Peter Welbel Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments

1 Kaslmir Malevich, Painterly Laws In the Problems of CIn-ema: in Cinema and Culture (Kino i Kultura), nos. 7- 9, 1929.

2 This history is described and documented In the follOWing books: Sheldon Renan, An Introduction to t he American Underground Film, Dutton, New York, 1967; P. Adams Sitney (ed.). Film Culture Reader. Praeger, New York,i970, Gene Young-blood, Expended Cinema, Dutton, New York,1970: Parl-0 J- ...--- ~ ..... h'.::..~.~. :.~: .: . ...:.: .. :. h ..... -.. , .. ,-. Io ... L_.40 ..... ' ....... _'"-A. " ' ,; " .), !'I _, .. _ ..... ,.. , . .. - .. ,~~ 1~"- . , ...

" .... ... t ~,. .-.-. II MI"7-'" ,.. ..... . ,-.... ,.. . ,.---_ _ c:.:::J

J./ " "', / J , .". " ..... . " ... O' -'.LL"': " ')'1 . ~44. "" ....... ~~ fHu .l...,.4 "'7 ..... 1 "',f., ~ ,. .t:.. .......... . .. J

, ~ .... d .. r

..... + , ' .... ' .... 1., ....... .. 10- .... .... ,,~,~< ...... l' .{~ ...... . .... ... .

,. ,, - .~ .... .......

J . 1 I

Gil J. Wolman L'Antl[~oncept 1951 f ilm stills L' lnstitu t Scandinave de Vandal isme Compar{) f rom Joseph Wolman, L'Antl-concept , ~dit i ons Allia, Par is, 1994, p, 66

classical cinema, from the camera to the projector, from the screen to the celluloid, was radically trans -formed, annih ilated and expanded, The history of avant-garde film is a history of interpellat ions in the sense of Althusser (see my pref ace) on t he basis of the apparatus itself. 2 The deficit of the cinematic ap-paratus theory of the 1970s was that it showed us only the ideology inherent to Hollywood f ilms,just as in the 1960s Umberto Eco used semiot ics to exp lain James Bond f ilms and t oday Slavoj Zizek uses Lacan t o exp lain Hit chcock, Neither t heor ist used t he appa -ra t us theory rad ica lly in order to demonst rate that the cinemat ic apparatus and the inscribed ideology can be transformed by making dif f erent f ilms with different technolog ies in the way done by avant -garde f ilmmakers. They therefore missed a vital po int, and f ell behind t heir own t heoret ica l premises, Their theoretical work insofar paradoxica lly supported the hegemony of Hollywood and dismissed the avant -garde movement from f ilm to video, from video to dig-it al, as rep resenting a transformat ion of t he cine-matic appar at us,

This transformation took place in three phases. In the 1960s, the cinematic code was exte nded wit h ana logous means, with t he means of cinema itse lf. Shor t ly afterwards, new elements and apparatuses like the video recorder were introduced, and the cinematic code was expanded electromagnet ica lly Artist s' video - from Bruce Nauman to Bill Viola, from Nam June Pa ik to Ste ina and Woody Vasu lka - was init ially successfu l in the 1970s, but was halted in t he 1980s by retro-orient ed pa int erly neo-Expr ess ion ism, In the 1990s video art became t he dominant form of

Stan Brakhage Mothlight 1963 16mm f ilm color, silent 4 min fi lm strip o Stan Brakhage

med ia avant- garde, and dominated maj or exhibit ions like t he Kasse l document a and Venice Bienn ial. In the same decade, f ilm entered t he f ie ld of digita lly ex-panded c inema

Material Experiments The subvers ive exp losion t hat shattered t he cine -mat og raphic code in t he 19605 affect ed all of the techn ical and mater ial paramet ers of f ilm, The mater-ial character of the f ilm itself was ana lyzed by art ists who, instead of expos ing t he ce lluloid, scratched it (George Landow, Film In Which There Appear Sprocket Holes, Edge Lettering, Oirt Particles, etc., 1965/66; Birgit and Wilhelm Hein, RohFilm, 1968), perforat ed it with a hole punch [D ieter Rot h, 1965), pa int ed it [Harry Smith used 35mm mat eria l, process ing it with grease, pa int , tape and spray, 1947), covered it wit h f inger -prints (Peter We ibe l, Fingerprint,1967) or glued moths t o it (Stan Brakhage, Mothlight, 1963, in which moth wings and leaves were f ixed between layers of per-f orat ed t ape and projected). Empt y frames, black f ilm and overexposed material were also used (G il J, Wo l-man, L'anti- concept, 1951; Guy Debord, Hurlements en Faveur de Sade, 1952; Peter Kubelka, ArnulF Ra iner, 1960; Tony Conrad, The Flicker, 1965)

At the same t ime, the apparatus offilm, from camera to projector, was t aken apart , reassemb led, augmented and used in ent irely new ways. There wer e camera less f ilms, for which unprocessed ce lluloid, known as clear f ilm, was inserted into the pr ojector (Nam Ju ne Pa ik, Zen for Film, 1962). and films wit hout fi lm, in which Kosugi, t o name one example, focu sed ligh t f rom a pr ojector wit hout film aga inst a paper

Birgit and Wilhelm Hein Rohfilm [Raw Film) 1968 16mm f ilm b/w, sound 20 min C t he artists

