Video installation essay In this essay I looked at the video art of past and present practitioners. I did this by looking at the video art work of three artists in particular. These were Sam Taylor Wood’s ‘Still Life’ and ‘Pietà’ Bill Viola’s ‘The Crossing’ and ‘The Quintet of Silence’ David hall’s ‘Progressive Recession’ ‘1001 TV Sets (End Piece)’ and ‘TV Interruptions (Tap Piece)’. Their artworks have a lot of similarities but they also have a lot of differences. All three artists aim their artwork at a similar audience however they utilize techniques, narrative, style and place of exhibition differently. I believe that Wood and Viola aim their work at a similar demographic. I don’t believe that any of their art work is aimed at any specific gender, race or ethnicity. I believe all of their artworks are aimed at an older audience of 40 and up as this is probably the typical age for the average art gallery attendee. Both Viola and Wood have aimed their work at reformers, succeeders and aspirers from the C to A class predominately. This is because typical consumers of art are likely to be middle class succeeders who come from a background of wealth, as they are likely to be brought up by their parents to experience art and encouraged or even pressured to take an interest in art by their peers as well as their peers. Aspirers who might occupy the C class might also might take a strong interest in art so they can sound cultured when talking to their peers. This I believe is the case for most artists. Reformers might be attracted to these video art works as well. Video art is a relatively new art form and reformers are usually open minded non traditionalists unlike succeeders and aspirers. I believe this was the audience Hall aimed his work at as he was producing his works when video art was a new medium. Aspirers might also want to expand their minds and see things in a different light. For example Wood’s ‘Still Life’ could provoke new ideas in reformers over decay and materialism. Consumers of art are also likely to be well educated as consumers of art and need to read into the artwork and think about what the true meaning of the art work is. For example Viola’s ‘The Crossing’ provokes all kinds of thought such as what is the relation between the two images. People from classes A to C are more likely to have been subject to a better education than people lower down the SOC scale as they might not be able to afford it or be able to afford to go to art galleries on a frequent basis. I believe David Hall differs from Wood and Hall as I believe his artwork was predominately aimed at a different audience. He was working in the 1970s when video art was a new art form that wasn’t well respected by the consensus of succeeders and reformers. Hall’s work may contain hidden meanings and be subject to intellectual themes however I believe it also appeals to a less educated audience as it’s also interactive, progressive recession in particular wasn’t just fine art but also entertainment. It wasn’t exclusively enjoyed by intellectual interpretation but also by novelty. David Hall’s ‘Tap Piece’ was targeted specifically at mainstreamers from the E and D class. Hall was attempting to bring his art work to an audience who probably wouldn’t normally consume video art or art in general. One in day the august of 1971 9 TV interruptions were broadcast on Scottish TV by just randomly interrupting programs of 9 Scottish TV channels. This forced mainstreams from the E and D class to experience video art, as at that time there wasn’t a large variety of channels to watch like there is today and it was unlikely for audiences to just turn off and watch a blank screen. I think Hall achieved his intention as accounts from the time have confirmed that this did interrupt the everyday life’s of people who wouldn’t normally attend art galleries. One account states customers of a gentleman's club dozing and reading newspapers to stop partaking in what they were doing because they were drawn to the TV screen as it started to fill with water. The typical demographic Wood and Viola targeted might have in time been attracted to Hall’s artwork however that wasn’t the demographic he was primarily aiming it at. Place of
exhibition is extremely important to attracting an audience, as art is something you have to seek out most of the time, it’s not a widely available mass medium like TV and it’s not often widely advertised publicly like films are via chat show appearances or TV ads. Or advertised in as great a volume as films are advertised. Art attracts a wealthier upper class audience as most art galleries are sophisticated, structural complex buildings that have well-furnished interiors that charge high admission fees. They are also likely to be situated in well developed trendy areas that are often centers of business where rich succeeders of the A and B class might live or work, along with aspirers of the C class who might also partake in administrative jobs in the area. For example Wood’s work was originally exhibited at the Baltic which is along the Southbank of the River Tyne in Gateshead, which is a center for business and culture in the northeast of England. They are also often in places that are centers of culture so aspires will be likely to visit them. These areas are also more often than not the only place art would be advertised. That’s why I admire David Hall’s TV interruptions so much as it’s exposing fine art to an audience who wouldn’t normally seek it out. Sam Taylor Wood’s and