational Tropical Malady melds folk fable with euphoric modern moviemaking, effortlessly traversing the mundane and the miraculous. In this pastoral with a dark pulse, two beguiling stories unfold: the first a playful romance between a handsome soldier, Keng, and Tong, a country boy; the second, a nocturnal journey into a realm of shape-shifting creatures. While Keng and Tong’s blissful courtship is told through moody, tender tableaux, the seeds of a lurking apprehension are being quietly sown—a dead body is found at the edge of the jungle, cows are found slaughtered in the fields. The villagers tell of a spirit that inhabits the body of a wandering tiger. As the second story emerges, Tropical Malady leaves behind the matter-of-fact for the mystical, a lush jungle peopled by talking monkeys and tricksters in human form. And who is that stalking the dread tiger? Is it soldier Keng? In this numinous tropic, we relish the malady of not necessarily knowing. Winner, Prix du Jury, Cannes 2004.

TUES APRIL 10 PFA
7:30 BB Optics: Optical Printing and Preservation Work
Bill Brand in Person
Brand presents a wide range of works preserved or printed by his firm, BB Optics, including avant-garde pieces and films confiscated from the Nixon White House by the FBI. Program includes:
New Left Note (Saul Levine, 1968/82). Nixon White House Super-8 Films (Reel S-10) (1969-73). The Fallen World (Marjorie Keller, 1983). Fire in My Belly (David Wojnarowicz, 1986-87). Home Avenue (Jennifer Montgomery, 1989). Black and White Film (Robert Huot, 1968-69). Daffodils (Katy Martin, 1979/81)

Tuesday, April 10 at Stanford University
4:30pm
the Sawyer Seminar Visualizing Knowledge: From Alberti's Window to Digital Arrays
presents a panel discussion between Pavle Levi and Marta Braun on "The Visibility of Motion."
Lectures and discussion will be held at the Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa
Ave., Stanford, CA 94305, (650) 723-3052.
http://visualization.stanford.edu information
http://visualization-wiki.stanford.edu streaming audio

THURSDAY APRIL 12 PFA
7:30 Time After Time
In experimental works and emotionally evocative narratives, students examine memory and its decay.
Program includes: Wandern (Daniel Czernilofsky, 5 mins). you are i hate you (Marik Armstrong, Josh McVeigh-Schultz, 14 mins). My Companions (Wenhua Shi, 1 min, B&W). A Sikh in America (Peter Alsop, 5 mins). Multiple Hugs & Kisses (Yosuke Hosaka, 6 mins). Saturday Ice Fever (Scott Bishop, Siyu Song, Frances You, 2 mins). Hard Knock Life (Alison Beaumont, 2005, 2 mins). Blips and Beeps (Nikolaos Hanselmann, 4.5 mins, B&W). Urban Jungle (Sophie Cooper, 8.5 mins). Fractal (Morgan Swing, 15 mins). Home Movies (Jason Karpman, 3.5 mins, B&W)
Total running time: 67 mins (plus Q & A)

Friday April 13 PFA
8:50 The Passenger
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy/France/Spain, 1975, 123 mins)
A penetrating political thriller, The Passenger, set in the Sahara, is also a desert film, and it resembles the much earlier L’avventura—a desert island film—with its horizontal vistas and its theme of absence. Jack Nicholson portrays a London journalist named Locke who, sent to cover a rebellion in North Africa, assumes the identity of a man, Robertson, who has died in the next hotel room. Locke is running away from being a journalist—from the codes that replace knowing, the images that replace seeing. He’s much like Monica Vitti’s Vittoria in L’eclisse in his desire for escape, for a mask. But, embracing Robertson’s globetrotting, increasingly mysterious persona, he finds himself pursuing not the man’s life, but his death. Even the camera seems to have a will toward another world: it distractedly tracks a passing camel in the desert, an anachronistic horse-drawn carriage in Munich. The film’s famous final seven-minute zoom literally draws out the pain of seeing in focus.