Bevond, The MIT Press, Cam -brrdge, MA/London, 1977; Deke Dusinb err e, A. L. Rees, Film as Film, Formal Experi-ment in Film 1910- 75, Arts Counci l of Great Br ita in/ Hayward Gallery, London, 1979; Peter Gidal, Material -ist Film, Routledge, London, 1989; David E, James (ed,), To Free the Cinema, Jonas Mekas 6 The New York Underground, Princeton Un iversit y Press, Pr inceton, New Jersey, 1992;Kerry Brougher, Art and Film Since 1945. Hall of Mirrors, Mona-ce lli Press, New York,1996, Spellbound: Art and Film, Ian Christie, Philip Dodd (eds), SFI Publishing, London, 1996; Jack Sargeant, Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, Creation Books, London, 1997; A. L. Rees, A His t ory of Experi -mental Film and Video. From the Canonical Avant- Garde to Contemporarv British Practice, SFI Publishing, London,1999; Garrett Stewart, Bet ween Film and Screen. Moderr1lsm's Photo Svnthesis, The UniverSity of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1999; Into the Light The PrQjected Image in American Art 1964- 1977, Chrissie lies (ed, ), e~h i b, cat , Whitney Museum of Ameri-can Art, New York/Harry N, Abrams, New York, 2001; Malcolm Le Grice, Experi -mental Cinema In the Digital Age, BFI Publishing, London, 2001; Hans Scheu91, ErwBlt -ert es Kino . Die Wiener Filme der 60er Jahre , Triton, Wien, 2002, Mart in Rieser, Andrea Zapp (eds), New Screen Media, Cmema/Art/ Narra -t ive, BFI Publishing, London, 2002, book and DVD; Margot Lovejoy, Oigital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age, Rout -ledge, London, 2003

Anthony McCall Line Describing a Cone 1973 15mm film b/w, silent 31 min instal latiorl view: Artists Space, New Yor k, 1974 Whitney Museum of American Art, New York courtesy Anthony McCal l phot o C Peter Moore; VG Bild- Kurls t, Bonn 2003

3 See Gene Youngblood, Ex-panded Cinema, Dutton, New Yor k, 1970, p. 371

screen, cutting out sections of the screen from the middle unti l there was nothing left of it (Film No.4 , 1965). In zzz:hamburg special (1968], Hans Scheugl rep laced the filmst r ip with a th read actually running t hrough the projector to c reate a shadow li ne on t he screen. In other works, the light beam was rep laced with a stretched length of rope (Pet er We ibe l, Licht -seil, 1973], or became the pure and only matt er (An -thony McCall, Line describing a cone, 1973], Films were projected not on the convent iona l screen but on cur -ta ins of steam wit h runn ing water (Robert Whitman, Shower, 1964] and on the surfaces of human bodies (in his Prune Flat, 1965, Rober t Wh it man proj ected a f il m onto t he body of a girl wear ing whit e cloth ing; the f ilm showed her tak ing off the same clothes; in Andy Warhol's and Jud Ya lkut's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 1966, the fi lm was proj ected onto the f igu res of members of the aud ience dancing to music by the Vel-vet Underground). The history of t hese material ex -per iments is described in Peter Gidal's book Material-ist Film (London, 1989).

Multiple Screen Experim ents Many film art ists carr ied out ra dica l experiments wit h the screen it self It was exploded and mult iplied, ei-ther t hrough divis ion into mult iple images us ing sp li t-screen techniques or by placing screens on severa l different wa ll s. Thus mult iple proj ections occupied t he foreground of a visua l culture that was inte nt upon liberating itse lf f rom t he conventiona l concept of the pa int ing, f rom the t echnical and mater ial r estrictions of imaging technology and f rom the rep ressive deter-

Robert Whitman Shower 1964 environment 16mm fi lm loop transferred t o video, shower stall, water, wa t er pump installation view Newar k Museum, New JerseY,1999 collection Robert Rauschenberg photo cou rtesy Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whit man

Simorle Fort i and Lucinda Childs in Robert Whitman's Prune Flat 1965 perfor marlce view: Exparlded Cinema Festival, Film-Maler's Cinematheque, New York, 1965 phot o 0 Pete r Moor e, VG Bild- Kunst, Bonrl 2003

minant s of t he socia l codes. In much the same way that some pa inters sli ced up t he canvas (Lucio Fontana] or used the human body as a canvas (the Viennese Actionists] in search of avenues of escape f rom the picture, cinema ar tists were also engaged in a quest for ways of break ing out of t he limited f ilm screen during t he same period

The Vortex Concerts (visua ls by He nry Jacobs, Jordan Belson, the Whitney Brothersl 19S7-S9, mixed mu lt iple f ilm proj ections and slide shows. Kenneth Anger showed Inauguration of t he Pleasure Dome [1954] on t hree screens in Brussels in 1958 In order to "free f ilm f rom it s f lat and frontal or ientation and to present it within an ambience of total space,"3 Milt on Cohen, t he leading f igure in the ONC E Group from Ann Arbor, Michigan, had since 1958 been devel-oping an env ironment (Space Theatre] fo r mu lt iple pr Oject ions with t he aid of rotat ing mirrors and prisms using mob ile rectangular and triangu lar screens. In 1965, Stan VanDerBeek publi shed a mani-festo in j ustif icat ion of real-time mult iple proj ection env ironment s, a kind of "image - flow" in wh ich image projection it se lf became the subject of t he perfor-mance. In the same year he showed Feedback NO.1: A Movie Mural. achieving a f irst breakth rough for mu lt i-projection cinema. To realize his idea, he estab-li shed a Movie Orome in Stony Point, New York ; a vaulted cupola modeled on t he geodet ic domes of Buckminst er Fu ller. Around 1960, t he USCG ("US" company] Group assoc iat ed with Gerd Stern began working on the mult i-prOject ion shows on t he east coast of the USA (We are all one, with four 16mm

ONCE Group Unmarked Interchange 1965 photo 0 Peter Moo re; VG 8 ild-Kunst, Bonn 2003 live performers interact With a prqiection of Top Hat, starnng Fred Astalre and Ginger Rogers

center and bottom Partially opened parachute becomes 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-jectors, 1965).