Bill Viola’s artwork both imitate famous painter’s styles in their work where as David Hall doesn’t. Sam Taylor Wood and Bill Viola’s work is bringing paintings to life where as David Hall’s work you could argue is video art in every essence of the word rather than the other two artists, as Hall has created his own orginal video art which is made from a specific video art concept rather that recreated a painting. David Hall’s work is the only one of these pieces of video art to be interactive, to feature live feed and multichannel where as the other artists are mostly just using single channel with the exception of Viola’s ‘The Crossing’. Wood’s ‘Still Life’ is an imitation of the 16 and 17 century Dutch still life Vanitas paintings, which were made to show the decay and passing of time. Her theme was obviously inspired by this as in her ‘Still Life’ a piece of fruit was pictured decaying over time as it turned from an appealing piece of fruit to a grey amorphous mass. The Vanitas paintings also inspired her props selection and her selection of location to film in as you can see by the fact that, like the Vanitas Wood has selected a similar dirty wooden table to put her objects on and has filmed in a very similar dull dark room which often featured in most Vanitas paintings. The fruit was placed in the center of the frame like the fruit was in the Vanitas painting and the background was displayed in a very similar way to the Vanitas paintings. Like the Vanitas ‘Still Life’ also has an off screen light source (the sun) that emits light into the frame from the top right hand side of the frame. By imitating a famous style of painting you could argue that Taylor Wood was answering some critics who say that video art isn’t real art because as an audience you don’t stare at it and examine the details like you would with a painting. She uses time lapse by speeding up the gradual process of fruit decaying over time, which means she has made a piece of video art for which audiences do notice examine the details. The wonder of this decay is likely to make an audience want to look at the change over time closely and stare at the ark work. I certainly wanted to look closely at the change over time. I think this is a very good use of time lapse. th
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Bill Viola’s ‘Quintet of the Astonished’ is an imitation of an old masters painting by Hieronymus Bosch in the late 15 century called ‘The Mocking of Christ’. These paintings often deal with personal religious themes. In ‘Quintet of the Astonished’ Viola is expressing his sense of nonspecific spirituality and his sense of absence after his father’s death. This might explain why the man in the center of the shot is displaying a very peaceful facial expression to suggest death is a kind of peace or the vacancy in religion. This might also be to imitate how Jesus was depicted in the original painting as Viola describes it as being ‘a center of calm amongst great chaos’ as in the original Jesus is surrounded by four executioners which were standing in similar positions in relation to th
framing of the other four people standing in Viola’s artwork. Viola has set out to do the opposite of Wood by using slow motion to make her art work a slowed down version of something that was actually a quick process in real life as opposed to Woods speeding up of a gradual process. He’s used this slow motion style to show the gradual change of the expressions over time. I think he has done that to show the complex reaction to spirituality. There is a debate over the meaning of the facial expressions in this artwork. David hall’s style is very much his own as he was the first artist interventions on British television. He originated the idea that TV can be used to display video art. His artwork could be argued to be more video art than the other two artists as video was the art whereas in the cases of Wood and Viola it’s just a medium to display art on. The use of exhibition space could be argued to have been used more effectively by David Hall than Taylor Wood or Bill Viola. As he incorporates the exhibition space into his art. In ‘Progressive Recession’ Hall organized the placing of cameras and monitors so a visitor was never looking directly at his own image head on in the screen he was standing directly in front of. There was 7 old fashioned big square TV monitors with hidden cameras above each one in a sidewall, there was a camera and TV screen on the wall from which you enter and a camera and TV screen on the wall at the opposite end of the room, he displayed his artwork in a small thin empty rectangular room shaped like a corridor so audiences would be compelled to simply walk up and down it like they would do if they were in a corridor. As the audience walked along the side wall and look into the TV monitors they would appear two screens ahead of the screen they were in front of and as you walked towards the screen on the wall at the end of the room the viewers were shown on the screen on the wall at the opposite side of the room they were walking towards. As the viewer walked towards the screen the further away they got from themselves on the screen they were looking at and they appeared closer to the screen on the opposite end of the room behind them. Both of these effects work as you walk back down the room in either direction. He does this to make a comment on CCTV’s surveillance in society. He was saying through this artwork that we are all under too much surveillance and can’t