Monday April 16 Doug Aitken 7:30
Art Technology Culture Colloquia, on campus (see website for location)
Internationally known Video and Digital artist Doug Aitken talks about his work.
http://archidose.blogspot.com/2007/01/30-in-30-27.html


TUESDAY APRIL 17 PFA
7:30 Anger Rising: The Restoration of Works by Kenneth Anger at UCLA Film and Television Archive
Ross Lipman in Person
New 35mm prints of four of Kenneth Anger's most famous films, plus an illustrated lecture by UCLA's Lipman detailing the challenges involved in restoring them. Program includes:
Fireworks (1947). Rabbit's Moon (1971). Scorpio Rising (1963). Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)

Jim Campbell at Hosfelt Gallery March 17-April 28
Jim Campbell is a digital artist (and pioneer of HDTV) who installs arrays of LED lights to produce unusual projections of film of video. He has a show of new work open right now in San Francisco. If you want to go you can write about the exhibit as an event review.
http://www.hosfeltgallery.com/HTML/exhibitions.htm

Jim Campbell TALK at PFA Sat April 21 12pm in MEASURE OF TIME gallery


(REQUIRED) Sunday April 22, 2pm Zellerbach theater, Berkeley Dance Project
Directed by Lisa Wymore
Featuring The Reception, a cross-disciplinary performance piece utilizing dance choreography and tele-immersion technology to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence. Also featuring new choreographic works by Tammy Cheney, Robert Moses, Carol Murota, and Ellis Wood. The Reception: Co-directed by Lisa Wymore (TDPS) and Ruzena Bajcsy (CITRIS). *The April 22 performance will be followed by a post-performance discussion: Being Here: Presence/Remote Presence within Live and Media Based Performance by N. Katherine Hayles.
The Resonance Project is a team of choreographers, dancers, computer engineers, and visual and sound artists who are investigating concepts of presence/remote presence and corporeal and code interactivity within live and media based performance. Unique to the project is the use of a "performance as research" model, within which scientists and artists collaborate to explore a re-visioning of cyber culture and corporeal presence.
You do not need to buy a ticket for this performance, meet in front of the theater before the show.

TUESDAY APRIL 24 PFA
7:30 Academy Film Archive: Recent Preservations
Mark Toscano in Person
Preservationist Toscano presents abstractions, conceptual pieces, and dryly humorous films, all preserved in the past year at the Academy. Program includes:
Film Exercise #5 (John & James Whitney, 1944). The Assignation (Curtis Harrington, 1952). Documentary Footage (Morgan Fisher, 1968). Runs Good (Pat O'Neill, 1970). Four Corners (Diana Wilson, 1978). Future Perfect (Roberta Friedman, Grahame Weinbren, c. 1976). Brummer's (David Bienstock, 1967). Murder Psalm (Stan Brakhage, 1980).


Wednesday May 2
3:00 Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Tsai Ming-liang (Taiwan, 2003, 82 mins)
Lecture by Marilyn Fabe
(Bu jian bu san). In Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang, director of Vive l'Amour (1994) and What Time Is It There? (2001), created the sharpest combination yet of his major themes—rain, missed connections, and the poetry of loneliness—juxtaposed this time against something completely unexpected: a martial arts film. It's a rainy night in Taipei, and the crumbling neighborhood kino-barn is showing King Hu's swordplay classic Dragon Inn. Most of the audience appears to be elsewhere, offscreen dreamers haltingly putting their thoughts of love into very slow motion while the onscreen kinetic frenzies keep blazing on like helpful cues. Visualizing the fantasies of anyone who's ever worked in a movie theater, or just adored being in one, Goodbye, Dragon Inn underscores the essence of why people watch films: to be reminded of what it is to live, and what it means to dream.

Open Sky - Johnny Mendoza

1. In Paul Virilio's Open Sky he argues that the development of telecommunications will lead to the "loss of the traveller's tale and, with it, the possibility of some kind of interpretation"(25) of "the traveller's tale". The advance in live-feed technology enables our society to be "telepresent to the whole world" (25); that people can be present in many places at once by means of observing it through a television. This eliminates the need for a "traveller's tale" because people no longer need to remember the places they have been because they can just videotape it and that will replace their memory. Virilio argues this will prevent any kind of interpretation of those moments because the video provides a "real-time image" and an "illumination of the reality of the facts" (26). Virilio makes a valid argument about the demise of the "traveller's tale", but he makes some untrue assumptions about live-feed video and human memory. He argues that video will replace memories, but in fact it can act as a second memory, or second interpretation to an experience. A video can show a place or event in one perspective, but a person's memory will provide a whole new perspective in the way that the human brain perceives the same event of place. Observing a place different than a person's present location through a live-feed video does not allow the person to be actually present at both locations, since the seeing the video will give a completely different perspective on the place than actually traveling there. Instead video allows the person to be visually present, which is the perspective the video gives. Virilio is right that telecommunications is starting a "telepresent" society, but he is wrong if he thinks it detracts from actually traveling somewhere and developing a "traveller's tale".