John Cage, Lejaren Hiller and Ronald Nameth staged HPSCHO, a five-hour "Intermedia Event" with eight thousand slides and one hund red f ilms pro-jec t ed onto forty-eight windows at t he University of Illinois in 1969. Between 1960 and 1967, Robert Whit-man experimented with multiple plastic and paper screens onto which films wer e projected (The Ameri-can Moon, 1960). In Tent Happening (1965), films, in-cluding a sequence filme d through a glass pane show-ing a man def ecating, were projected onto a large tent. Beginning in 1965, Aida Tambellini's Electromedia Theatre worked with multiple projections (Black Zero, 1965) in which, to cite one example, a gigantic black balloon appeared from nowhere, blew itself up and eventually exploded. Hu ndreds of hand- pa int ed films and slides were used. In 1968 Tambelli ni organized Black Gate in Dusseldorf along the banks of the Rhine, an event featuring projections onto helium-filled, airborne plastic hoses and figures by Otto Piene. Jud Yalkut created Dream Reel for Yukihisa Iso be's Floating Theatre, a gigantic parachute held by nylon t hreads - a portable hemispheric screen for mult iple frontal and rear projections. The Single Wing Tur-quoise Bird group (Peter Mays, Jeff Perkins, the later video artist Michael Scroggins and others) from Los Angeles put together light shows for rock concerts in 1967 and 1968. Sponsored by the painter Sam Francis, they subsequently conducted exper iments in an aban-doned Santa Monica hotel with constantly changing images, from video project ions to laser beams. In

their Theatre of Light of the late 1960s, Jackie Cassen and Rudi Stern used self-constructed "sculptural projectors" to project multiple images onto pneu-matic domes, transparent Plexiglas cubes, po lyhexag-onal structures, water surfaces. and so f orth, Par-t icularly impressive was a founta in illuminat ed by a strobe light, a technique that evoked the impression of individual drops of water being suspended like crystals in the air. This effect is today variously re-peated by Olafur Eliasson. Toshio Matsumoto showed his Space ProjectionAKO in a dome in 1969. One note-wort hy example is Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966). a mixture of split-screen techniques and multiple projection in which a number of performers discuss their unusual lives from multiple perspectives and at several different levels at the same time. There were monumental mobile projections f r om moving veh icles onto building facade s (Imi Knoebel, Prqjektion X, 1972), onto dancing people, onto forests and fields, onto the curved inside and outside surfaces of geodetic domes, onto plastic balls, hoses, and so on.

Contemporary visual practices have returned to these techniques of mobile projection or deployment of the screen as a window in a moving vehicle, as in Lutz Mommartz' Eisenbahn [Railway] of 1967. The in-teractive installation Crossings (1995) by Stacey SpiegelS Rodney Hoinkes simulates a t rain journey between Paris and Berlin, transforming physical space into the vir t ual interact ive space of t he World-Wide Web. Room with a view (2000), created by Michael Bielicky and Bernd Lintermann for Volkswagen's "Au-tostadt Wolfsburg," uses four projectors to achieve a

The Single Wing Turquoise Bird group in t heir studiO at Vemce, California, 1967/1966 phot o C Gene Youngblood

Mlchael8ieliclcy, 8ernd Lintermann, Torsten 8elschner Zimmer mit Aussicht [Room with a View] 2000 Inte ractive installat ion sti ll s ZKM I Inst it ute for Visua l Media, Kar lsruhe C the ar tis t s and ZKM I Ce nter for Art and Media Karlsruhe

"' ~

Edmund Kuppel Das Planetarium 1990 installation central prqJector. 12 screens, steel grabe 800 em 0 inst allation view courtesy the artist bottom Dss Planetarium detail

perfect 360- degree dome projection, with a touch-screen at the center of the dome allowing multiple manipulat ion of the projected images. With twelve r ound screens in a dome construction and one cen-tral pr ojector, Edmund Kuppel's Das Planetarium (1990) is an interesting paraphrase of Michael Snow's outstanding La Region Centrale (1970]. In the 19605, t he screen became in a number of ways mult iple and mobile, as well as f lat or curved, or was even replaced by unusual materia ls like wa t er, woods and build ings.

Import an t experiment s with material film, multiple projections and expanded cinema were made in t he 1970s by a group of British filmmakers associated with Malcolm Le Grice (After Leonardo, 1974, a six-projector fi lm) and made up by Dave Crosswaite, David Dye (Unsigning for eight proj ectors, 1972), Gill Eather -ley, Annabel Nicholson, William Raban and Lis Rhodes. In 1972, Birgit and Wilhelm Hein showed a two-scr een fi lm titled Ooppe/projektion I -IV A very early example of double projection was delivered by the film L'Uomo meccanico [The Mechanical Man] of 1921 by Andre Deed, a French f ilm clown who had been making his "Cret inetti" f ilms in Italy since 1909 and was admired by the Fut urists. In t his film, a robot f ilmed with a camer a a furiously f ast police car and t he footage was shown on a second screen inside t he first

These experiment s wit h multiple screens were carried forwa r d in t he 1960s by env ir onments wit h f ilm and by f ilm environments wh ich combined projec-

";: ." ~~-- .-~p ~. \ ' ' ... ;r~ _ ".~:

Michael Snow wi th t he machine used for fi lming La Region Centrale [The Central Region] photo C Joyce Wieland

Michael Snow Two Sides to Every Story 1974 prQJec t ion t wo 16mm f ilms bot h color, sound t wo prqjector s, painted aluminum screen 9 min, dimensions var iable Installa t ion view: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1974 Nat ional Gallery of Canada, Ottawa o Michael Snow photo courtesy Michael Snow

tion and live action. In Moviemovie (1967) by Theo Botschuuver, Jeffrey Shaw and Sean Wellesley- Miller, films and light were prqjected onto' a pneumatic sculpture on wh ich people moved, Moviehouse (1965) by Claes Oldenburg showed a f ilm theater without a f ilm. The situation (real people sitting on chairs) was t he cinemat ic spectacle, a cinematic approach re-peated by Janet Cardif f in t he 1990s (Playhouse, 1997), An innovative project by Markus Huemer (1988) placed the famous letters HOLLYWOOD on a hil l in Linz, Aust ria; the idea was later repeat ed by Maurizio Cattelan in Palermo (2001), and partially (LYWO] by Bertrand Lavier in Lyon (2000).

