Bill Viola (born 1951) is a contemporary video artist whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human experiences such as birth, death and aspects of consciousness.

His works include room-size video installations, sound environments, electronic music performances and flat panel video pieces, as well as works for television broadcast, concerts, opera, and sacred spaces.

Bill Viola has been referred to as “the Rembrandt of the video age” and, indeed, his work pays homage not only to the famous Dutch master but to the tradition of creating large-scale works of art that draw the viewer into beautifully painted images and compelling narratives. There is often a spiritual component to his work, with elements of Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and Christian mysticism underpinning themes considered universal: birth, death, love, sex, grief, and redemption. Viola considers the “phenomena of sense perception” as a path to self-awareness; therefore, his work is a blend of experimental video art and sound, including avant-garde music performance. He was one of the earliest artists to explore the potential of the video camera, which in its most basic form in the 1970s only vaguely resembles the sophisticated devices of today. As one of the pioneers of the medium, he has consistently exploited its rapidly changing technology to create over 150 artworks over the last 40 years.

 Slowly Turning Narrative offers Viola’s characteristically hypnotic sense of wonderment at the world and also reveals the fullness of his philosophical vision. Slowly Turning Narrative includes two projections on a large central rotating screen. One presents images of virtually everything that constitutes life, embracing the broadest sweep from birth to death. The other shows a close-up of Viola’s head incanting “the one who lives,” “the one who acts,” “the one who reads,” and more. As this screen rotates, a mirror on the back comes into view, reflecting the image of the viewer in this video evocation of human existence.

The work is concerned with the enclosing nature of self-image and the external circulation of potentially infinite (and therefore unattainable) states of being, all revolving around the still point of the central self. The room and all persons within it become a continually shifting projection screen, enclosing the image and its reflections, and all locked into the regular cadence of the chanting voice and the rotating screen. The entire space becomes an interior for the revelations of a constantly turning mind absorbed with itself. The confluences and conflicts of image, intent, content, and emotion perpetually circulate as the screen slowly turns in the space.

The artist created a system of parallel fabric veils to function both as sculptural elements and screens to catch the light of multiple projections.

Thin parallel layers of translucent cloth hang loosely across the center of a dark room. Two projectors at opposite ends of the space face each other and project images into the layers of material. The images show a man and a woman as they approach and move away from the camera, viewed in various nocturnal landscapes. They each appear on separate opposing video channels, and are seen gradually moving from dark areas of shadow into areas of bright light. The cloth material diffuses the light and the images dissipate in intensity and focus as they penetrate further into the scrim layers, eventually intersecting each other as gossamer presences on the central veil. Recorded independently, the images of the man and the woman never coexist in the same video frame. It is only the light from their images that intermingles in the fabric of the hanging veils. The cone of light emerging from each projector is articulated in space by the layers of material, revealing its presence as a three-dimensional form that moves through and fills the empty space of the room with its translucent mass.

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Hito Steyerl is one of the artists that I have researched into for my project. I actually saw some of her works when I went to the Venice Biennale back in November 2019.

• Born in 1966
• German filmmaker, moving-image artist & innovator of the essay documentary
• Topic of interests: media, technology & global circulation of images
• PhD in Philosophy from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
• Currently a professor of New Media Art at Berlin University of Arts
• Co-founded the Research Centre for Proxy Politics with Vera Tollmann & Boaz Levin

Her work concerns topics of militarization, surveillance migration, the role of media in globalization, and the dissemination of images and the culture surrounding it. Steyerl has pushed both the role and the label of fine artist, which is demonstrated through her tendencies and interests in engaging the presentational context of art. Her work is developed from research, interviews, and the collection of found images, culminating in pedagogically-oriented work in the realm of forensic documentaries and dream-like montages.

Exhibitions

May You Live in Interesting Times, 58th Venice Biennale, May 11th – Nov 24th 2019

Power Plants, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, April 11th – May 6th 2019

Steyerl’s new project for the Serpentine Galleries considers power and inequality in society, mapping unequal wealth distribution in the communities surrounding the Serpentine which has been recorded as one of the most socially uneven areas in Europe. Visitors to the exhibition will see an augmented reality app designed to expand our social vision of some local communities to reveal what Steyerl calls Actual Reality, a series of guided neighborhood ‘power walks’, and a new video installation created using artificial intelligence trained to predict the future. Beginning with the premise that ‘’’power’’ is the necessary condition for any digital technology’, Steyerl considers the multiple meanings of the word, including electrical currents, the ecological powers of plants or natural elements, and the complex networks of authority that shape our environments.

