BILL VIOLA
(b. 1951, American)
Issues/interests: art and technology — video as an art medium; art and nature — landscape, natural elements of fire and water; art and the body — the artist's body as subject; art and belief — religion and philosophy, both Western and Eastern
Forms: videotapes, video and sound installations
Frames: Postmodern in its use of technology and interactivity; Subjective in the mood and sense of personal memory of the artist
Conceptual Framework: His works have personal significance but are presented to a public audience using mass media technology. His videos, by their size, slow motion, sound and context (as installations), have an intentional impact on the audience. Viola's videos draw the viewer into them, engaging both visual and auditory senses. They encourage private contemplation and can be interpreted in various ways by the audience. Viola's works are of international significance, as they reflect issues of concern to all humanity. Viola explores perceptions of the world and our particular place within it.
The Messenger (see above) was a video originally commissioned to be shown in Durham Cathedral, England, although it has since been exhibited in various art museums around the world including the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There is often a spiritual aspect to Viola's work, as he seeks to draw connections between our inner and outer lives. His influences include various philosophies and belief systems, such as Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism, and poetry.
The Messenger 1996 (above)
colour video projection on large vertical screen mounted on wall
in darkened space, amplified stereo sound
7.6 × 9.1 × 9.8 m
Installation view: Durham
Cathedral
Photo: Kira Perov
The work consists of a continual action video disk showing the slow rising to the surface of a naked male figure in a body of water. As he emerges, slowly twisting at an angle, the sound increases and the camera zooms in so that you focus on the head and upper body. He slowly opens his mouth and takes a breath. His eyes stare blankly, but not directly at you. His face never totally breaks free of the lapping water. He sinks again while exhaling from his right nostril. The cycle appears inevitable, yet it is not a struggle for survival. The silvery reflections and clarity of the blue of the water create a feeling of spirituality, not doom. The accompanying sound effects, with their underlying regular beat, suggest a heartbeat. The recurring ‘ping’ sound suggests bursting bubbles or an underwater sonic detector representing the life force.
As Viola slowly submerges, the zooming out of the camera gives the impression of great depth. The body not only straightens but also moves away from you. At first there is an accompanying feeling of loss. The figure appears to disintegrate into vibrating particles of light. The reflections seem to shimmer like angel's wings. Matter has become spiritual, the bubbles now representing the essence of the person. Although you have been distanced from the body, you still feel connected. The viewer remains transfixed to the screen as the particles of light slowly begin to merge and the body gently floats to the surface. The cycle continues with subtle variations. It is a metaphor for birth, reincarnation, renewal, emergence of an individual and personal journey. One is left tcontemplate the meaning of life, as well as to dwell on memories and, perhaps, fears.
The concept of submergence in water occurs in several of Viola's works, stemming from a personal experience of nearly drowning in a lake when he was 10 years old. Yet his memories of the experience are of the sense of mystery and peace below the surface.
Issues/interests: art and technology — video as an art medium; art and nature — landscape, natural elements of fire and water; art and the body — the artist's body as subject; art and belief — religion and philosophy, both Western and Eastern
Forms: videotapes, video and sound installations
Frames: Postmodern in its use of technology and interactivity; Subjective in the mood and sense of personal memory of the artist
Conceptual Framework: His works have personal significance but are presented to a public audience using mass media technology. His videos, by their size, slow motion, sound and context (as installations), have an intentional impact on the audience. Viola's videos draw the viewer into them, engaging both visual and auditory senses. They encourage private contemplation and can be interpreted in various ways by the audience. Viola's works are of international significance, as they reflect issues of concern to all humanity. Viola explores perceptions of the world and our particular place within it.
The Messenger (see above) was a video originally commissioned to be shown in Durham Cathedral, England, although it has since been exhibited in various art museums around the world including the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There is often a spiritual aspect to Viola's work, as he seeks to draw connections between our inner and outer lives. His influences include various philosophies and belief systems, such as Taoism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism, and poetry.
The Messenger 1996 (above)
colour video projection on large vertical screen mounted on wall
in darkened space, amplified stereo sound
7.6 × 9.1 × 9.8 m
Installation view: Durham
Cathedral
Photo: Kira Perov
The work consists of a continual action video disk showing the slow rising to the surface of a naked male figure in a body of water. As he emerges, slowly twisting at an angle, the sound increases and the camera zooms in so that you focus on the head and upper body. He slowly opens his mouth and takes a breath. His eyes stare blankly, but not directly at you. His face never totally breaks free of the lapping water. He sinks again while exhaling from his right nostril. The cycle appears inevitable, yet it is not a struggle for survival. The silvery reflections and clarity of the blue of the water create a feeling of spirituality, not doom. The accompanying sound effects, with their underlying regular beat, suggest a heartbeat. The recurring ‘ping’ sound suggests bursting bubbles or an underwater sonic detector representing the life force.
As Viola slowly submerges, the zooming out of the camera gives the impression of great depth. The body not only straightens but also moves away from you. At first there is an accompanying feeling of loss. The figure appears to disintegrate into vibrating particles of light. The reflections seem to shimmer like angel's wings. Matter has become spiritual, the bubbles now representing the essence of the person. Although you have been distanced from the body, you still feel connected. The viewer remains transfixed to the screen as the particles of light slowly begin to merge and the body gently floats to the surface. The cycle continues with subtle variations. It is a metaphor for birth, reincarnation, renewal, emergence of an individual and personal journey. One is left tcontemplate the meaning of life, as well as to dwell on memories and, perhaps, fears.
The concept of submergence in water occurs in several of Viola's works, stemming from a personal experience of nearly drowning in a lake when he was 10 years old. Yet his memories of the experience are of the sense of mystery and peace below the surface.
The Fall into Paradise 2005
video/sound installation
Screen size: 320 × 427 cm
Photo: Kira Perov
In The Fall into Paradise , Viola combines the real with the
imaginary world, taking as his ‘subject matter’ the epic love story of Tristan
and Isolde. In this work, the couple's love is so spiritually profound that
their desires can never be fulfilled in this world. Viola represents them making
the ultimate sacrifice to live an ethereal existence as they fall into Paradise
in an eternal embrace. The action, as is often the case in a Viola video, is
almost painfully slow. You watch a dot of light that gradually grows, forming
into an entwined couple drifting slowly upwards until with a crescendo of sound
they burst through a seemingly invisible barrier to slowly float and descend into the blue luminous water. Reaching a point of equilibrium, they climb back
up to the surface as if defying gravity. This video explores the question raised in many narrative traditions in both East and West, including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: would you be willing to die for love?
Viola's art often deals with such threshold decisions between life and death, joy and sorrow, waking and sleeping and, more fundamentally, day and night.
The Fall into Paradise was shot underwater in high-definition video. The three videos from the Tristan Project that visited Sydney in 2008 required a crew of 60 people, including the performers, chief cameraman Harry Dawson and his crew, lighting, grip stunt coordination, special effects teams, and the editing and sound design team.
video/sound installation
Screen size: 320 × 427 cm
Photo: Kira Perov
In The Fall into Paradise , Viola combines the real with the
imaginary world, taking as his ‘subject matter’ the epic love story of Tristan
and Isolde. In this work, the couple's love is so spiritually profound that
their desires can never be fulfilled in this world. Viola represents them making
the ultimate sacrifice to live an ethereal existence as they fall into Paradise
in an eternal embrace. The action, as is often the case in a Viola video, is
almost painfully slow. You watch a dot of light that gradually grows, forming
into an entwined couple drifting slowly upwards until with a crescendo of sound
they burst through a seemingly invisible barrier to slowly float and descend into the blue luminous water. Reaching a point of equilibrium, they climb back
up to the surface as if defying gravity. This video explores the question raised in many narrative traditions in both East and West, including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet: would you be willing to die for love?
Viola's art often deals with such threshold decisions between life and death, joy and sorrow, waking and sleeping and, more fundamentally, day and night.
The Fall into Paradise was shot underwater in high-definition video. The three videos from the Tristan Project that visited Sydney in 2008 required a crew of 60 people, including the performers, chief cameraman Harry Dawson and his crew, lighting, grip stunt coordination, special effects teams, and the editing and sound design team.
The Reflecting Pool 1977–79 (above)
videotape, colour, mono sound; 7 minutes
Photo: Kira Perov
The Reflecting Pool explores Viola's expression of the beauty of nature
and his singular vision of being in the world. It is structured around a
solitary movement of plunging into a pool. The figure slowly becomes apparent in the landscape, poised at the edge of the swimming pool, itself a reflection of
the lush green surrounds. One blink and you have missed the figure plunging into the pool and you wait and wait for it to reappear, only to see a reflection. The viewer is ‘forced’ to slow down and look carefully to try to decipher the rift
between reflection and reality, waiting for the figure to reappear and return to
the foliage. The audience is left in awe, trying to unravel the richness of
meaning, its poetic resonance, and anxious to revisit the video to make sure
they have not missed the subtle nuances of seeing and being.
videotape, colour, mono sound; 7 minutes
Photo: Kira Perov
The Reflecting Pool explores Viola's expression of the beauty of nature
and his singular vision of being in the world. It is structured around a
solitary movement of plunging into a pool. The figure slowly becomes apparent in the landscape, poised at the edge of the swimming pool, itself a reflection of
the lush green surrounds. One blink and you have missed the figure plunging into the pool and you wait and wait for it to reappear, only to see a reflection. The viewer is ‘forced’ to slow down and look carefully to try to decipher the rift
between reflection and reality, waiting for the figure to reappear and return to
the foliage. The audience is left in awe, trying to unravel the richness of
meaning, its poetic resonance, and anxious to revisit the video to make sure
they have not missed the subtle nuances of seeing and being.
The Crossing 1996
video/sound installation
90 × 840 × 1740 cm
Two channels of colour video projections from opposite sides of
large dark gallery onto two large back-to-back screens suspended from ceiling
and mounted to floor; four channels of amplified stereo sound, four
speakers
Performer: Phil Esposito
Photo: Kira Perov
In The Crossing, the two elements of fire and water appear not only as destructive forces but also as agents of renewal and spiritual liberation.
This is a double projection work (two screens are positioned back to back, as displayed in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao). A larger-than-life male figure walks slowly towards you, his image gradually filling the screen. In one screen flames begin to gently lick his feet. As you watch, mesmerised, the flames slowly rise and grow until they engulf the figure. In the other screen a small trickle of water gradually becomes a powerful downpour, submerging the figure in a torrent of water. The slow movement and accompanying sound draw the viewer into the experience.
Viola's video work heightens our awareness, making us realise what we already know, helping us to assess our fears as well as our place in the world.