Narrative Experiments Multiple projections of different films alongside one another, one on top of the other, and in all spatial directions represented more than merely an invasion of space by the visual image. They were also an ex-pression of multiple narrative perspectives. The fi lm-maker Gregory Markopoulos, an early master of quick cuts and complex cross - fading techniques, published a manifesto of new narrative forms based upon his cutting technique

"I propose a new form of narrat ion as a combina-t ion of classical mon tage technique wit h a more abstract system. Th is syst em incorporates t he use of shor t f ilm phases t ha t evoke thought im-ages_ Each f ilm phase compri ses a select ion of

Annabel Nicholson Reel Time 1973 16mm f ilm b/w, sound per formance of Indeterm inate lengt h o Annabel Nicholson

specific images similar t o t he harmonious unity of a musical composition. The film phases det ermine other interrelationships among themselves; in classical montage t echnique, there is a constant relationship to the continuous shot; in my ab-stract system t here is a complex of different im-ages that are repeated." 4

From t he out set , t he extension of t he single screen to many screens, from the sing le project ion to multi -ple projections represented not only an expansion of visual horizons and an overwhelming intensif ication of visual experience. It was always engaged in the service of a new approach to narration. For the first time, the suQjective response to the world was not pressed into a constructed, falsely objective style of nar rat ion but was inst ead f ormally presented in t he same dif -fuse and f ragment ary way in which it was experienced. In the age of social revolts, mind-expanding drugs and cosmic visions, multiple projection environments became an important factor in the quest for a new imaging technology capable of articulating a new perception of the world .

Charles and Ray Eames made very early use of slide and film projections ont o multiple screens Glimpses of the USA was shown on seven screens at t he Moscow World's Fair (1959]. and on fourteen screens in t he IBM Pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1964-65). For the Montreal Expo in 1967, several

art ists also creat ed huge mu lti-vision environments (for instance, Roman Kroitor's Labyrinthe) with the intention of developing new forms of storytelling. "People," as Roman Kroitor asserted, 1were] tired of the standard plot structure." Francis Thompson, a pioneer in large-scale, multi-image cinematography, presen t ed his piece We are Young on an arrangement of six screens in Montrea l. The Czech pavilion fea-t ured Josef Svoboda's Creation of the World of Man, a huge (Oiapolyekran) screen on which 15,000 slides could be shown simultaneously on 112 movable cubes.

In these experiments with multiple screens we see the beginning of immersive environments, virtual worlds and interactive relations between spectator and image. The spectator slowly becomes part of the system that he observes. Closed -circuit video instal-lat ions in t he 1970s really allowed t he spectator to see himself in t he video monitor, in t he image cap-tured by the video camera. At the same t ime, mult iple screens broke up the linearity of traditional narra-tion. Multiform plots, a non-linear narrative matrix, became possible. Narrative elements could be re-peated, recombined, or replaced by other elements. In Zoms Lemma (1970) by Hollis Frampton, letters were replaced by images, and these images t urned into events. A new form of narration was achieved on a single screen. The narrat ive matrix was based on a theorem of set t heory (Zorn's Lemma). The narration became a multiform matrix, a multi-story machine.

Rodney HOlnkes, stacey Spiegel Crossmgs 1995 Interactive installation, Internet project mixed media dimenSions va r iable inst allation view o Rodney Homkes. Stacey Spiegel

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

4 In Filmculture. no. 31. winter 1963/64

ro

: .. : /\ \: :'. '. :

". v ... :.:~.:: ... , \ j

~do5 [; .. ::.:: ..... :::::'.<

ID;'~,;~ I GLj] \.t{ "~~~:: v ... :::"':: .... \~

..... ; ',' '-' Ji"::"!:_.~:.:.::'

.. "/ )' ':' v .... :~ .. ,:: .... ".,j

~'/. >:.Q " ... ::~.:. " \j

S Raymond Durgnat, SexlJal Alienation in the Cinema, St lJdio Vista, London, 1972

left John Whitney Matrix 1971 co mput er-graphics animation color, sound 5 min C John Whitney Figures f r om John Whitney 's article "A Computer Art fo r the Video Picture Wal l: in Robert Russet t and Cecile Starr (eds), Experimenta /Animat ion Origins of New Art, Da Capo Press, New York,1976, pp.187- 191

above Ed Emshwil ler Skin Matrix 1984 video color, sound 1657 min video st ill courtesy Ed Emshwiller

In the fi lm Nowa Ksiazka [New Book] of 1975 Zbigniew Rybczynsk i used a matrix of nine dif f erent images on one screen, showing different pa r ts of one narrative and thereby anticipating the four-part screen of Mike Figgis' Time Code (2000). Before t he t erm "matrix" was made famous by Wi lliam Gibson's novel New-romancer (1984) and the Wachowski brot hers' f ilm Matrix (1999), it was already serving as a method fo r visual narrat ives (see John Whitney's computer animat ion Matrix I, 1971, and Skin Matrix, a video f antasy by Ed Emshwil ler, 1984),

Time and Space Experiments In addition to the expansion of t he technica l reper-toire t hrough experimentat ion with projectors and mult iple project ions, another mat eria l-oriented ap -proach to t he visua l expression of a new concept of reality, the renunciation of soc ial convent ions and a new drug-induced, consciousness-expanding experi-ence emerged, It involved the shift ing and distortion of t he conventiona l parameters of space and time using techn iques designed to extend, slow, delay and abbreviate t ime Film duration was extended to as much as twent y-four hours (Andy Warho l, Empire State Building, 1963), just as later Douglas Gordon ex-tended Hitchcock's Ps ycho to twenty-four hou rs, or reduced to an extreme of on ly a few seconds (Pau l Sharits, Wrist Trick, ten seconds,1966). Temporal di la-tions in film and music (La Monte Young) were favo red as primary means of express ion not on ly due to their consc iousness - rai sing effects, but also f or composi-tiona l and formal reasons, The same was t rue of t ime-short en ing and aggress ive cutting techniques, The f ilms of Michael Snow were pure t ime and space ex -