see who’s watching us. This I think is a brilliant way of using exhibition space to create meaning as hall really made the most of his exhibition space and thought about about how to place all his artwork for a specific purpose to convey a meaning rather than just for a means of clear display and clarity in viewing like you could argue the other artists do. Hall’s intention is indicated to the audience from the title of the artwork ‘Progressive Recession’ as the further the audience walks to a screen the further they away from the screen they appear on that screen which they are walking towards. When I went to view the artwork I certainly was inclined to walk down the length of the room and then walk back down it. It was mostly out of curiosity which was most probably Halls intention for people to initially walk down to walk up and down the room. Sam Taylor Wood also uses exhibition space to aid the audience’s viewing of the art work as her work is displayed on a 10ft by 5ft screen in a darkened room, in a cinema like setting so viewers watching will be less likely to get distracted by anything else in the room and will therefore be more inclined to focus on her work and the subtle changes in imagery that go into her work. For example in the ‘Pieta’ the woman in the white vest top holding Robert Downey junior’s body slowly gets weaker towards the end of the video, which is subtly shown through the way she relinquishes her hand from holding Robert Downey Jr’s body more towards the end of the video and how he also gets weaker towards the end of the video shown through the way his arm slowly drops. Audiences might not notice these slight changes if the room was not set up in a cinema setting. Bill Viola also uses this same cinema setting to exhibit his ‘Quintet of the Astonished’ as the actors changing facial expressions could be hard to notice in this artwork if the lights
were on as they might get distracted by other things in the room. Viola and Wood could be exhibiting their artwork in this way to take advantage of the sonorous envelope theory. This is the theory that when we are in the womb the first thing we experience is a sense of warmth, being surrounded and sound. This therefore makes the audience more susceptible to and more open to experiencing emotion because it takes them back to that state of vulnerability of being in the womb. This gives Wood and Viola’s work more impact. However this isn’t so much using exhibition space to create meaning as it is using exhibition space to aid the impact of their artwork on the viewer. Bill Viola does use exhibition space to create meaning when exhibiting ‘The Crossing’ as it’s displayed on a giant double sided 30ft video screen in the middle of a dark room. On one side is a bald man wearing jeans and a long sleeved flannel shirt walking towards the audience and catching fire gradually until he disappears and the fire follows, on one side and the same man wearing the same cloths walks toward the audience at the same slow pace as the man on fire, he stops and then a huge mass of water gradually descends onto him. He puts them both on opposite screens to each other so the audience can walk around and see both sides to make it appear like the man might be crossing from one screen to the other. Viola is suggesting that this man is moving from the two extremes of joy and pain. However some people believe Viola’s fascination with water after he almost drowned as a kid might have influenced this work. I think of the three artists David Hall best takes advantage of exhibition space to create meaning as you could argue he is the only artist whose exhibition space is essential to the theme of his artwork. He is the only artist for which exhibition space actually is part of the art. If there were no visitors in the progressive recession piece there would be no art. You could argue that all three artists give their work a narrative however Sam Taylor Wood and Bill Viola both give their artwork a stronger sense of narrative than David Hall, as Hall’s work relies more on concept, and doesn’t really have any particular narrative. David hall’s ‘1001 TV Sets (End Piece)’ in which 1001 TV monitors of all different brands and sizes, only tuned into the first five channels are all laid out next to each other with screen pointing up, is portraying the concept that as a society we are overloaded by TV This work delivers a statement rather than telling a story like ‘The Quintet of the Astonished’ or ‘Still Life’. David Hall’s 1975 original exhibition named ‘101 TV sets’ which Hall’s 2012 ‘1001 TV Sets (End Piece)’ recreates maybe uses this increase in TV sets as part of another statement being conveyed that TV’s control on society has increased overtime. You could say Hall’s ‘TV Interruptions (Tap Piece)’ employs a narrative, as at the start of the artwork the video screen is empty which is the intro, then a tap appears on the screen and discharges water, the tank then slowly fills up with water which is the middle and when the tank is eventually full which is it’resolution. Bill Viola’s ‘The Crossing’ does have a narrative however you could say it’s not a narrative with a traditional three point plot structure as there is no end. The beginning is when the man appears walking towards the audience. The water or fire hitting the man acts as the dilemma and so therefore the middle however there is no resolution at the end as the man appears to be gone after the water or fire consumes him, only for him to appear to cross over to the other side. Some people think that he was just consumed by the water or the fire however some people think that the man has passed over to the other side of the screen. You could say that if the man is to be consumed by the fire or water that would have acted as the resolution. Sam Taylor Wood’s ‘Still Life’ does have a clear three point narrative as the beginning is just a bowl of fruit on a table, the dilemma is when the fruit decays and the resolution is when the fruit is no more than just some a grey amorphous mass. The advantage of video art opposed to paintings or sculpture is that it allows for a beginning, middle and end as there is movement and therefore progression in the artwork opposed to a painting or a sculpture which is just an image in a solid static