ALSO CHECK OUT THESE WEBSITES
http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/1
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/viola.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/viola_transcript.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTakwOpWqG4
Artist's Practice
Intentions/influences
Viola's video installations investigate life itself, unfolding the layers of human consciousness and self-knowledge. His approach to life and his work has been especially influenced by Eastern philosophy, which places humanity in the context of nature's ongoing cycle and recognises the whole as being represented in the parts. He sees nature's power in interacting opposites (the Chinese Taoist idea of yin and yang), light and dark, fire and water, spiritual and physical, life and death. The illusions create a sense of grandeur, with a hint of romanticism. His installations move one to stand in patient expectation, watching, contemplating for a long time.
Viola creates a link between dreams, the imagination and reality as he investigates the functioning of human sensory systems. His works often suggest violence and death, but the violence is inherent to life itself, as in the birth of a child. His work is often linked with beauty. Death in his videos is always interpreted as a state of transition and transformation, as in the blowing out of a candle — as his mother dies, his child is born. Viola is thus
concerned with issues of creation, death and renewal, the links between the divine and the mundane, and the knowledge that is contained in every small space and particle. He uses imagination as the key to reveal or heighten our perceptions.
Materials/methods
Bill Viola has been a pioneer in the use of video and the moving image since the 1970s. He uses state-of-the-art electronic technology, his multimedia installations exploring the phenomenon of sense perception.
Viola uses elements of painting (space, colour, movement) transformed into the video medium. His use of double projections (two or more screens arranged in a room), in suggesting a narrative (story), reminds us of multi-panel altar paintings. He strives for technical perfection in his chosen medium, in the way an oil painter might. His manipulation of focus and sensual colour effects creates an aesthetic experience for the viewer just as a painting does.
Images are left on the screen just long enough to be unsettling and to challenge viewers' expectations. Time is often slowed down so the viewer
feels drawn into the experience. The accompanying sounds often become deeper and more obvious as time and the image are expanded or compressed. Shifts in scale are another technique used by Viola to overwhelm or disconcert the viewer. The viewer is placed in the elusive area between the present and the timeless as images dissolve, objects and people slowly appear, come into clear focus, then resubmerge into the landscape, water or some unexpected end point, such as a billboard or the eyes of an animal, gradually disappearing again.
Viola always uses the medium of video with restraint and dignity, rather than as an opportunity to display tricks. The effect is one of grandeur and deep understanding.
As part of his artmaking process, Viola keeps a collection of notebooks in which he records and develops his ideas. These include quotes from writers and philosophers and transcripts from books on history, memory and religion, as well as his workings for his videos and installations.
Symbols
Structural Frame
Viola represents the world through symbols, ideas and spiritual phenomena, searching for a greater understanding of the spiritual heritage of
humankind. His main symbols are fire and water. Yet simple, everyday images, such as chairs and buckets, and simple actions, such as crying and laughing, are important to the reality of his dramas.
Conceptual Framework — Subjective Frame
Viola draws upon the audience's imagination, as well as their memory, dreams and subconscious. He shows us reality through his poetic vision in such a way that we re-evaluate our perceptions of reality and realise that we are looking at something out of the ordinary. The physical is transformed into the psychological as we become more aware of ourselves and of the many layers of human consciousness, as the rational and the intuitive are combined in his
videos.
Postmodern Frame
In a sense, artistic creations make references to every other artwork that has ever been made. Artworks derive meaning through built-up systems of codes, conventions and traditions. Postmodern artists frequently break these traditions or purposely recontextualise the codes in order to challenge our perceptions. The following are some of the ways in which Viola breaks with tradition:
• He works with new media and a new form — the video installation.
• He has developed a new interpretation of the concept of the ‘timeless art object’. Viola manipulates the viewer's concept of time. He uses sequences of events, but not in the conventional narrative form.
• His art is a programmed experience that appeals to all senses and the subconscious.
• Viola's works are neither two-dimensional nor bound by a frame. He creates a new spatial dimension.
• He uses landscape, a traditional subject, not as a representation of nature but as a trigger to the imagination and experience of the spiritual.
• Instead of the female nude, he features the male nude (himself) as subject (e.g. in The messenger).
• His works often operate at the edge of consciousness, which may waver between dream, memory and the subconscious, so meaning is derived from the response of the viewer.
Artist's statements
‘Recording something, I feel, is not so much capturing an existing thing as it is creating a new one. I want to have more of an input in this process of creation than simply to determine where to point the camera. An active position enables me to exceed my own physical limitations and manifest my imaginings, which then serves more to really transform myself than just to change the images existing within the confines of the monitor screen. Each time a tape is finished it is like the release of a long-held breath, and with it, naturally, is signalled the need for another …
‘The spectrum of electromagnetic energy vibrations that make up the universe at large far exceeds the narrow band-width, or “window”, open to us through our sensory receptors. As philosophers through the ages have stated, the human senses can thus be considered “limiters” to the total amount of energy bombarding our beings, preventing the individual from being overwhelmed by the tremendous volume of information existing at each and every instant. Imagination is our key to the doorway of perception. The television medium, when coupled with the human mind, can offer us sight beyond the range of our everyday consciousness …
‘I want to look so close at things that their intensity burns through your retina and onto the surface of your mind. The video camera is well suited to looking closely at things, elevating the commonplace to higher levels of awareness …
‘This sense of seeing — or seeing the sense of an object — is what I have been after …
‘My interest in the various image systems of the cultures of the world involves a search for the image that is not an image. This is why I am not interested in “realistic” rendering. Sacred art seems very close because of its symbolic nature. Its intrinsic interwoven meaning on other planes makes it more “conceptual”. I am interested not so much in the image whose source lies in the phenomenal world, but rather the image as artefact, or result, or imprint, or even wholly determined by some inner realisation.’
Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973–1994, Thames and Hudson, London, 1995, frontispiece and pp. 33, 40, 60, 78, 79, 85.
Historical Practice
'Though the tools Viola uses are at the cutting edge of technology, his work is firmly rooted in the history of art, both Western and Eastern. Viola argues that the most powerful frescoes in the churches of Renaissance Florence could be seen as “a form of installation; a physical, spatial consuming experience”. However, in today's culture, with electronic images omnipresent, his work surprises us with its emphasis on the symbolic. Viola explores the suggestive power of the image and man's metaphysical relationship with his surroundings. Connections can be seen between Viola's work and such figures as Bosch, Goya or Blake, artists whose work plays on the crossover between the real and the fantastic.
‘Some of the earliest artists to make use of video — such as Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci — were drawn to the medium as a means of documenting their performance work. Soon, however, they began to perform for the camera. An early Viola video, The space between the teeth 1976, shows a similar spirit of self-inquiry and some of the confrontational elements of Acconci and Nauman.
Here the writer places Viola within the wider context of art history.
‘Viola's extraordinary achievement, however, lies in his ability to sculpt sound and image in such a way as to stimulate within us an awareness of our physical and mental presence.’
In his last paragraph the writer informs us of Viola's relationship to the history of video art. The writer has switched to critical rather than historical writing, as factual statements and historical significance are replaced by opinion and value judgements.
Quoted from exhibition catalogue Bill Viola: Unseen Images, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 17 December 1993 – 13 February 1994, p. 1.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTION
Artist's practice
Refer to one of Viola's artworks and a quote from the artist to explain the intentions and methods in his artmaking practice. - Answer in discussion board on the Virtual Classroom.
http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/1 - Bill Viola website with Interview
http://www.designboom.com/design/designboom-interview-bill-viola/ - Bill Viola artworks and interview
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/viola_transcript.shtml - BBC interview with Bill Viola
video/sound installation
90 × 840 × 1740 cm
Two channels of colour video projections from opposite sides of
large dark gallery onto two large back-to-back screens suspended from ceiling
and mounted to floor; four channels of amplified stereo sound, four
speakers
Performer: Phil Esposito
Photo: Kira Perov
In The Crossing, the two elements of fire and water appear not only as destructive forces but also as agents of renewal and spiritual liberation.
This is a double projection work (two screens are positioned back to back, as displayed in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao). A larger-than-life male figure walks slowly towards you, his image gradually filling the screen. In one screen flames begin to gently lick his feet. As you watch, mesmerised, the flames slowly rise and grow until they engulf the figure. In the other screen a small trickle of water gradually becomes a powerful downpour, submerging the figure in a torrent of water. The slow movement and accompanying sound draw the viewer into the experience.
Viola's video work heightens our awareness, making us realise what we already know, helping us to assess our fears as well as our place in the world.
ALSO CHECK OUT THESE WEBSITES
http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/1
http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/viola.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/viola_transcript.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTakwOpWqG4
Artist's Practice
Intentions/influences
Viola's video installations investigate life itself, unfolding the layers of human consciousness and self-knowledge. His approach to life and his work has been especially influenced by Eastern philosophy, which places humanity in the context of nature's ongoing cycle and recognises the whole as being represented in the parts. He sees nature's power in interacting opposites (the Chinese Taoist idea of yin and yang), light and dark, fire and water, spiritual and physical, life and death. The illusions create a sense of grandeur, with a hint of romanticism. His installations move one to stand in patient expectation, watching, contemplating for a long time.
Viola creates a link between dreams, the imagination and reality as he investigates the functioning of human sensory systems. His works often suggest violence and death, but the violence is inherent to life itself, as in the birth of a child. His work is often linked with beauty. Death in his videos is always interpreted as a state of transition and transformation, as in the blowing out of a candle — as his mother dies, his child is born. Viola is thus
concerned with issues of creation, death and renewal, the links between the divine and the mundane, and the knowledge that is contained in every small space and particle. He uses imagination as the key to reveal or heighten our perceptions.
Materials/methods
Bill Viola has been a pioneer in the use of video and the moving image since the 1970s. He uses state-of-the-art electronic technology, his multimedia installations exploring the phenomenon of sense perception.
Viola uses elements of painting (space, colour, movement) transformed into the video medium. His use of double projections (two or more screens arranged in a room), in suggesting a narrative (story), reminds us of multi-panel altar paintings. He strives for technical perfection in his chosen medium, in the way an oil painter might. His manipulation of focus and sensual colour effects creates an aesthetic experience for the viewer just as a painting does.
Images are left on the screen just long enough to be unsettling and to challenge viewers' expectations. Time is often slowed down so the viewer
feels drawn into the experience. The accompanying sounds often become deeper and more obvious as time and the image are expanded or compressed. Shifts in scale are another technique used by Viola to overwhelm or disconcert the viewer. The viewer is placed in the elusive area between the present and the timeless as images dissolve, objects and people slowly appear, come into clear focus, then resubmerge into the landscape, water or some unexpected end point, such as a billboard or the eyes of an animal, gradually disappearing again.
Viola always uses the medium of video with restraint and dignity, rather than as an opportunity to display tricks. The effect is one of grandeur and deep understanding.
As part of his artmaking process, Viola keeps a collection of notebooks in which he records and develops his ideas. These include quotes from writers and philosophers and transcripts from books on history, memory and religion, as well as his workings for his videos and installations.