Douglas Gordon 24 Hour Psycho 1993 video installation installat ion view C Douglas Gordon photo C Doug las Gordon

periments (Wavelength, 1967, a forty-five minute zoom through a room; One second in Montreal, 1969; La Region Centrale, 1970). In his See you later/Au revoir (1990), a th irty-second movement (a man leaving his office) was extended to seventeen minut es and thi r ty seconds. In Joe Jones' Smoke (1966), the cigarette smoke streaming from a mouth is ext ended to six minutes, The composer Takehisa Kosugi takes th irty minutes to take off his jacket in Anima 7 (1966). Peter Weibe l's fi lm actions The Kiss and To pour (both 1968), which deploy extreme slow motion, must also be counted among th is "slow antho logy" (T. Kosugi).

Social and Sexual Experiments In t he social sense t oo, the contents of these inde-pendent avant - garde and under ground fi lms strayed f rom the fami liar terrain of the ind ustry f ilm. Images from t he intimate sphere, psycho-dramat ic docu-ments of an excess ive ind ividualism were shown pub-li cly in uncensored form. Taboo sex scenes were acted out in f ront of the camera (Jack Smith, Flaming Crea -tures, 1962/63, a t r ansvest ite orgy that triggered a scandal even in art ist ic circles yet became a major sou rce of inspi ration f or Warho l's universe; Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, 1963, which marked t he bir t h of Biker Movies and homo - erot ic se lf -fashioning, and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1966). The widen-ing of material and technical paramet ers went hand-in-hand wit h t he dissolut ion of soc ial consensus,S

Sound Experiments Both formal and thematic extensions of the cine-matographi c code were welcomed enthusiastically in the revolutionary aesthetic and social atmosphere of the 1960s and was, like progressive rock music, sup-ported by a new, youthful audience. Indeed, a large number of such underground films were accompanied by rock (from the Grateful Dead to Cream) and avant-garde (f rom John Cage to Terry Riley) music In these films, the role played by music was much more eman-cipated than in industry movies. Regardless of whether mainstream productions use classical or popular scores, music serves more or less as back-ground sound and a device for controlling mood and atmosphere, for heightening or resolving dramatic tension. By cont rast, in many avant -garde f ilms music and sound exercise a determining effect upon the structure of imagery, and images are cut and com-posed in accordance with musical principles. The ten-dency to industrially exploit and market film images through linkage with music is clearly illustrated by the function of the soundtrack, the serial arrangement of existing popular songs and the commissioned piece that is known as a theme song and used to assoc iate a certain fjjm with a certain musical hit. This usage of semi-prefabricated components in movies and videos is reminiscent of the accelerated prefab bui lding techniques employed in mass industrial high- rise con-struction. Instead of compound concret e-and-steel construction, the rapidly mass-produced industrial film made use of a compound sound-and-music con-struction. In contrast, t he avant-garde f ilms of the 1960s employed a highly differentiated approach to the development of new relationsh ips between sound

and visua l imagery.6 Barry Spinello's Soundtrack (1970), in which both sound and image are produced with handmade graphic effects, explored audio-visual compOSit ional techniques. In Feature Film (1999), Doug-las Gordon reorchestrated Bernard Herrmann's score for Hitchcock's Vertigo and presented on ly James Conlon conducting and hearing the film music played by an orchestra.

The Evolution of the Language of New Media: Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments In the course of the 1970s, several avant-garde gal-leries promoted analytical refinements and develop-ments, rang ing f rom the Structura li st f ilms to spatia l film installations. This decade also witnessed the emergence of video art , with vi ewer-oriented closed-circuit installations that anticipated the observer-relative interactive computer installations of the 1990s and time -delayed instal lations, which pursued further the experiments of Expanded Cinema. The market - induced revival of f igurative painting in the 1980s put an abrupt end to the development of ex-panded cinematic forms and video art. Broad seg-ments of visual culture were affected by an amnesia as scandalous as it was total, and for which the mar-ket alone was not to blame but also institutional art historiography, which had buckled under to the power of the market. Viewed from this perspective, the tri -umphant return and revival of t he t endencies of 1960s Expanded Cinema in the work of the 1990s video generation is all the more astounding and grati-fying . However, we still fa ce the problem t hat most art historians and writers, being oblivious to the his-tory of avant-garde f ilm and video art, cannot make a

8arry Spinello SoundtrBCk 1970 16mmfilm b/w, parts handcolored, sound 11 min f ilm strips courtesy Barry Spinello 80th sound and image are produced With handmade gra-phic effects

6 See Michel Chlon, Les mus'ques electro-Bcous-tiques. INA-GRM, Aix-en Provence. 1976; Michel Chlon. Le son au cinema, Cahiers du CIn~ma, Paris. 1985; Michel Chion, L'audiovi-sion, Nathan, Pans, 1990; Michel Chion.la musiqua au cinemB. Fayard, Parls,1995

'" --

" E < ~ ., < w

;;; " L ;; u < o u ;;

DenniS Oppenheim Echo 1973 film installation f our 16mm fi lm loops transferred t o video b/w, sound inst allation view Whit ney Museum of American Art, New York. 2001 collection of the artist C Denr'lls Oppenheim phot o C David Allison

connection between the generations and ther efore exaggerate contemporary achievements.