2. Virilio argues that there exists pollution that goes beyond affecting only physical substances, and he calls it "dromospheric" (22) pollution. A pollution that affects people's perceptions of duration and the world, which is caused by the "communications revolution" (22). According to Virilio, though, the study of ecology does not include this temporal pollution, but it should since the whole world is experiencing a "public duration" (23). This "public duration" plays out as humans move around and experience new things through their "journey" (23), which in turn implies there will be a future. However, telecommunications causes people to not move around and experience things, since these experiences can be brought straight to them by way of the television, which causes people to be stuck in the present moment. This prevents people from following their transhumant instincts, which affects the dromology, or duration, of the world as a whole, since the world has no future it has become "endotic" (25). Virilio's argument of the world becoming "endotic" with the advance in telecommunication technology has come a little late. It can be argued that the world has been in the process of becoming "endotic" since the invention of the train and then with the invention of the airplane it became more "endotic". Telecommunication has just increased the endocity of the world, and there will always be something else to diminish "spatial exteriority" (25) even more.

3. Virilio describes “the speed of the new optoelectronic and electroacoustic milieu” as a “final void..., a vacuum that no longer depends on the interval between places or things..., but on the interface of an instantaneous transmission” (33). Because the electromagnetic waves of a video-feed travel at the speed of light they can travel any distance on earth instantly, eliminating the relationship of space and time. Since there is no longer any relationship between space or time, video turns the world into a “void” or black hole, in which a person can instantaneously cover any distance by watching his/her television. Virilio is grossly over exaggerating in his description of the “final void”. Yes, the live-feed does weaken the relationship between time and space, but so did the train, the airplane, and cars. Video is not the ultimate “void”, it is just one on many inventions that enables people to travel distances at a greater speed.

Johnny Mendoza

Open Sky

1) Virilio opens this reading by comparing his “dromospheric” pollution to the pollution of natural contamination—emphasizing the apparent dangers of dormology. He claims that new technology of communication and travel has caused pollution to “spread further that the elements, natural substances, air, water, fauna and flora – as far as the space-time of our planet” (137). We can see from this that his problem with technology goes beyond the physical contaminates that are produced by machines, but rather how they affect human perception and duration. This shows an indirect irony of how these new methods of travel and communication, which are supposed to advance man-kind, actually contaminate them. Virilio goes on to claim that this “machine time” pollution has to do with “ergonomics… economics… [and] politics” instead of “ecology” (137). With a statement like this, it seems hard to consider such technological advancements as a pollution because in natural contaminates in ecology actually degrade and eat away at an environment, while “machine time” actually makes designs, economies and governments more efficient/useful.

2) He admires the “original [‘warrior’] nomad for whom the journey… are dominate” and says that the other type of man, the “sedentary urban ‘civilian,’” focuses on the “subject and object” (139). The sedentary man is more focused on the cause and result of an event—similar to Bergson’s belief in the cinematographical habit of the mind—whereas the nomad is more concerned with the process or “journey” itself. The practical, cinematographical interests of the sedentary man result in the title of “civilian” because he/she is not willing to do things outside of the social construct of the state. For example, Virilio explains that the use of the “remote control and long-distance telepresence” will cause an “ultimate state of sedentariness where real-time environmental control will take over from the deployment of the real space of the territory” (139). As we can see, the sedentary “civilian” utilizes the remote control in order to change the channel without having to go through the “journey” of going to change the channel manually on the television set. Now, the “warrior” label on the nomadic man serves as a hyperbole to emphasize Vilirio’s respect for them because getting up off of the couch to change the channel or going to talk to someone in person as opposed to the telephone does not literally make you a warrior.

3) Photography is viewed by Virilio as a freezing of time that represents movement and Virilio believes that a collection of these “time-light” photographs in cinematographic sequence forms “real-time video” (140-141). Even though they would agree on the “representative” quality of a photograph, Virilio’s view of video is a clear departure from the views of Henri Bergson because Bergson explicitly believes that cinematography is at best a representation of motion, whereas Virilio believes that cinematography shows motion in “real-time.” Virilio depicts cinematography both as “the greatest scientific invention since fire,” and an invention that runs on electricity and that doesn’t have to follow “chronological time” (141). Unlike Bergson, Virilio glorifies video through the deployment of an absolute. However, by stating that film does not need to be chronological, Virilio brings back the beginning of his paper, where he talked about how machines caused dromospheric pollution because they eliminated the “journey,” and how such things would be distanced from the natural way of perceiving the world.

-Christopher Melgaard