Symbols
Structural Frame
Viola represents the world through symbols, ideas and spiritual phenomena, searching for a greater understanding of the spiritual heritage of
humankind. His main symbols are fire and water. Yet simple, everyday images, such as chairs and buckets, and simple actions, such as crying and laughing, are important to the reality of his dramas.
Conceptual Framework — Subjective Frame
Viola draws upon the audience's imagination, as well as their memory, dreams and subconscious. He shows us reality through his poetic vision in such a way that we re-evaluate our perceptions of reality and realise that we are looking at something out of the ordinary. The physical is transformed into the psychological as we become more aware of ourselves and of the many layers of human consciousness, as the rational and the intuitive are combined in his
videos.
Postmodern Frame
In a sense, artistic creations make references to every other artwork that has ever been made. Artworks derive meaning through built-up systems of codes, conventions and traditions. Postmodern artists frequently break these traditions or purposely recontextualise the codes in order to challenge our perceptions. The following are some of the ways in which Viola breaks with tradition:
• He works with new media and a new form — the video installation.
• He has developed a new interpretation of the concept of the ‘timeless art object’. Viola manipulates the viewer's concept of time. He uses sequences of events, but not in the conventional narrative form.
• His art is a programmed experience that appeals to all senses and the subconscious.
• Viola's works are neither two-dimensional nor bound by a frame. He creates a new spatial dimension.
• He uses landscape, a traditional subject, not as a representation of nature but as a trigger to the imagination and experience of the spiritual.
• Instead of the female nude, he features the male nude (himself) as subject (e.g. in The messenger).
• His works often operate at the edge of consciousness, which may waver between dream, memory and the subconscious, so meaning is derived from the response of the viewer.
Artist's statements
‘Recording something, I feel, is not so much capturing an existing thing as it is creating a new one. I want to have more of an input in this process of creation than simply to determine where to point the camera. An active position enables me to exceed my own physical limitations and manifest my imaginings, which then serves more to really transform myself than just to change the images existing within the confines of the monitor screen. Each time a tape is finished it is like the release of a long-held breath, and with it, naturally, is signalled the need for another …
‘The spectrum of electromagnetic energy vibrations that make up the universe at large far exceeds the narrow band-width, or “window”, open to us through our sensory receptors. As philosophers through the ages have stated, the human senses can thus be considered “limiters” to the total amount of energy bombarding our beings, preventing the individual from being overwhelmed by the tremendous volume of information existing at each and every instant. Imagination is our key to the doorway of perception. The television medium, when coupled with the human mind, can offer us sight beyond the range of our everyday consciousness …
‘I want to look so close at things that their intensity burns through your retina and onto the surface of your mind. The video camera is well suited to looking closely at things, elevating the commonplace to higher levels of awareness …
‘This sense of seeing — or seeing the sense of an object — is what I have been after …
‘My interest in the various image systems of the cultures of the world involves a search for the image that is not an image. This is why I am not interested in “realistic” rendering. Sacred art seems very close because of its symbolic nature. Its intrinsic interwoven meaning on other planes makes it more “conceptual”. I am interested not so much in the image whose source lies in the phenomenal world, but rather the image as artefact, or result, or imprint, or even wholly determined by some inner realisation.’
Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973–1994, Thames and Hudson, London, 1995, frontispiece and pp. 33, 40, 60, 78, 79, 85.
Historical Practice
'Though the tools Viola uses are at the cutting edge of technology, his work is firmly rooted in the history of art, both Western and Eastern. Viola argues that the most powerful frescoes in the churches of Renaissance Florence could be seen as “a form of installation; a physical, spatial consuming experience”. However, in today's culture, with electronic images omnipresent, his work surprises us with its emphasis on the symbolic. Viola explores the suggestive power of the image and man's metaphysical relationship with his surroundings. Connections can be seen between Viola's work and such figures as Bosch, Goya or Blake, artists whose work plays on the crossover between the real and the fantastic.
‘Some of the earliest artists to make use of video — such as Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci — were drawn to the medium as a means of documenting their performance work. Soon, however, they began to perform for the camera. An early Viola video, The space between the teeth 1976, shows a similar spirit of self-inquiry and some of the confrontational elements of Acconci and Nauman.
Here the writer places Viola within the wider context of art history.
‘Viola's extraordinary achievement, however, lies in his ability to sculpt sound and image in such a way as to stimulate within us an awareness of our physical and mental presence.’
In his last paragraph the writer informs us of Viola's relationship to the history of video art. The writer has switched to critical rather than historical writing, as factual statements and historical significance are replaced by opinion and value judgements.
Quoted from exhibition catalogue Bill Viola: Unseen Images, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 17 December 1993 – 13 February 1994, p. 1.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTION
Artist's practice
Refer to one of Viola's artworks and a quote from the artist to explain the intentions and methods in his artmaking practice. - Answer in discussion board on the Virtual Classroom.
http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/1 - Bill Viola website with Interview
http://www.designboom.com/design/designboom-interview-bill-viola/ - Bill Viola artworks and interview
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/johntusainterview/viola_transcript.shtml - BBC interview with Bill Viola
Tony Oursler
(b. 1957, American, has worked in New York since 1983)
Issues/interests: society's misfits, disturbed people explaining their fate
Forms: combination of video, sculpture installation and performance
Frames: Cultural — comments on aspects of contemporary culture, in particular the violence and trauma associated with mass media and technology, and their ability to infiltrate our consciousness; Postmodern — non-traditional art form, using technology in a challenging way
Conceptual Framework: Oursler strives for an active emotional involvement from his audience.
A ‘doll’ lies trapped in a wooden box. The expressions of the projected image on the face match the piercing voice, which variously whispers, curses and screams.
Hello? 1996
video installation
Photo: Bernhard Schmitt
© Tony Oursler
Being projected onto a sculptural form resembling a simplified but warped kewpie doll intensifies the bizarre effect of this video projection. The bloodshot eyes with accentuated lashes engage you while the mouth smiles in a beguiling yet disturbing way. She seems to be pleading with the viewer. Among the mumblings can be deciphered the word ‘Please’. The sculptural shape draws our attention to the emotions being expressed.
Artist's practice
Background
Tony Oursler is a pioneering video artist who began working with single-channel videotapes in the 1980s. Rather than showing faces on TV screens or projected onto a gallery wall, Oursler's faces are projected onto real objects (often a solid white oval with an attached, doll-like material body handmade by Oursler) and so have their own reality and form. These projected faces speak, or rather rant and complain, often directly to the viewer. They express extreme psychological states.
Oursler is perhaps best known for his ‘talking head’ video sequences projected onto bent or corrugated surfaces around 1995. The heads' features appeared swollen or abbreviated as they mumbled randomly and repetitively as if in a trance, whether indicating anxiety or pain or making sexual innuendos or jokes. These works were highly disquieting to the viewer, as eyes (as in Eye in the Sky 1997) would appear without any other facial feature, or a mouth would ‘speak’ from under furniture. The disjunction between speech, facial features and objects suggests ventriloquism or even a ghost in a séance. At
times the ‘voice’ itself is fractured in its tonal and semantic registers. In 2000 he projected faces that seemed to float over trees and clouds of smoke in
Madison Square Park in Manhattan. All his ‘characters’ are distressed (often moaning, crying or muttering); many are tormented, demented, even paranoiac. A
feeling of tension is generally created: faces contort, eyes shift, lips purse, eyebrows furrow, all emotions accented and expressed. Some of his ‘characters’
manifest extreme emotional states, screaming wildly or from the pit of despair, or evincing a heavy blankness like a lost soul. We, the viewers, are invited to
share their misery. Oursler's works both disturb and fascinate.
Big Eyes 2003 (Below)
fiberglass sculpture,
Sony VPL CS5 projector, DVD, DVD player
61 × 61 × 30.5 cm
Courtesy of the
artist and Metro Pictures
Issues/interests: society's misfits, disturbed people explaining their fate
Forms: combination of video, sculpture installation and performance
Frames: Cultural — comments on aspects of contemporary culture, in particular the violence and trauma associated with mass media and technology, and their ability to infiltrate our consciousness; Postmodern — non-traditional art form, using technology in a challenging way
Conceptual Framework: Oursler strives for an active emotional involvement from his audience.
A ‘doll’ lies trapped in a wooden box. The expressions of the projected image on the face match the piercing voice, which variously whispers, curses and screams.
Hello? 1996
video installation
Photo: Bernhard Schmitt
© Tony Oursler
Being projected onto a sculptural form resembling a simplified but warped kewpie doll intensifies the bizarre effect of this video projection. The bloodshot eyes with accentuated lashes engage you while the mouth smiles in a beguiling yet disturbing way. She seems to be pleading with the viewer. Among the mumblings can be deciphered the word ‘Please’. The sculptural shape draws our attention to the emotions being expressed.
Artist's practice
Background
Tony Oursler is a pioneering video artist who began working with single-channel videotapes in the 1980s. Rather than showing faces on TV screens or projected onto a gallery wall, Oursler's faces are projected onto real objects (often a solid white oval with an attached, doll-like material body handmade by Oursler) and so have their own reality and form. These projected faces speak, or rather rant and complain, often directly to the viewer. They express extreme psychological states.
Oursler is perhaps best known for his ‘talking head’ video sequences projected onto bent or corrugated surfaces around 1995. The heads' features appeared swollen or abbreviated as they mumbled randomly and repetitively as if in a trance, whether indicating anxiety or pain or making sexual innuendos or jokes. These works were highly disquieting to the viewer, as eyes (as in Eye in the Sky 1997) would appear without any other facial feature, or a mouth would ‘speak’ from under furniture. The disjunction between speech, facial features and objects suggests ventriloquism or even a ghost in a séance. At
times the ‘voice’ itself is fractured in its tonal and semantic registers. In 2000 he projected faces that seemed to float over trees and clouds of smoke in
Madison Square Park in Manhattan. All his ‘characters’ are distressed (often moaning, crying or muttering); many are tormented, demented, even paranoiac. A
feeling of tension is generally created: faces contort, eyes shift, lips purse, eyebrows furrow, all emotions accented and expressed. Some of his ‘characters’
manifest extreme emotional states, screaming wildly or from the pit of despair, or evincing a heavy blankness like a lost soul. We, the viewers, are invited to
share their misery. Oursler's works both disturb and fascinate.
Big Eyes 2003 (Below)
fiberglass sculpture,
Sony VPL CS5 projector, DVD, DVD player
61 × 61 × 30.5 cm
Courtesy of the
artist and Metro Pictures
Intention/meaning
Perhaps Oursler's main purpose can be expressed as an attempt to draw empathy or identification rather than just pity or sympathy from the viewer.