The new gener ation took its cue less from the achievements of 1980s video artists, whose art was subordinated to the scu lpture and painting of their t ime. In pu rsuing t he development of a specif ic video-based language, video artists in the 1990s deliberately focused on the expansion of image technologies and social consciousness that took place in the 1960s. We f ind surpr ising evidence of parallels, sometimes ex-tending even to the finest detail, not on ly in style and technique, but in content and motif as well. For the most part, 1990s video art is also shaped by an in-tense interest in multiple projection and the con~ comitant new approaches to multi-perspective nar-ration and multiform plots. Numerous representa -tives of t he 1990s video generation, including artists like Jordan Crandall, Ju lia Scher, St eve McQueen, Jane and Louise Wilson, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas, Johan Grimonprez, Pierre Huyghe, MarUke van Warmerdam, Ann - Sofi Sid en, Grazia Toderi and Aero -naut Mike, now work within the context of a decon-struction of the technical "apparatus" outlined here. Many computer artists of the same decade, among them Blast Theory, Jeffrey Shaw, Perry Hoberman and Peter Weibel, have also returned to the tendencies

David Lamelas Filmscnpt 1972 inst allatIOn view Wit te de With, Rott erdam photo C S, Goedewaagen

Jane and Louise Wi lson St8si City 1997 four-channel Video Installat ion color, sound 29 min installat ion view collect ion Pamela and Richard Kramlich courtesy Thea West reich Art Advisory Services

and technologies of 1960s Expanded Cinema. In a se-ries of interactive computer installations, including On Justifying the Hypothetical Nature of Art and the Non-Identicality within the Object World (1992) or Cur-tain of Lascaux (1995-96), Peter Weibel realized vari-ous virtua l worlds in wh ich t he observer played a piv -otal role derived from his closed circuit video installa-t ions of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The observer became part of the system he observed, articulating the immersive image system, and changed the behav-ior and content of the image by his actions. The Br it ish group Blast Theor y's Desert Rain (1999) sent six visitors on a mission in a virtual environment made up of six rooms. The virtual worlds were projected onto a curtain of streaming water. Each visitor had thirty minutes to complete his mission by communi-cating with the other five virtual environments and t heir inhabit ant s. However, 1990s video ar t ist s pur-sued the deconstructi on of the cinematographic code in a much more controlled, less subjective man-ner, applying strategies more methodical and more closely oriented to social issues than those of the 1960s. In the video art of t he 1990s. experiments with multiple projections were employed primarily in the service of a new approach to narrat ion. Video and slide projections onto unusual objects were used by

St an Douglas Evening 1994

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

three- channel video installation color, sound 20 min Installat ion view: Rerlaissance Society, Chicago, 1995 courtesy Galerie Oavid Zwimer, New York photo 0 TMil is

art ists ranging f rom Tony Ours ler to Honore d' O Pro-jections onto two or more screens are f ound in t he work of artists li ke Pipilott i Rist, Sam Taylor-Wood (Third Party, 1999, seven prOjections], Burt Barr, Mar-cel Odenbach, Eua- Liisa Ahti la, Shirin Neshat , Samir, Doug Ait ken, Dryden Goodwin, Heike 8a ranowsky and Monika Oechsler, Split -sc ree n techniques are charac-te r istic featu re s of t he ar t of Karin Westerlund and Samir, Multip le- monito r environments are employed by Ut e Friederike Jurss, Mary Lucier and Chanta l Ak -erman (O'Est , 2002, twenty-five monitors).

Multiple Monitors and Screens, Multiple Projections and Perspectives, Multi -perspect ive Narrations and Plots These mult iple project ions take advantage of t he op-port unit ies mu ltip le perspective offers for a depar -ture from f ami liar ways of looking at social behavior On t hree screens projected in alte rnat ion, Monika Oechsler's High Anxieties of 1998 shows the con-struct ion of f eminine identit y as it beg ins in childhood, illustrat ing how even girlf rien ds of t he same age con-trol t he formation of the individual as agents of soc i-ety. The chang ing cinemati c perspect ive ca ll s to mind the f amiliar cinematic codes of courtroom dramas in-volving prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims and

defendants. Enhanced by t he poss ibilit ies off ered by t riple project ion and mult iple viewpoint ach ieved t hrough t his formal montage technique, t his new per-spective intensifies t he hidden violence inherent in t he socia lization of t he individua l. In a similar way, t he t r iple prOjection in EUa-Lii sa Ahti la's TODAY/Tanaan [1996/ 97) enormously enhances the poss ibil it ies for comp lex li nking of image and text element s indepen-dent of the narrat or's per spective. Only rarely do the texts match the face s and genders. Texts and images do not ident ify each other; instead t hey distingu ish each other, f loat ing alongside one another and f orm-ing moving nodes in a network of mult iple relat ion-ships wh ich t he viewer must creat e himself. Free -f loating cha ins of signs, be t hey images or texts, are int erwoven to f orm a universe without a cent er. Yet it s core harbors t he cat ast rophe of a fat al acc ident t ha t has obviously erad icated all possib ility of a co -herent, linear narrat ive . Only disparate f ragments of memory are presented in strangely objective f ashion by t he passive, knotted subjects [the title of a book by Eli sabeth Bron fen, 1998). The story of t he catast ro -phe no longer fol lows t he linear track of rat ional t hought; instead, the ir rationa l essence of the cata-st rophe is released (from censorsh ip) by disorde r ly, cent ri f ugal, mul ti-perspect ive narrative trajector ies,

top Blast Theory Desert Rain 1999 VR envirOrlment f or per formance installation views. ZKM I Center f or Art and Media Karlsruhe, 1999 o Blast The ory photo C Franz Wamhof

bottom Sam Taylor-Wood Third Party 1999 installat ion seven 16mm fi lm pr Q)ect ions, t ransferred t o OVO installatiorl view photo C Jay Jopling, London

'" '"

c E c

~ ., c w

.. o ~ ., u c o u 5

7 See Kej a Silverman, Tile Acoustic Mirror. The Female Voice in PsvchoaneJvsis and Cinema , Indiana Univ. Press, 81oomlngton, 1988

Only in this way can the catastrophe be experienced as such - through the refusal of image and text ele-ments to merge and fit together. Narrative struc-tures of this kind, which employ the irrational charac-ter of dream and the human psyche as plot elements, clearly reveal associations with the early films of Ing-mar Bergmann (for example, Wild Strawberries, 1957). The interactive CD-ROM Troubles with Sex, Theory 6 History (1997) by Marina Gr~inic and Aina Smid ana-lyzes aleatoric, combinatoric and recombinatoric re-lations between images and text, based on a selection of works by Grzinic and Smid between 1992 and 1997.