state. I think Sam Taylor Wood best uses narrative as by the end of ‘Still Life’ you know what has happened to the fruit, the story is told and as a member of the audience I felt satisfied, where as the resolution in the crossing was too ambiguous and creates more questions than it answers. The reason for this might be that the artist wants to spark a debate or provoke thought among the audience. I prefer the artwork without a fixed resolution as it makes you think which is what I think art should do, I don’t like art to answer all of it’s own questions as I don’t feel engaged with it. This artwork certainly leaves unanswered questions because we don’t know if the water and fire are metaphors for anger and peace, if the man wants to die or live or if the man does die and get reborn. David Hall’s ‘1001 TV Sets’ could now be said to have a resolution as he reprised the artwork recently so he could capture the switch over from analogue to digital. When that switch over took place and all of the screens turned static it could be the resolution in his artwork. This however does provoke thought and ask questions about whether all technology has a shelf life and whether we might give way to a new technology. I feel Wood’s work just tells a story and doesn’t really provoke much though. Although Wood’s work does contain meaning and messages for example the ‘Pieta’ is about how people can’t hold onto each other forever, this feel more like a statement than a question for the audience to think about. Where as Hall’s work makes the audience think about his artworks reflection on society as ‘Progressive Recession’ asks the audience to think about whether society can see who is surveying them and Viola’s art work makes the audience ask question about the characters in his artwork and what they represent ‘The Crossing’ makes the audience wonder what has happened to the man on screen and what is symbolises. All of these artists use techniques and technology differently in their work. To create ‘The Pieta’ Sam Taylor Wood filmed herself cradling Robert Downey Jr’s lifeless body in slow motion on some concrete steps for the whole 2 minutes 4 second duration of the artwork. She films it in real time rather than just looping a bit of footage of herself cradling his body or repeating a few frames to create stop motion. This artwork is an imitation or interpretation of Michelangelo's ‘Pieta’ in which the Madonna holds the dead body of Christ for what appears like an eternity, it gives that effect because it’s a painting. The reason Taylor wood wanted to film 2 minutes 4 seconds of herself carrying Robert Downey Jr’s body in real time is so the audiences can see her getting weaker and towards the end of the artwork as she almost drops him when she relinquishes her hand presumably because of cramp. Wood deliberately wants to show the fact that she can’t hold to Robert forever as real people can’t hold on forever. This gradual progression or recession would be missed in a painting or if the artwork was just a bit of footage or a few frames looped. Bill Viola uses a different technique to create the effect of slow motion in ‘The Quintet of the Astonished’ in which he films a minute of the facial reactions of five actors on high speed film and then slows it down in the playback in post production. I think he did this because the ‘The Quintet of the Astonished’ was 15 minutes long in total, and it would be difficult to ask actors to maintain such slow movement constantly for 15 minutes while achieving the same continuous realism. He uses a very high frame rate so his images don’t appear blurred. Bill Viola definitely feels the benefit of technology. Bill Viola is able to do things like this because of the time he is working in. All artists are only able to use the technology they have available to them and technology of course evolves over time. One technique I really particularly like is the use of silence. Bill Viola and Sam Taylor wood both use it very well in their pieces. Both ‘The Pieta’, ‘Still Life’, ‘Quintet of the Astonished’ and ‘The Crossing’ are artworks that feature casual change over a relatively long duration if you consider how little screen action there is. In these works the audience