His central theme of existential despair is expressed through facial expressions and a monologue emitted from his ‘heads’. The position of the ‘head’
or ‘doll’ emphasises their predicament. In Getaway #2 1994 the ‘talking head’ is trapped under a mattress. In Insomnia 1996, he works with just a head. The projection on the head explains her problem of not being able to sleep. In Underwater (Blue/Green) 1995 the head is gasping for breath. We, the viewers, are drawn to relate personally to the anxiety and despair of these projections, particularly as they often speak directly to us, pleading or abusive.
The contrast between the dolls and the aggressive, often vulgar language with which they speak adds dramatically to the emotive power of the work.
Oursler uses video technology to comment on the insidious link he sees between media, particularly television, and our psychological states. He believes its power to mesmerise ‘numbs’ the mind, and that some of its common themes, such as violence and abuse, can become lodged in a viewer's mind. But he sees television viewing as just one of the insidious obsessive behaviours of contemporary society. ‘The medium [TV] has long ago expanded out, and it got exploded by the internet and now what we have is a whole diversified delivery system of mood altering electronic devices’ (Oursler, in Art World, issue 5, October–November 2008, p. 96).
Techniques/materials
Oursler's videos are usually displayed as installations, projected onto white sculptural components (often referred to as his ‘dolls’) generally created by
assistants. Often his works look like theatre sets, incorporating everyday (often rather worn) objects. Video tends to neutralise our emotions: we have
become used to seeing great violence, horror, loss and grief in movies and videos, yet by projecting his videos onto sculptural surfaces Oursler creates an
active emotional engagement with the viewer. His ‘dolls’ generally recite a rambling, stream-of-consciousness narrative to illustrate the depths of despair
of the human psyche.
Oursler has collaborated with other artists, musicians and actors such as David Bowie, the band Sonic Youth, Tracey Leipold and Joe Gibbons (a film and video maker), and like many contemporary artists he often employs assistants. He also considers the viewer as a collaborator in the work. He has recently extended his practice with video installations to include 3D hologram-like images, web art and CD-ROMs.
Artist's statements
‘To me, the body is being dematerialised and rematerialised all the time. Technology alters life. Technology is an amplifier of instinct.’
Quoted in Brandon Taylor, Art Today, Laurence King Publishing, 2004, p. 242.
Oursler sees his work as ‘an empathy test for the viewer’. To achieve this goal, he says, ‘I attenuate these emotions like musical notes, just to see what happens. They are worked almost to the point where they fall apart. That's how they transcend being a special effect in a movie, or part of a good performer's repertoire, or an insult from someone in the street.’
Quoted in Linda Weintraub, Making Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson, 2003, p. 305.
Other artworks
The Loner 1980
The Loner expresses loneliness in the setting of a nightmarish fantasy of the search for love, the elusive ‘Her’, in a singles bar. It suggests both sexual obsession and personal failure.
EVOL 1985
This work (‘Love’ spelt backwards) explores the erotic dreams of a young man, jumping from cultural stereotypes to childhood expectations and adult reality.
Judy 1994
This is a multiple ‘head’ installation, in which each of the trio of speaking dummies expresses a form of emotional trauma. There is also a silent figure, withdrawn as if in a deep psychotic depression. One dummy weeps constantly, which has a disturbing effect on the viewer. This work is all the more poignant
as the installation's environment is filled with flowers, which, although they reinforce the feminine, certainly don't make the artwork more relaxing to experience. ‘Oh no, not that!’ she cries, invoking fear as well as anguish. All the video projections are manifestations of the same person, suggesting mental
dissociation. Oursler has stated that he has used only one individual as a symbol for a cultural condition. This work is based on a medical study of a patient who suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder.
We Have No Free Will 1995
Two dolls sit in ‘conversation’ on a wall; their relative size suggests a father/son relationship. Oursler has commented that he wanted to express a state of mind rather than a structured narrative, and that his main aim was to trap the onlooker in the emotional scenario.
MMP1 (Red) 1996
A little man is trapped under a fallen chair. He seems to be resigned to his fate as he mumbles, ‘Time is irrelevant’.
Streetlight series 1997
This is a series of video sculptures of eyes with television screens reflected in the pupils. Eye in the Sky consists of a fibreglass sphere onto which is projected a single eye watching television. Its twitching movements relate to the sounds of weather forecasts, commercials and so on, as Oursler comments on our media-saturated world and its effects on the human condition.
The Influence Machine 2000
Images were projected in Soho Square in London using ‘ghosts’ of key figures in media history as subject matter. Oursler's projections made the trees appear
to take on human form and talk. This work commented on the cultural influence of communication technologies such as the telephone, TV and the internet. It also involved sound and light and suggested links with the spirit world.
Burst 2005
As the name suggests, parts of faces try to burst out of the confines of the irregular, organic shape on which they are projected.
Cell Phones Diagrams Cigarettes Searches and Scratch Cards 2009,
Metro Pictures Gallery, New York. Themes include obsessive desires, phobias, socially acceptable addictions, self-help culture and the influence of technology on our lives.
September–October 2009, London's Lisson Gallery
Projections on giant sculptural objects representing such common objects of today's society as scratch cards, mobile phones, playing cards and cigarettes.
Elaborating on his New York show, it also investigated vices such as gambling, compulsive cleaning and overeating but in a humorous way (the cigarette burns
down to the sound of a sucking breath, the mobile phone screen shows dancing girls). Oursler feels we all try to hide the ‘little madness’ in us. These new works make a more dynamic and theatrical use of space.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTION
Conceptual Framework
‘Oursler combines sculptural objects, moving image and text (voice), thus involving the viewer in a variety of ways.’ Discuss the changing nature of the
Postmodern artwork with reference to Oursler and one other artist. Write your answer on the virtual classroom discussion board.
His central theme of existential despair is expressed through facial expressions and a monologue emitted from his ‘heads’. The position of the ‘head’
or ‘doll’ emphasises their predicament. In Getaway #2 1994 the ‘talking head’ is trapped under a mattress. In Insomnia 1996, he works with just a head. The projection on the head explains her problem of not being able to sleep. In Underwater (Blue/Green) 1995 the head is gasping for breath. We, the viewers, are drawn to relate personally to the anxiety and despair of these projections, particularly as they often speak directly to us, pleading or abusive.
The contrast between the dolls and the aggressive, often vulgar language with which they speak adds dramatically to the emotive power of the work.
Oursler uses video technology to comment on the insidious link he sees between media, particularly television, and our psychological states. He believes its power to mesmerise ‘numbs’ the mind, and that some of its common themes, such as violence and abuse, can become lodged in a viewer's mind. But he sees television viewing as just one of the insidious obsessive behaviours of contemporary society. ‘The medium [TV] has long ago expanded out, and it got exploded by the internet and now what we have is a whole diversified delivery system of mood altering electronic devices’ (Oursler, in Art World, issue 5, October–November 2008, p. 96).
Techniques/materials
Oursler's videos are usually displayed as installations, projected onto white sculptural components (often referred to as his ‘dolls’) generally created by
assistants. Often his works look like theatre sets, incorporating everyday (often rather worn) objects. Video tends to neutralise our emotions: we have
become used to seeing great violence, horror, loss and grief in movies and videos, yet by projecting his videos onto sculptural surfaces Oursler creates an
active emotional engagement with the viewer. His ‘dolls’ generally recite a rambling, stream-of-consciousness narrative to illustrate the depths of despair
of the human psyche.
Oursler has collaborated with other artists, musicians and actors such as David Bowie, the band Sonic Youth, Tracey Leipold and Joe Gibbons (a film and video maker), and like many contemporary artists he often employs assistants. He also considers the viewer as a collaborator in the work. He has recently extended his practice with video installations to include 3D hologram-like images, web art and CD-ROMs.
Artist's statements
‘To me, the body is being dematerialised and rematerialised all the time. Technology alters life. Technology is an amplifier of instinct.’
Quoted in Brandon Taylor, Art Today, Laurence King Publishing, 2004, p. 242.
Oursler sees his work as ‘an empathy test for the viewer’. To achieve this goal, he says, ‘I attenuate these emotions like musical notes, just to see what happens. They are worked almost to the point where they fall apart. That's how they transcend being a special effect in a movie, or part of a good performer's repertoire, or an insult from someone in the street.’
Quoted in Linda Weintraub, Making Contemporary Art, Thames and Hudson, 2003, p. 305.
Other artworks
The Loner 1980
The Loner expresses loneliness in the setting of a nightmarish fantasy of the search for love, the elusive ‘Her’, in a singles bar. It suggests both sexual obsession and personal failure.
EVOL 1985
This work (‘Love’ spelt backwards) explores the erotic dreams of a young man, jumping from cultural stereotypes to childhood expectations and adult reality.
Judy 1994
This is a multiple ‘head’ installation, in which each of the trio of speaking dummies expresses a form of emotional trauma. There is also a silent figure, withdrawn as if in a deep psychotic depression. One dummy weeps constantly, which has a disturbing effect on the viewer. This work is all the more poignant
as the installation's environment is filled with flowers, which, although they reinforce the feminine, certainly don't make the artwork more relaxing to experience. ‘Oh no, not that!’ she cries, invoking fear as well as anguish. All the video projections are manifestations of the same person, suggesting mental
dissociation. Oursler has stated that he has used only one individual as a symbol for a cultural condition. This work is based on a medical study of a patient who suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder.
We Have No Free Will 1995
Two dolls sit in ‘conversation’ on a wall; their relative size suggests a father/son relationship. Oursler has commented that he wanted to express a state of mind rather than a structured narrative, and that his main aim was to trap the onlooker in the emotional scenario.
MMP1 (Red) 1996
A little man is trapped under a fallen chair. He seems to be resigned to his fate as he mumbles, ‘Time is irrelevant’.
Streetlight series 1997
This is a series of video sculptures of eyes with television screens reflected in the pupils. Eye in the Sky consists of a fibreglass sphere onto which is projected a single eye watching television. Its twitching movements relate to the sounds of weather forecasts, commercials and so on, as Oursler comments on our media-saturated world and its effects on the human condition.
The Influence Machine 2000
Images were projected in Soho Square in London using ‘ghosts’ of key figures in media history as subject matter. Oursler's projections made the trees appear
to take on human form and talk. This work commented on the cultural influence of communication technologies such as the telephone, TV and the internet. It also involved sound and light and suggested links with the spirit world.
Burst 2005
As the name suggests, parts of faces try to burst out of the confines of the irregular, organic shape on which they are projected.
Cell Phones Diagrams Cigarettes Searches and Scratch Cards 2009,
Metro Pictures Gallery, New York. Themes include obsessive desires, phobias, socially acceptable addictions, self-help culture and the influence of technology on our lives.
September–October 2009, London's Lisson Gallery
Projections on giant sculptural objects representing such common objects of today's society as scratch cards, mobile phones, playing cards and cigarettes.