Shirin Neshat presents in Turbulent (1998) t he binary opposition of man and woman in a patriarchal society on two screens positioned opposite one an-ot her. The woman has a voice but neither words nor listeners. She has on ly sound and her ability to scr eam. The man possesses the words, the culture of language and an audience which rewards him with fre-netic applause at the end. The exclusion of woman from the building of civili zation and society can hardly be illustrated more vividly than in this binary juxtapo-sition of projectors and positions. The device of the synecdoche (used here in the representation of the violence inherent in gender issues and the politics of identity) is typical of many of the best works of video art, which deal in a methodological-analytical manner with the eradicated power mechanisms of the social code, as opposed to t he predominantly subjective ap-proaches of t he New American Cinema of the 1960s.

Modern society offers the real subject a number of dif f erent role models and possibilities for role be-havior. On a scale of mult ip le possibilit ies defined by the cu lt ure industry in media ranging f rom popu lar movies to highbrow opera, from slick magazines t o

Manna Gr2:lnlc. Alna Smld Troubles with Sex, Theory and History 1997 interactive CD-ROM screenshot C Marina Grlinic. Aina Smld

low-ratings TV, the subject can make its choice and posit ion itself, as long as it can take the pressure of the respective social code. This relationship between the subject as a real possibility and the imaginary subject option is expressed as a synecdoche in Sam Taylor-Woad's Killing Time (1994). Like several other artists, Taylor-Wood works with "found sound." Inter-estingly enough, her work confirms the theory of the dominance of musical structure as the determining narrative structure. It is not the visual image but sound that dictates the behavior of the actors. The f our persons shown in t he quadruple projections lis-ten to Electra by Richard Strauss, waiting for cues for their assigned voice parts. Like Shirin Neshat's work, t he f ilm sequence is a synecdoche for the range of available (soc ial) roles and the role of the voice in so-ciety.? The theater of sound opens a view to t he the -ater of subject positions. In comparison, Pipilott i Rist tends rather toward the structure of semi-prefabri-cated components in her work. She uses pre-recorded music, which she illustrates with her pic-tures, or the music illustrates her pictures according to coded schemes of the kind we see on MTV. She re-mains within the codes of the subject option and the industrial narrative prescribed and accepted by soci-ety. We find a differently interesting adaptation of the relationship between sound and image at the nar-rative level, since remembering is one of the functions of narrat ive, in A Capella Portraits by Ute Friederike Jurss. The videos of Sylv ie Blocher, Gillian Wearing, Sam Tay lor-Wood combine in a very complex way mise-en-scene, documentary, sounds, images, masks and screens t o serve the deconstruction of t he world as a mult iform script

Geor ge Legrady Slippery Traces 1996 interactive CD- ROM screenshot courtesy George legrady

Found Image and Sound, Found Film Experiments Just as artists of the 1960s made use of "found im-ages" and "found footage" (George Landow and oth-ers). contemporary video and film artists like Douglas Gordon, Marcel Ddenbach and Martin Arnold employ found material as well. Perry Hoberman uses in his in-teractive CD-ROM piece The Sub-Oivision of the Elec-tric Light (1996) found slides and 8mm film and old projection instruments. Erkki Huhtamo uses a selec-tion of found vaudeville rides, mostly computer-gen-erated to imitate on a simulation platform a journey on virtua l vehicles through the highl ights of historic cinematographic rides in his piece The Ride of Your Ufe (1998). George LeGrady in his int eractive CD-ROM piece Slippery Traces (1996) uses about two hundred post-cards for a non-linear narrat ion bu ilt on an al-gorithm, navigating through a data bank. Mart in Arnold de constructs his found footage to the ex-treme in order to make hidden semantic structures visible through gradual repetition (Piece toucMe, 1989; passage a /'acte, 1993). Found footage is re-assembled, looped, partially re-filmed and visually es-tranged in its entirety. The use of found film is part of a general strategy of media reflection and appropria-tion. When Marcel Odenbach, Gabriele Leidloff, Samir, Isabell Heimerdinger, Andrea Bowers, Burt Barr, Pierre Huyghe and Douglas Gordon allude to familiar films, including such classics as From here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) and The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) or to popular te levision images ranging from cheerleaders [Andrea Bowers, Touch of Class, 1998) to scenes from the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales (Gabriele Le idloff, Moving Visual Ob-ject, 1997). then what we have are media-oriented ob-servations of a second order, in which visual culture

as a whole is exposed as a ready-made object for analysis. Consequently, observation of the world gives way to the observation of communication. The uncon-scious character of the visual code becomes evident in a kind of symptomatic reading .

In Doug Aitken's installations employing multiple screens, the narrative universe is broken down into individual, autonomous film frames and series of ef-fects of the kind familiar to viewers schooled in video-clip techniques: detailed shots, blurred motion, tech-nical modifications achieved with the camera, digital image processing, short cuts and dilations of time Narration is not on ly broken apart spatially th rough projection onto multiple screens but in chronologica l t erms as well.