needs to look closely at details and intricacies of the work. The silence aids that as it doesn’t distract you from what’s on screen. Furthermore it adds to the themes being expressed. The silence adds to the theme of decay nicely in ‘Still Life’ as it gives the impression of this casual decay over time, the silence gives helps to portray Viola’s sense of absence and non spirituality. They added a poeticism to their work, which would be lost with sound. Hall on the other hand does use sound in ‘TV Interruptions (Tap Piece)’ and ‘1001 TV sets’ which I believe he did correctly as it also aided his work. TV interruptions needed sound to capture the passive audience attention and if you turned the 1001 TV sets silent then he wouldn’t achieve that theme of being over loaded by TV’s. A technique that was very particular to Wood’s ‘Still Life’ was her use of iconography to add meaning. She placed a black Biro pen next to the fruit to show that maybe all the fake plastic things in the world will outlive all the natural living things in this world as the plastic artificial pen doesn’t decay at all whereas the natural fruit does. I think a black Biro Pen was a good contemporary prop to use, at it’s so mundane and commonly used by everyone and will probably be around forever. Often artists will ask what can create or exhibit with the technology they have available to them and therefore technology will very much inform their artwork. David Hall does this as he was working in the 1970s and unlike the other artists he didn’t benefit from digital technology so instead he had to use analogue which was harder to edit especially in the 1970s when the editing software wasn’t very developed as it is today. This might have been a reason for the limited amount of editing that took place in his artwork. Furthermore in the 1970s most of the British public hadn’t seen themselves on a TV screen as video recorders weren’t cheap and weren’t as portable or as compatible with TV’s as they are today. David Hall’s use of technology is essential to the success of his art work as progressive recession relies on the novelty of the audience seeing themselves on screen. Still Life wasn’t created by slowing down the footage but instead by filming the same shot of the fruit everyday for six months and then editing it together, so the gradual process of decomposition would appear to be a very quick process. The Still Life artwork is using the technique of slow motion for a different purpose to ‘The Quintet of the Astonished’ uses the technique as the process of the changing facial expressions is made to take longer than it would in real life. David Hall doesn’t play with time at all. Although David Hall is a past practitioner who was restricted by the technology of his time he still happened to take advantage of video installation techniques more than the other two artists for example he is the only one of these three artists to use live feed and has a much more ambitious use of multi channel that Viola. However you could say Bill Viola has a more ambitious and imaginative use of technology as the man in the water and the man on fire are on two opposite sides of a giant 30ft screen in the middle of room. On appearance Viola’s work seems far more high tech and modern than David hall’s art work. Viola’s use of multichannel was more complex than Hall’s as he had to sync the two videos so they would start and finish at the same time. However I believe David Hall has used technology more creatively than Viola because Hall demonstrated out of the box thinking for example with the idea of showing a visitors image on the opposite wall to that they are walking towards and two screens ahead of the screen they were looking at on the sidewall. Wood however I don’t feel experiments as much with technology as I don’t feel she’s completely tested modern technology’s limitations to try and enhance her artwork. She was working in the same time as Viola yet she didn’t utilize the advantages of modern technology nearly enough as he did or Hall did 30 years prior. Viola employed the use of machines that expel water to give the appearance of rain whereas Wood appeared to have actually refused the advance of technology and just filmed the Pieta in real time rather than looping a small piece of footage.
So in conclusion I believe all three artists base their work on very humanistic themes and emotions as Wood’s Pieta deals with the theme of not being strong enough to support someone you love and Viola’s ‘The Crossing’ deals with the theme of non specific spirituality and Hall’s ‘1001 TV Sets’ comments on human society being overloaded by TVs. However they all use different styles and techniques to create their artworks and have different approaches to technology as I feel Viola and Hall place a high importance on technology in their art work where as Sam Taylor Wood doesn’t as her artwork is made in the same time as Viola’s and she doesn’t experiment with the advance of technology as much as he does. I also think that Hall utilized exhibition to create meaning more than Viola and Wood as the exhibition space to an extent was the art particularly in ‘Progressive Recession’ where as exhibition space was only used to aid the display of Viola’s and Wood’s work. The artist’s work may use similar techniques but they use different technology differently to create those techniques as you can see by the different ways Wood and Viola create slow motion. I feel Hall is much more ambitious in his artwork as he is trying to attract a new audience to video art and he was pioneering video art at the start, asking what he could do with the limitations with technology placed on him by the time he was working in. I think Hall is the best video artist as his work is probably the most creative, ambitious, and furthermore of his own style. Viola’s ‘Quintet of the Astonished’ might have brought religious themes back into video art however I believe Hall’s use of multi channel and live feed have made him more of an influence on video art than Viola or Wood.