Elaborating on his New York show, it also investigated vices such as gambling, compulsive cleaning and overeating but in a humorous way (the cigarette burns
down to the sound of a sucking breath, the mobile phone screen shows dancing girls). Oursler feels we all try to hide the ‘little madness’ in us. These new works make a more dynamic and theatrical use of space.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTION
Conceptual Framework
‘Oursler combines sculptural objects, moving image and text (voice), thus involving the viewer in a variety of ways.’ Discuss the changing nature of the
Postmodern artwork with reference to Oursler and one other artist. Write your answer on the virtual classroom discussion board.
http://www.designboom.com/interviews/designboom-interview-tony-oursler/ - Tony Oursler interview
http://bombsite.com/issues/96/articles/2823 - Article on Tony Oursler
http://bombsite.com/issues/96/articles/2823 - Article on Tony Oursler
Stelarc
(Stelios Arcadiou, b. 1946, Cyprus, raised in Australia)
Issues/interests: art and the body, art and technology
Forms: performance, art events, interactive artworks
Frame: Postmodern in challenging what an artwork is and integrating technology into art
Conceptual Framework: The audience interacts with and at times
controls the artwork. The artist is part of the artwork.
Amplified Body, Laser Eyes and Third Hand 1990
multimedia performance
Melbourne International Festival
Photo: Anthony Figallo
STELARC
In Stelarc's performance piece Amplified Body, Laser Eyes and Third Hand (above), the third hand could operate independently of or in sync with the other two hands. If the electrodes were placed on the flexor and extensor muscles on the arm, the third hand did whatever the arm did. If the electrodes were placed on the leg and abdominal muscles, the actions would be independent. In this performance, not only were the actions of the body amplified, but the gaze of the eyes was projected with the use of lasers.
The idea of using lasers came from experiments at the time with robots. By blinking and moving the muscles of his face, Stelarc could scribble in space with light. This performance linked with Stelarc's interest in prosthetic attachments and bionics as evolutionary experiments on the modification of the body. Stelarc sees a future in which the distinction between what is synthetic and what is biological is blurred. The audience was involved in various ways in this performance. Charts and diagrams were projected onto screens; video recordings and recorded bodily sounds were also played. At the same time, Stelarc explained his philosophies on the future of the body, injecting into his ‘lecture’ his sense of humour and infectious laugh.
Issues/interests: art and the body, art and technology
Forms: performance, art events, interactive artworks
Frame: Postmodern in challenging what an artwork is and integrating technology into art
Conceptual Framework: The audience interacts with and at times
controls the artwork. The artist is part of the artwork.
Amplified Body, Laser Eyes and Third Hand 1990
multimedia performance
Melbourne International Festival
Photo: Anthony Figallo
STELARC
In Stelarc's performance piece Amplified Body, Laser Eyes and Third Hand (above), the third hand could operate independently of or in sync with the other two hands. If the electrodes were placed on the flexor and extensor muscles on the arm, the third hand did whatever the arm did. If the electrodes were placed on the leg and abdominal muscles, the actions would be independent. In this performance, not only were the actions of the body amplified, but the gaze of the eyes was projected with the use of lasers.
The idea of using lasers came from experiments at the time with robots. By blinking and moving the muscles of his face, Stelarc could scribble in space with light. This performance linked with Stelarc's interest in prosthetic attachments and bionics as evolutionary experiments on the modification of the body. Stelarc sees a future in which the distinction between what is synthetic and what is biological is blurred. The audience was involved in various ways in this performance. Charts and diagrams were projected onto screens; video recordings and recorded bodily sounds were also played. At the same time, Stelarc explained his philosophies on the future of the body, injecting into his ‘lecture’ his sense of humour and infectious laugh.
Models for Prosthetic Head 2002
interactive, computer-generated speaking head — a computer-generated 3D head projected 5 m in height
Image: Barrett Fox
STELARC
Prosthetic Head (above) is an interactive, technology-generated artwork created by Stelarc to explore the narrowing divide between human and intellectual intelligence. Stelarc believes this is a forerunner to the way humans in the near future will converse with computerised systems such as home entertainment systems and communication and security devices. But it is not just the developments in technology that excite Stelarc. He also investigates through this work the notion of intelligence itself and issues of identity.
This three-dimensional animation of a head (the image is of Stelarc himself), generally exhibited on a large screen, has been programmed to ‘answer’ audience questions typed onto a keyboard, replying with synchronised facial expressions and lip-sync. It is a 3000-polygonal structure with a skin constructed of digital images of the artist's head. It is ‘constructed’ with an IBM text-to-speech engine; its brain is a modified, customised and personalised Alice chatbot engine.
Prosthetic Head can hold a conversation on religion, philosophy or general knowledge questions, explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity and even tell jokes. Each verbal response appears appropriate and relates to Stelarc's personal history and sense of humour. It also has embedded algorithms that enable it to generate poetry or sing. If asked a question it cannot answer, it will change the subject or reply that it is a ‘silly question’.
The intent was to construct an ambiguous and unpredictable agent that is somewhat schizoid in its projected personality … As the Prosthetic Head increases its database, it will be more autonomous in its responses. The artist will then no longer be able to take full responsibility for what its Head says.
(Pamphlet from Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 2005)
This is an ongoing project that Stelarc intends to refine as technology, particularly in voice recognition, develops. It is hoped that eventually the Head will be able to ‘hear’ the questions asked by the viewer as well as reassess information and respond with a degree of intelligence.
Historical background — biographyStelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) left Cyprus with his parents when he was two years old. He trained as an art teacher in Melbourne and after two years of teaching left Australia to teach at the Yokohama International School. He stayed in Japan for almost 20 years.
Stelarc is a pioneer of performance art. He has engaged with the theme of the body, particularly during sensory deprivation and physical stress, since the 1970s.
Artist's practice
Intention
As a Postmodern artist, Stelarc has always set out to shock people; for example, his early work included having large hooks inserted into his naked skin before being hauled by a crane over city streets. His work concentrates on suspensions, simulations and interventions of the body, going beyond the body's occupation of space, time and reality, suggesting that mental states can be altered or extended. His art has always been at the forefront of technology, employing existing technologies as well as pre-empting new developments. His main concern is with the exploration of the relationship between new technologies (including medical inventions) and the body. Stelarc sees the human skin as the interface, allowing the body to interact with a cybernetic world, raising questions about the limitations and design of the body. His artworks are a visually creative means of expressing his optimistic ideas on the future incorporation of technology and the body. He questions our present way of life, what it is to be human and the limitations of the body, suggesting what technology may provide in the future.
Techniques/materials
Stelarc uses technological means to explore artistic ideas. He uses his body as a site-specific object in his pursuit of the idea of enhancing the body's operational capabilities. He treats the body as biological architecture, as ‘an object for redesigning’. Stelarc is not interested in the metaphysical concerns
of the body, its gender or emotions, but rather in the body as sculpture or technological interface. He is more interested in the notion of the body as a means of experience and an art form in itself (he has compared his work to that of a ballet dancer). In order to extend and enhance the body as a performance
element, he has used prosthetics, medical instruments, virtual reality systems, lasers, the internet, and computer-generated and interactive artworks.
Other examples of Stelarc's work
Stelarc's early works were performance suspension series, his body suspended or supported in space with harnesses or ropes. This developed into works
performed in Japan, Europe and Australia (e.g. Tree Suspension and Shaft Suspension in a lift well), in which his body was supported in
space by means of large metal hooks, inserted with no anaesthetic through the skin (this idea was inspired by ancient Hindu rituals).
Third Hand 1980
This work involved the attachment of a state-of-the-art prosthesis to the body. The third hand's movement was activated by Stelarc's own abdominal and leg
muscles. With the addition of this extra hand, Stelarc was able to simultaneously draw a circle, a triangle and a square, developing his skills so
that he was able to write the word ‘Evolution’ on a glass sheet between himself and the audience. He wrote the word, three letters at a time (‘Evo’ with one
hand, ‘lut’ with the second and ‘ion’ with the third), backwards so it could be read by the audience. The third hand had the capabilities of pinching, grasping
and rotating 290 degrees.
Virtual Arm Project 1992
In this work Stelarc virtually augmented his body.
Stomach Sculpture 1993
Stelarc had inserted inside his body a small ‘sculpture’, a miniature electronic device that recorded his bodily sounds. This sculpture consisted of a retracting, non-corrosive metal outer device (made by a jeweller) with internal workings he had made by a medical instruments specialist. It thus combined expertise and specialist skills beyond those of the artist. The ‘sculpture’ was specially built for implanting inside the body and was inserted through the mouth 80 centimetres into his alimentary canal. One cable was inserted to control the sculpture while another was for the endoscope to film the insertion.
Stelarc was conscious throughout the insertion, lying on his side and directing the procedure. To create approximately 15 minutes of video it took two days and six attempts at the procedure. His body was ‘invaded’, not for medical reasons, but to further his art.
Factal Flesh 1995
While in Luxembourg he invited internet users to log on and take control of his body's involuntary muscle movements by means of electrodes. In this online
‘performance’, people in, say, Paris could touch different parts of Stelarc's body as shown on their computer screen to activate involuntary movements by
Stelarc a minute later. Thus people were projecting their presence onto a body elsewhere in space, the body acting as host.
Exoskeleton 1998
Here the body (Stelarc) controlled the movement of a cumbersome, jerky machine (resembling a large mechanical spider, but with only six legs) through
the use of arm gestures. In this way he was able to control the machine, making it move, turn on the spot or walk.
Muscle Machine 2001–02
This time one leg controlled three of the robots, the other controlled the other three. There was also a link between the sounds it emitted and the
movement. This work was more intuitive, providing a closer link between man and machine.
Extra Ear Project
Beginning in 2003, Stelarc had first proposed adding an extra ear behind his own. He designed a soft prosthesis made of skin and cartilage, but the project
had to be abandoned as no surgeon would attempt it. He then planned to have an extra ear attached to his arm, and this operation took place in April 2009. He envisaged that it would emit sounds as a person came close, but there have been problems with this aspect of the project. No doubt he will continue to pursue new technological avenues to further extend this project. Google his website for updates and to view imagery of the project.
Critical practice
‘Stelarc is the man with two heads. There's the one he is born with. And there's the incredible computerised “prosthetic head” he has created to explore
the narrowing divide between human and artificial intelligence.
‘Stelarc's false head — based on the features of his original one — could also be called the “face of the future”. It looks disturbingly like Orwell's Big
Brother and sounds exactly like HAL, the talking computer that goes insane at the end of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey …
‘It can hold an intelligent discourse on an infinite number of subjects, speaking in perfect sync with appropriate facial expressions …
‘His prosthetic head is the climax of more recent works, examining robotics and human movement. It was developed in California with the help of three
programming experts. Since it first went on show in Glasgow in 2003, the head has been exhibited in London, Toronto and Melbourne.
‘The only flaw is that questions have to be typed on a keyboard — though improvements in voice recognition technology will one day make it possible for
the head to “hear” questions.