Shifts and distortions of convent ional parameters of space and time playa significant role in the new narration. As in the 1960s, these experiments with time emphasize the technological time of the cine-matic order as opposed to the biological time of life. The focus is on artificial time rather than "rediscov-ered time," on time constructions as visual symptoms of a completely artif icial, constructed reality. In his triple projection L'Ellipse of 1998, with Bruno Ganz, Pierre Huyghe illustrates the difference between in -dustrial time (the use of time in the industry film) and personal time (the use of time in Pierre Huyghe's own film). He uses found footage or found f ilm, fi lm as a ready-made work of art, which he deconstructs by subject ing it to chronologica l manipulation: When Bruno Ganz is of f screen in t he industry film (The American Friend by Wim Wenders, 1977), t he projec-tion of his personal film begins and int errupts t he projection of the industry film. Huyghe plays with the cinematographic technique of cutting from one scene

Perry Hoberman The Sub- DiVIsIOn of the Electric Light 1996 CO-ROM screenshot o Perry Hober man

c E o E > o w

" ,

c ;;

~ o o ~ :;;

8 Wil liam Surroughs, Nova Ex-press, Grove Press. New York,1964

9 See Walt er Grand. Oer Erziihler und der Cyberspace. Haymon. Inns-bruck. 1999

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 ar t ist

to another by deleting the time and space in between which technique is called "elliptical." Douglas Gordon suQjects industry films to similar time manipulations. He also works with found fi lms (from Hitchcock's Psy-cho to Ford's The Searchers), expanding them to re-spectively twenty-four hours or five years.

Computer Film Made with the help of an IBM 1620-21, Marc Adrian's film random (1963) was probably the first computer-aided f ilm made by an ar t ist in Europe. The Whitney Brothers opened the field of the digital film (John Whitney, Permutations, 1968). In 1971, John Whitney jr. made his first digital fi lm Terminal SelF, a title that was later recalled in that of Scott Bukatman's book Termina/ldentity (1993), which simultaneously echoed a line from William Burroughs: "The entire planet is being developed into t ermina l identity and complete surrender."s Michael Whitney made the digital film Binary Bit Patterns (1969). John Stehura (Cybernetic 5-3,1965), Lillian Schwartz and Ken Knowlton, Charles Csuri and James Shafter (Humming Bird) belong to the early avant-garde of digital film . David Blair's WAXWEB (1994 - 2000) laid a foundation stone for web cinema.

Navigable Ah izomatic Narration The narrative universe becomes revers ible in the field of digita lly expanded cinema and no longer reflects the psychology of cause and effect. Repetitions, the suspension of linear t ime, temporal and spatial asynchrony blast apart classica l chronology. Multiple screens function as fields in which scenes are de-picted from a multiple perspective, their narrative thread broken. The accusation once leveled at new music - t hat it had cut the link t o t he listener, since the listener could no longer reconstruct or recognize the principles of composition - can now be addressed without reservation to the advanced narrative tech-niques of contemporary video art . They have severed the link to the viewer, who can no longer make out the narrative structure. Linearity and chronology, as clas-

sical parameters of narration, fall victim to a multiple perspective projected onto multiple screens. Asyn-chronous, non- linear, non- chronological, seemingly illogical, parallel, multiple narrative approaches from multiple perspectives projected onto multiple screens are the goal. These narrative procedures comprising a "multiform plot" have been developed with reference to and oriented toward such rhi-zomatic communication structures as hypertext, "as-sociational indexing" (Vannevar Bush, As We May Think , 1945J, text based "mu lti-user dungeons" (MUDs) and other digital techniques of literary narration. 9 Gilles Deleuze's definition of the rhizome as a network in which every point can be connected with any other point is a precise description of communication in the

multi~user environment of the World-Wide Web and the allusive, open-ended image and text systems de-rived from it . These narrative systems and scripts have a certain algorithmic character. Narration be-comes a machine, a plot-machine, an engine. As early as 1928, Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his famous study Morphology of the Fairy Tale t hat t he 450 fa iry tales he analyzed could be reduced to 25 basic func-tions and narrative events, or narrative morphemes. These twenty- five morphemes form a kind of algo-rithm, which generates an endless string of new plots through new combinations. With its audio-visua l narrative techniques, contemporary video art breaks down holistic f orms into t hei r basic morpholog ical components. These are then reassembled using the multiple methods described above. These new narra-tive techniques render t he complexity of social systems lucid The crisis of representation, which painting averted during the 1980s by resorting to a restorative repetition of historical figurative and express ive conditions, is be ing overcome in contem-porary video art through the revival of narrative conditions anticipated by the historical avant-gardes of literature, theater and music: from the French OULlPQ (Ouvoir de Litterat ure Potentiel le] group to the Vienna Group. The interactive installation Pas-sage Sets/ One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue

(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 combinat ions. 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-ern visual language of contemporary media art be-comes increas ingly discursive, the more it makes use of avant - garde narrative techniques. Unlike techni -cally ponderous film art, the digital technology of today permits more complete control of cinematic resou rces and thus promotes a more stable develop-ment of the cinematic code. The advantage of today's video and digital technology over yesterday's film technology lies in the improved logistics of it s techni -cal repertoire. What was once virtua lly impossible and susceptible to problems as wel l is now much easier to reali ze and entirely reliable. Thanks to this technical stabil ity, 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 digital art 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 shor t verSion of this essay fi rs t appeared under the ti tle "Narrated Theory: Multiple Projection and Multiple Narrat ion" in New Screen Media. Cinema/ Art/Narrative, Andrea Zapp and Martin Rieser (eds). SF I Pub -lishing. London, 2002

Bill Seaman Passage Sets/ One Pulls Pivots at t he Tip of tile Tongue 1994-1995 Interactive IIlstaliatlon mixed media C Bill Seaman

Frank Fietzek Tafel [Black Board] 1993 IIlteractlve IIlstaliatlon

dimenSions varl8ble Installation view ZKM I Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe C Frank Fietzek

"' '"

BurtonNotebook_113.pdfBurtonNotebook_114.pdfBurtonNotebook_115.pdfBurtonNotebook_116.pdfBurtonNotebook_117.pdfBurtonNotebook_118.pdfBurtonNotebook_119.pdfBurtonNotebook_120.pdfBurtonNotebook_121.pdfBurtonNotebook_122.pdfBurtonNotebook_123.pdfBurtonNotebook_124.pdfBurtonNotebook_125.pdfBurtonNotebook_126.pdfBurtonNotebook_127.pdfBurtonNotebook_128.pdf