‘Soon, Stelarc says, “talking heads” will be the normal way that humans will converse with phones, computers and home-entertainment systems.
‘What interests him more than the technical breakthroughs are the philosophical repercussions: “This is an installation which explores issues of
identity, the idea of what it is to be intelligent.”
‘Like a human, it doesn't always give the same answer to the same question — it constantly reassesses updated information in its database. In other words, it
can “rethink”. Also like a human, it tries to change the subject if it doesn't know the answer.
‘But the prosthetic head does have one limitation. “It's only as intelligent as the person asking the questions,” admits Stelarc.’
Steve Meacham, ‘Man with two heads puts his best face forward’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 2005, p. 3.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTIONS
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html - Interview with Stelarc
interactive, computer-generated speaking head — a computer-generated 3D head projected 5 m in height
Image: Barrett Fox
STELARC
Prosthetic Head (above) is an interactive, technology-generated artwork created by Stelarc to explore the narrowing divide between human and intellectual intelligence. Stelarc believes this is a forerunner to the way humans in the near future will converse with computerised systems such as home entertainment systems and communication and security devices. But it is not just the developments in technology that excite Stelarc. He also investigates through this work the notion of intelligence itself and issues of identity.
This three-dimensional animation of a head (the image is of Stelarc himself), generally exhibited on a large screen, has been programmed to ‘answer’ audience questions typed onto a keyboard, replying with synchronised facial expressions and lip-sync. It is a 3000-polygonal structure with a skin constructed of digital images of the artist's head. It is ‘constructed’ with an IBM text-to-speech engine; its brain is a modified, customised and personalised Alice chatbot engine.
Prosthetic Head can hold a conversation on religion, philosophy or general knowledge questions, explain Einstein's Theory of Relativity and even tell jokes. Each verbal response appears appropriate and relates to Stelarc's personal history and sense of humour. It also has embedded algorithms that enable it to generate poetry or sing. If asked a question it cannot answer, it will change the subject or reply that it is a ‘silly question’.
The intent was to construct an ambiguous and unpredictable agent that is somewhat schizoid in its projected personality … As the Prosthetic Head increases its database, it will be more autonomous in its responses. The artist will then no longer be able to take full responsibility for what its Head says.
(Pamphlet from Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 2005)
This is an ongoing project that Stelarc intends to refine as technology, particularly in voice recognition, develops. It is hoped that eventually the Head will be able to ‘hear’ the questions asked by the viewer as well as reassess information and respond with a degree of intelligence.
Historical background — biographyStelarc (Stelios Arcadiou) left Cyprus with his parents when he was two years old. He trained as an art teacher in Melbourne and after two years of teaching left Australia to teach at the Yokohama International School. He stayed in Japan for almost 20 years.
Stelarc is a pioneer of performance art. He has engaged with the theme of the body, particularly during sensory deprivation and physical stress, since the 1970s.
Artist's practice
Intention
As a Postmodern artist, Stelarc has always set out to shock people; for example, his early work included having large hooks inserted into his naked skin before being hauled by a crane over city streets. His work concentrates on suspensions, simulations and interventions of the body, going beyond the body's occupation of space, time and reality, suggesting that mental states can be altered or extended. His art has always been at the forefront of technology, employing existing technologies as well as pre-empting new developments. His main concern is with the exploration of the relationship between new technologies (including medical inventions) and the body. Stelarc sees the human skin as the interface, allowing the body to interact with a cybernetic world, raising questions about the limitations and design of the body. His artworks are a visually creative means of expressing his optimistic ideas on the future incorporation of technology and the body. He questions our present way of life, what it is to be human and the limitations of the body, suggesting what technology may provide in the future.
Techniques/materials
Stelarc uses technological means to explore artistic ideas. He uses his body as a site-specific object in his pursuit of the idea of enhancing the body's operational capabilities. He treats the body as biological architecture, as ‘an object for redesigning’. Stelarc is not interested in the metaphysical concerns
of the body, its gender or emotions, but rather in the body as sculpture or technological interface. He is more interested in the notion of the body as a means of experience and an art form in itself (he has compared his work to that of a ballet dancer). In order to extend and enhance the body as a performance
element, he has used prosthetics, medical instruments, virtual reality systems, lasers, the internet, and computer-generated and interactive artworks.
Other examples of Stelarc's work
Stelarc's early works were performance suspension series, his body suspended or supported in space with harnesses or ropes. This developed into works
performed in Japan, Europe and Australia (e.g. Tree Suspension and Shaft Suspension in a lift well), in which his body was supported in
space by means of large metal hooks, inserted with no anaesthetic through the skin (this idea was inspired by ancient Hindu rituals).
Third Hand 1980
This work involved the attachment of a state-of-the-art prosthesis to the body. The third hand's movement was activated by Stelarc's own abdominal and leg
muscles. With the addition of this extra hand, Stelarc was able to simultaneously draw a circle, a triangle and a square, developing his skills so
that he was able to write the word ‘Evolution’ on a glass sheet between himself and the audience. He wrote the word, three letters at a time (‘Evo’ with one
hand, ‘lut’ with the second and ‘ion’ with the third), backwards so it could be read by the audience. The third hand had the capabilities of pinching, grasping
and rotating 290 degrees.
Virtual Arm Project 1992
In this work Stelarc virtually augmented his body.
Stomach Sculpture 1993
Stelarc had inserted inside his body a small ‘sculpture’, a miniature electronic device that recorded his bodily sounds. This sculpture consisted of a retracting, non-corrosive metal outer device (made by a jeweller) with internal workings he had made by a medical instruments specialist. It thus combined expertise and specialist skills beyond those of the artist. The ‘sculpture’ was specially built for implanting inside the body and was inserted through the mouth 80 centimetres into his alimentary canal. One cable was inserted to control the sculpture while another was for the endoscope to film the insertion.
Stelarc was conscious throughout the insertion, lying on his side and directing the procedure. To create approximately 15 minutes of video it took two days and six attempts at the procedure. His body was ‘invaded’, not for medical reasons, but to further his art.
Factal Flesh 1995
While in Luxembourg he invited internet users to log on and take control of his body's involuntary muscle movements by means of electrodes. In this online
‘performance’, people in, say, Paris could touch different parts of Stelarc's body as shown on their computer screen to activate involuntary movements by
Stelarc a minute later. Thus people were projecting their presence onto a body elsewhere in space, the body acting as host.
Exoskeleton 1998
Here the body (Stelarc) controlled the movement of a cumbersome, jerky machine (resembling a large mechanical spider, but with only six legs) through
the use of arm gestures. In this way he was able to control the machine, making it move, turn on the spot or walk.
Muscle Machine 2001–02
This time one leg controlled three of the robots, the other controlled the other three. There was also a link between the sounds it emitted and the
movement. This work was more intuitive, providing a closer link between man and machine.
Extra Ear Project
Beginning in 2003, Stelarc had first proposed adding an extra ear behind his own. He designed a soft prosthesis made of skin and cartilage, but the project
had to be abandoned as no surgeon would attempt it. He then planned to have an extra ear attached to his arm, and this operation took place in April 2009. He envisaged that it would emit sounds as a person came close, but there have been problems with this aspect of the project. No doubt he will continue to pursue new technological avenues to further extend this project. Google his website for updates and to view imagery of the project.
Critical practice
‘Stelarc is the man with two heads. There's the one he is born with. And there's the incredible computerised “prosthetic head” he has created to explore
the narrowing divide between human and artificial intelligence.
‘Stelarc's false head — based on the features of his original one — could also be called the “face of the future”. It looks disturbingly like Orwell's Big
Brother and sounds exactly like HAL, the talking computer that goes insane at the end of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey …
‘It can hold an intelligent discourse on an infinite number of subjects, speaking in perfect sync with appropriate facial expressions …
‘His prosthetic head is the climax of more recent works, examining robotics and human movement. It was developed in California with the help of three
programming experts. Since it first went on show in Glasgow in 2003, the head has been exhibited in London, Toronto and Melbourne.
‘The only flaw is that questions have to be typed on a keyboard — though improvements in voice recognition technology will one day make it possible for
the head to “hear” questions.
‘Soon, Stelarc says, “talking heads” will be the normal way that humans will converse with phones, computers and home-entertainment systems.
‘What interests him more than the technical breakthroughs are the philosophical repercussions: “This is an installation which explores issues of
identity, the idea of what it is to be intelligent.”
‘Like a human, it doesn't always give the same answer to the same question — it constantly reassesses updated information in its database. In other words, it
can “rethink”. Also like a human, it tries to change the subject if it doesn't know the answer.
‘But the prosthetic head does have one limitation. “It's only as intelligent as the person asking the questions,” admits Stelarc.’
Steve Meacham, ‘Man with two heads puts his best face forward’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 May 2005, p. 3.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTIONS
- What are the pros and cons of talking to Stelarc through
the medium of the artwork Prosthetic Head? What three questions would you
ask it to discover his personality, identity and values? - Analyse the critical review by Meacham and one other piece
of writing by an art critic quoted in this book to explain the role of an art
critic.
In the attachment below is a sample student essay on technology.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/stelarc/a29-extended_body.html - Interview with Stelarc
sample_student_essay_-_technology.docx | |
File Size: | 17 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Patricia Piccinini
(b. 1965 Sierra Leone, Africa; lives and works in Australia)
Issues/interests: technological intervention in producing, maintaining and enhancing life; the relationship between the natural and the artificial; family love, maternal and children's relationships with products of technology
Forms: digital media, computer-manipulated photography, video, sculpture
Frame: Postmodern in use of technology, confronting subject matter
Conceptual Framework: Her artworks are her personal response to ethical issues of the contemporary world. Her works elicit an emotive response from the viewer.
Piccinini's Nature's Little Helpers exhibition contained a series of photographs; a rather disturbing video of a hairy creature with a very malleable face with egg-type shapes crawling under its skin; relief metallic automotive-finish sculptural panels; sculptures that looked like high-tech, beautifully designed, fibreglass motorcycles cum jet-skis that have taken on lifelike, alligator/tadpole-type characteristics (Piccinini calls them ‘cyclepups’), with one that had seemingly half crawled up the wall. But by far the most compelling, or perhaps repelling, feature was the ‘family’ of ‘creatures’ she calls bodyguards. At first it is hard to see the links between these strangely believable ‘bodyguard’ creatures with saggy skin, wrinkles, moles, freckles and scarce hair, and the perfect, padded-leather,
metallic-finish sculptures. After browsing the whole exhibition, subtle links appear, other than the most obvious one of the ‘bodyguards’ being in the photographs. We see the egg shapes in the wall relief repeated in the video, while the creatures' tent-shaped leather homes link not only to the leather of
the sculptures but also to a human's tent in one of the photographs. In this witty exhibition a builder crouched on top of the frame of a house while a
‘bodyguard’ looks on in one of her photographs. She seems to be bringing the different aspects and interests of her artmaking practice together.
Piccinini's Nature's Little Helpers exhibition contained a series
Nature's Little Helpers — Bodyguard (for the Golden Helmeted Honeyeater) 2004 (above)
silicon, fibreglass, leather, plywood, hair
150 × 40 × 60 cm (detail)
Photo: Graham Baring
In the artist's statement that accompanies this exhibition Piccinini writes:
"Creation, birth, responsibility, babies, the changing nature of the environment and our relationship with it, the increasingly nebulous boundaries between the technological and the natural world — each of these works explores these same ideas in different ways …"
There are a few main stories that intertwine in this show. The first, told primarily through the figurative silicone sculptures and photographs, is about doing the wrong things for the right reasons and whether we can use technology to solve environmental problems. The second story is more general and can be
found in all the works. It is about the way that some stuff begins to take over places where it doesn't belong. A third story is about babies. Actually it is not really a story; it is more a recurring image. Everywhere you look in this show there are babies. I have just had a baby myself …
Crossing the borderline between machine and animal, Piccinini continued her work inspired by highly sophisticated designed objects, beginning with Truck
Babies 1999, in which she explored the nature of desire in our world of technological commodification and global consumer culture. A related series,
Car Nuggets 1999, consisted of shiny coloured duco objects suggesting a morphing between organic rock shapes and the sharpness, sophistication,
precision and gloss finish of manufactured design. In these works Piccinini questions the uniqueness or essence of such objects, the quality that makes
consumer products so appealing.
Issues/interests: technological intervention in producing, maintaining and enhancing life; the relationship between the natural and the artificial; family love, maternal and children's relationships with products of technology
Forms: digital media, computer-manipulated photography, video, sculpture
Frame: Postmodern in use of technology, confronting subject matter
Conceptual Framework: Her artworks are her personal response to ethical issues of the contemporary world. Her works elicit an emotive response from the viewer.
Piccinini's Nature's Little Helpers exhibition contained a series of photographs; a rather disturbing video of a hairy creature with a very malleable face with egg-type shapes crawling under its skin; relief metallic automotive-finish sculptural panels; sculptures that looked like high-tech, beautifully designed, fibreglass motorcycles cum jet-skis that have taken on lifelike, alligator/tadpole-type characteristics (Piccinini calls them ‘cyclepups’), with one that had seemingly half crawled up the wall. But by far the most compelling, or perhaps repelling, feature was the ‘family’ of ‘creatures’ she calls bodyguards. At first it is hard to see the links between these strangely believable ‘bodyguard’ creatures with saggy skin, wrinkles, moles, freckles and scarce hair, and the perfect, padded-leather,
metallic-finish sculptures. After browsing the whole exhibition, subtle links appear, other than the most obvious one of the ‘bodyguards’ being in the photographs. We see the egg shapes in the wall relief repeated in the video, while the creatures' tent-shaped leather homes link not only to the leather of
the sculptures but also to a human's tent in one of the photographs. In this witty exhibition a builder crouched on top of the frame of a house while a
‘bodyguard’ looks on in one of her photographs. She seems to be bringing the different aspects and interests of her artmaking practice together.
Piccinini's Nature's Little Helpers exhibition contained a series
Nature's Little Helpers — Bodyguard (for the Golden Helmeted Honeyeater) 2004 (above)
silicon, fibreglass, leather, plywood, hair
150 × 40 × 60 cm (detail)
Photo: Graham Baring
In the artist's statement that accompanies this exhibition Piccinini writes:
"Creation, birth, responsibility, babies, the changing nature of the environment and our relationship with it, the increasingly nebulous boundaries between the technological and the natural world — each of these works explores these same ideas in different ways …"
There are a few main stories that intertwine in this show. The first, told primarily through the figurative silicone sculptures and photographs, is about doing the wrong things for the right reasons and whether we can use technology to solve environmental problems. The second story is more general and can be
found in all the works. It is about the way that some stuff begins to take over places where it doesn't belong. A third story is about babies. Actually it is not really a story; it is more a recurring image. Everywhere you look in this show there are babies. I have just had a baby myself …
Crossing the borderline between machine and animal, Piccinini continued her work inspired by highly sophisticated designed objects, beginning with Truck
Babies 1999, in which she explored the nature of desire in our world of technological commodification and global consumer culture. A related series,
Car Nuggets 1999, consisted of shiny coloured duco objects suggesting a morphing between organic rock shapes and the sharpness, sophistication,
precision and gloss finish of manufactured design. In these works Piccinini questions the uniqueness or essence of such objects, the quality that makes
consumer products so appealing.
Doubting Thomas 2008
silicon, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, chair
100 × 53 × 90 cm
Photo: Graham Baring
The Stags 2008
From the Wellspring exhibition
fibreglass, auto paint, plastic, stainless steel, leather, rubber tyres
196 × 224 × 167 cm
Photo: Graham Baring
The Stags 2008 (above) brings to mind sleek, finely tuned, individually created bikes. Although more akin to industrial design than the future genetic explorations of her wrinkled, sparsely haired, humanoid creatures, the sculptures still suggest a life force. They are an extension of earlier works of shiny metal and superbly crafted leather such as Sandman Leather 2002, in which the front of a car mutates into segmented moulded leather and other ‘bikes’ that suggest lizard-like creatures, which begin to slither up walls. In these 2008 works the ‘creatures’ suggest deer with ‘antlers’ made from rear-view mirrors.
Artist's practice
Intention/influences
Piccinini is a Postmodern artist both in her use of technology and in her creation of artworks that grapple with some of the big ethical issues of our contemporary world. She has stated that she tries in her art to connect to and reflect something of our times and what is happening in them. Her works comment on the increasingly artificial nature of contemporary life, from plastic surgery and genetically modified food to IVF programs and stem cell research (genetic engineering). This interest in and exploration of medical research and technological intervention developed from her personal experience of watching her mother die early from cancer.
Piccinini's ‘creations’ challenge us to contemplate the consequences of scientific intervention in the natural world. Her fascinating creations are cutely grotesque rather than frightening or threatening. The medical research into cloning, such as the celebrated Scottish sheep Dolly, the first cloned animal in history (which died in 2003), and other experiments to synthetically create human parts have acted as stimuli to Piccinini's art.
Piccinini's first artworks that involved ‘invented’ life forms were the LUMP (lifeform with unevolved mutant properties) works of 1994, a line of
genetically superior, custom-built babies. With these LUMPs she parodied the IVF market and eugenics research (the science of improving the gene pool of
a population by controlling inherited characteristics). She also focused on the LUMP as a commodity and on its relationship to advertising. This series
of artworks of digital photographs featured Piccinini's technological version of a baby — a comical, shiny, plastic model with stick-on organs, blue eyes and
full lips — held lovingly by a TV personality. This work seemed to combine the dream world of advertising with the technological future.
Technique
Piccinini is highly creative and her works have a slickness that reflects her concern for precision. They also celebrate the power of plastic as an infinitely
transformable substance.
Although she employs a variety of media, nearly all (her drawings are an exception) rely on the language and methods of the computer (sculpture,
photography, video). The artist has explained that she feels the computer is the most appropriate medium for commenting on our contemporary world. After
extensive research she fuses digital imagery with her understanding of complex scientific and cultural processes. Her practice could be called conceptual,
since it is her imaginative ideas that are the focus; she chooses the media that can best express those ideas.
She works from a Postmodern perspective, ‘directing’ the production of her ideas so she can employ various new technologies and
specialist expertise in a wide range of forms.
Conceptual Framework
Piccinini's artworks are her response to our changing world. She encourages us to recognise that technology and technological intervention now play crucial
roles in our lives, and that this raises important moral issues. She does not offer us easy answers to these moral challenges, but she does want us to be
aware of them. She seems to encourage a feeling of compassion towards the offspring of technology, her works suggesting an acceptance rather than a conflict between humans and machines.
Critical practice
‘Each of [Piccinini's] collaborators is a specialist in their field … Though Piccinini is not handling the paintbrush, she is firm about what she wants and
exactly how she wants it done … Finding the right people and being able to talk their language … are important components of the modern artist's skill set.
‘Piccinini rejects the notion that artists should always make their own work, that art is somehow about the hand of God coming through the hand of the artist.
[She says] “I could spend a lifetime being a car modeller or sculptor, but I haven't because I'm not interested in the process … for me that's not really
engaging. It might look nice but it doesn't tell me about the world I live in, and I am fascinated and elated and upset by the world I live in.”’
Katrina Strickland, ‘Mother Love’, Weekend Australian Magazine, 3–4 May 2003, p. 17.
‘For several years, Patricia Piccinini has been charting the changing fortunes and status of “the natural” in the increasingly technologically mediated world of the late 20th century. Her work is grounded within the experience of the western, urban culture from which she comes. It makes no grandiose claims to represent universal or spiritual truths, rather it attempts to convey the realities and issues of the complex culture of its times. Working with images and technologies drawn from the contemporary media environment, Piccinini has developed a practice that in many ways owes more to the traditions of social realism or surrealism than Pop …’
Peter Hennessey, ‘Patricia Piccinini: plastic realist’, in Blair French (ed.), Photofiles: an Australian photography reader, Power Publications/Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, 1999, p. 247.
‘Patricia Piccinini is again tinkering with genetic engineering … Her multimedia practice combines a compelling mix of fact and science fiction.
‘In the series Nature's Little Helpers, the artist cross-breeds politically correct concepts of environmentalism with a Frankenstein logic of mad science. She appears to be in the business of making the world a safer place for the golden helmeted honeyeater … an endangered bird native to her home state of Victoria.
‘The centrepiece to Unbreaking Eggs is a sculpture of a creature that Piccinini has designed as a “bodyguard” for the honeyeater. Half-monkey, half hobbit, the creature has been meticulously engineered from silicon, fibreglass,leather, plywood and hair. It has horns sprouting from its chin and a seriously
large set of fangs. Despite these intimidating quirks, the critter has more than a touch of warmth, sporting a rash of freckles across its nose and an endearing
paunch.’
Dominique Angeloro, ‘Freakshow Frodo’, Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Metro’, 2–8 September 2005.
‘A Piccinini show is not to be missed. Her work always unnerves the viewer with its focus on imaginary creatures that begin human, then veer into something
disturbingly non-human. In this latest body of work she continues to explore the outer limits of manipulating the human form.’
Margaret Mereton, Harper's Bazaar, November 2008.
‘Shock. Disgust. Fascination and something approaching love. Patricia Piccinini's bizarre, lifelike sculptures can elicit all these emotions when you
meet them face to face.
‘What are we to make of an old woman with a dugong's body sleeping peacefully in the arms of a six-year-old boy? Or a baby with parchment skin and brown eyes the size of cricket balls gazing anxiously from a crib?
“I think they're beautiful,” said Piccinini, a Melbourne artist whose exhibition, Related Individuals, opens at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 gallery tonight. “This show is about our relationship with the stuff we create — and a lot of that stuff is alive.”
‘Piccinini, 42, has long been fascinated with genetics, cloning and transgenics. The works in her show may look like ghastly mutations — but spend some time with them and they become strangely empathetic.
‘That is partly because they enjoy calm, affectionate relationships with children.
‘For example, a work called Doubting Thomas shows a young boy putting his hand into the gaping mouth of a pink creature that looks like the wombat from hell.
‘On closer inspection, one or more of the creature's offspring can be seen cavorting inside their mother's well-lubricated maw.
“This boy is curious — he has no disgust or malice,” Piccinini said. “It's tender and soft the way he is approaching it. There's mutual trust.”
‘All of the show's creatures were made from silicone by the Sydney company Makeup Effects Group. The hair — most of it human — was punched into the scalps strand by strand.
‘The young boy in Doubting Thomas boasts some hair clippings — and cast-off clothes —from Piccinini's three-year-old son, Hector. The dugong in The
Long Awaited has a head of yak's hair because, apparently, grey human hair is hard to come by.
“The work is about empathy,” said Piccinini, who gave the bug-eyed baby, The Foundling, wrinkled skin and imploring eyes to elicit concern and tenderness.
‘She does look different but she's still beautiful.”
Richard Jinman, ‘A lovable lump in the lap of luxury’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 2008, p. 3.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTIONS
Conceptual Framework
(answer in virtual group discussion area)
1. How has Piccinini created a feeling of unreality and of a future world?
2. In Piccinini's work repulsive, threatening creatures are merged with the cute and endearing. What is your reaction to Nature's Little Helpers — Bodyguard and Doubting Thomas 2008?
Write your own response to this work.
DISCUSSION
Piccinini is the ideas person, working collaboratively, acting as the director or administrator of her artworks. This raises the question: does an artist need to be physically involved with all aspects of their artworks' creation? It is also interesting to consider studio practice historically: compare Piccinini's practice with that of, for example, Renaissance artists, who were supported by apprentice assistants, or the ‘art genius’ reputation of Modernists such as Matisse and Mondrian.
From the Wellspring exhibition
fibreglass, auto paint, plastic, stainless steel, leather, rubber tyres
196 × 224 × 167 cm
Photo: Graham Baring
The Stags 2008 (above) brings to mind sleek, finely tuned, individually created bikes. Although more akin to industrial design than the future genetic explorations of her wrinkled, sparsely haired, humanoid creatures, the sculptures still suggest a life force. They are an extension of earlier works of shiny metal and superbly crafted leather such as Sandman Leather 2002, in which the front of a car mutates into segmented moulded leather and other ‘bikes’ that suggest lizard-like creatures, which begin to slither up walls. In these 2008 works the ‘creatures’ suggest deer with ‘antlers’ made from rear-view mirrors.
Artist's practice
Intention/influences
Piccinini is a Postmodern artist both in her use of technology and in her creation of artworks that grapple with some of the big ethical issues of our contemporary world. She has stated that she tries in her art to connect to and reflect something of our times and what is happening in them. Her works comment on the increasingly artificial nature of contemporary life, from plastic surgery and genetically modified food to IVF programs and stem cell research (genetic engineering). This interest in and exploration of medical research and technological intervention developed from her personal experience of watching her mother die early from cancer.
Piccinini's ‘creations’ challenge us to contemplate the consequences of scientific intervention in the natural world. Her fascinating creations are cutely grotesque rather than frightening or threatening. The medical research into cloning, such as the celebrated Scottish sheep Dolly, the first cloned animal in history (which died in 2003), and other experiments to synthetically create human parts have acted as stimuli to Piccinini's art.
Piccinini's first artworks that involved ‘invented’ life forms were the LUMP (lifeform with unevolved mutant properties) works of 1994, a line of
genetically superior, custom-built babies. With these LUMPs she parodied the IVF market and eugenics research (the science of improving the gene pool of
a population by controlling inherited characteristics). She also focused on the LUMP as a commodity and on its relationship to advertising. This series
of artworks of digital photographs featured Piccinini's technological version of a baby — a comical, shiny, plastic model with stick-on organs, blue eyes and
full lips — held lovingly by a TV personality. This work seemed to combine the dream world of advertising with the technological future.
Technique
Piccinini is highly creative and her works have a slickness that reflects her concern for precision. They also celebrate the power of plastic as an infinitely
transformable substance.
Although she employs a variety of media, nearly all (her drawings are an exception) rely on the language and methods of the computer (sculpture,
photography, video). The artist has explained that she feels the computer is the most appropriate medium for commenting on our contemporary world. After
extensive research she fuses digital imagery with her understanding of complex scientific and cultural processes. Her practice could be called conceptual,
since it is her imaginative ideas that are the focus; she chooses the media that can best express those ideas.
She works from a Postmodern perspective, ‘directing’ the production of her ideas so she can employ various new technologies and
specialist expertise in a wide range of forms.
Conceptual Framework
Piccinini's artworks are her response to our changing world. She encourages us to recognise that technology and technological intervention now play crucial
roles in our lives, and that this raises important moral issues. She does not offer us easy answers to these moral challenges, but she does want us to be
aware of them. She seems to encourage a feeling of compassion towards the offspring of technology, her works suggesting an acceptance rather than a conflict between humans and machines.
Critical practice
‘Each of [Piccinini's] collaborators is a specialist in their field … Though Piccinini is not handling the paintbrush, she is firm about what she wants and
exactly how she wants it done … Finding the right people and being able to talk their language … are important components of the modern artist's skill set.
‘Piccinini rejects the notion that artists should always make their own work, that art is somehow about the hand of God coming through the hand of the artist.
[She says] “I could spend a lifetime being a car modeller or sculptor, but I haven't because I'm not interested in the process … for me that's not really
engaging. It might look nice but it doesn't tell me about the world I live in, and I am fascinated and elated and upset by the world I live in.”’
Katrina Strickland, ‘Mother Love’, Weekend Australian Magazine, 3–4 May 2003, p. 17.
‘For several years, Patricia Piccinini has been charting the changing fortunes and status of “the natural” in the increasingly technologically mediated world of the late 20th century. Her work is grounded within the experience of the western, urban culture from which she comes. It makes no grandiose claims to represent universal or spiritual truths, rather it attempts to convey the realities and issues of the complex culture of its times. Working with images and technologies drawn from the contemporary media environment, Piccinini has developed a practice that in many ways owes more to the traditions of social realism or surrealism than Pop …’
Peter Hennessey, ‘Patricia Piccinini: plastic realist’, in Blair French (ed.), Photofiles: an Australian photography reader, Power Publications/Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, 1999, p. 247.
‘Patricia Piccinini is again tinkering with genetic engineering … Her multimedia practice combines a compelling mix of fact and science fiction.
‘In the series Nature's Little Helpers, the artist cross-breeds politically correct concepts of environmentalism with a Frankenstein logic of mad science. She appears to be in the business of making the world a safer place for the golden helmeted honeyeater … an endangered bird native to her home state of Victoria.
‘The centrepiece to Unbreaking Eggs is a sculpture of a creature that Piccinini has designed as a “bodyguard” for the honeyeater. Half-monkey, half hobbit, the creature has been meticulously engineered from silicon, fibreglass,leather, plywood and hair. It has horns sprouting from its chin and a seriously
large set of fangs. Despite these intimidating quirks, the critter has more than a touch of warmth, sporting a rash of freckles across its nose and an endearing
paunch.’
Dominique Angeloro, ‘Freakshow Frodo’, Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Metro’, 2–8 September 2005.
‘A Piccinini show is not to be missed. Her work always unnerves the viewer with its focus on imaginary creatures that begin human, then veer into something
disturbingly non-human. In this latest body of work she continues to explore the outer limits of manipulating the human form.’
Margaret Mereton, Harper's Bazaar, November 2008.
‘Shock. Disgust. Fascination and something approaching love. Patricia Piccinini's bizarre, lifelike sculptures can elicit all these emotions when you
meet them face to face.
‘What are we to make of an old woman with a dugong's body sleeping peacefully in the arms of a six-year-old boy? Or a baby with parchment skin and brown eyes the size of cricket balls gazing anxiously from a crib?
“I think they're beautiful,” said Piccinini, a Melbourne artist whose exhibition, Related Individuals, opens at Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 gallery tonight. “This show is about our relationship with the stuff we create — and a lot of that stuff is alive.”
‘Piccinini, 42, has long been fascinated with genetics, cloning and transgenics. The works in her show may look like ghastly mutations — but spend some time with them and they become strangely empathetic.
‘That is partly because they enjoy calm, affectionate relationships with children.
‘For example, a work called Doubting Thomas shows a young boy putting his hand into the gaping mouth of a pink creature that looks like the wombat from hell.
‘On closer inspection, one or more of the creature's offspring can be seen cavorting inside their mother's well-lubricated maw.
“This boy is curious — he has no disgust or malice,” Piccinini said. “It's tender and soft the way he is approaching it. There's mutual trust.”
‘All of the show's creatures were made from silicone by the Sydney company Makeup Effects Group. The hair — most of it human — was punched into the scalps strand by strand.
‘The young boy in Doubting Thomas boasts some hair clippings — and cast-off clothes —from Piccinini's three-year-old son, Hector. The dugong in The
Long Awaited has a head of yak's hair because, apparently, grey human hair is hard to come by.
“The work is about empathy,” said Piccinini, who gave the bug-eyed baby, The Foundling, wrinkled skin and imploring eyes to elicit concern and tenderness.
‘She does look different but she's still beautiful.”
Richard Jinman, ‘A lovable lump in the lap of luxury’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 2008, p. 3.
SHORT RESPONSE QUESTIONS
Conceptual Framework
(answer in virtual group discussion area)
1. How has Piccinini created a feeling of unreality and of a future world?
2. In Piccinini's work repulsive, threatening creatures are merged with the cute and endearing. What is your reaction to Nature's Little Helpers — Bodyguard and Doubting Thomas 2008?
- In Piccinini's work repulsive, threatening creatures are
merged with the cute and endearing. What is your reaction to Nature's Little
Helpers — Bodyguard and Doubting Thomas 2008?
Write your own response to this work.
DISCUSSION
Piccinini is the ideas person, working collaboratively, acting as the director or administrator of her artworks. This raises the question: does an artist need to be physically involved with all aspects of their artworks' creation? It is also interesting to consider studio practice historically: compare Piccinini's practice with that of, for example, Renaissance artists, who were supported by apprentice assistants, or the ‘art genius’ reputation of Modernists such as Matisse and Mondrian.
sample_student_essay_-_technology_piccinini.docx | |
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http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/31/Patricia_Piccinini/1202/ - a great resource to see an exhibition by Piccinini