Hello World―For the Post-Human Age, Art Tower Mito Japan, Feb 10th – May 6th 2018

How Not to Be Seen—a video by artist and critic Hito Steyerl—presents five lessons in invisibility. As titles that divide the video into distinct but interrelated sections, these lessons include how to: 1. Make something invisible for a camera, 2. Be invisible in plain sight, 3. Become invisible by becoming a picture, 4. Be invisible by disappearing, and 5. Become invisible by merging into a world made of pictures.¹

A satirical take on instructional films, How Not to Be Seen features a mix of actual and virtual performers and scenes, which illustrate the strategies for becoming invisible, communicated in an authoritative narrative voiceover. In the fourth lesson, the narrator outlines ways of disappearing—including “living in a gated community” or “being a disappeared person as an enemy of the state”³—while panning shots of architectural renderings of luxury living and public spaces, populated largely by computer-generated people, unfold across the screen.

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PRIX DE ROME

I went to Amsterdam last year and saw Accidents waiting to Happen (2019) at the Stedelijk Museum. Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch the performance that came with the installation but I really like seeing the sculptures. They were all very unique and had a lot of character. The room did emanate a hospital setting because of how large and white the space was. But my favourite part of the work was the micro-cameras that were attached to the walls all around the room. They were connected to the multiple monitors that were in each corner of the room and played a live streaming of the people in the room. Some of the monitors were flipped upside down whilst others had a time delay and its hard to tell which camera connects to which channel. This gave the sense of surveillance over the viewer, and it was kind of confusing knowing that we were being filmed but not knowing from which direction.

I really liked this because the viewer becomes part of the work, and it was engaging in an almost frustrating kind of way. The concept that the artists were trying to achieve also worked well because the camera captures the viewers alongside the sculptures, having the two diverge.

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(born 1967 in Mexico City) is a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist who works with ideas from architecture, technological theater and performance. He holds a Bachelor of Science in physical chemistry from Concordia University in Montreal. Currently, Lozano-Hemmer lives and works in Montreal and Madrid.

A lot of Lozano-Hemmer’s work are interactive installations that require an engagement from the audience. Having a history of BA Science in Physical Chemistry, Hemmer uses his knowledge and skills to manipulate and use advanced technology in his work.

Presence and participation are important in a lot of his work because the work requires to be activated by the viewer. A lot of the work is defined by the viewer’s active engagement. His fuses architecture with performance art to create work that discusses society and human nature, for his immersive technological installations.

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Marina Abramović is a Serbian artist known for her vanguard performance pieces that use her body both as subject and vehicle. Incorporating performance, sound, video, sculpture, and photography into her practice, Abramović often braves dangerous or grueling acts to investigate sensation and its effects, often with audience participation. “The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind,” she stated. Born on November 30, 1946 in Belgrade, Serbia (former Yugoslavia), Abramović met German performance artist Ulay while living in Amsterdam, the couple continued their collaboration until their separation in the late 1980s. Part of a group of avant-garde artists, including Vito Acconci and Chris Burden, that experimented with using one’s body as a medium in the 1970s, Abramović pushed physical and mental boundaries to explore themes of emotional and spiritual transfiguration.

Rhythm 0 by the Serbian artist Marina Abramovic comprises seventy-two objects set out on a long table covered with a white tablecloth, as well as sixty-nine slides. Thus, for a period of six hours, visitors were invited to use any of the objects on the table on the artist, who subjected herself to their treatment. The artist has stated, ‘the experience I drew from this work was that in your own performances you can go very far, but if you leave decisions to the public, you can be killed’ (quoted in Ward 2009, p.132). 

The work was inspired by her belief that stretching the length of a performance beyond expectations serves to alter our perception of time and foster a deeper engagement in the experience. Seated silently at a wooden table across from an empty chair, she waited as people took turns sitting in the chair and locking eyes with her. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day, she met the gaze of 1,000 strangers, many of whom were moved to tears.

In The House with the Ocean View, Abramović spent twelve days in the Sean Kelly Gallery without eating, writing or speaking. Contained within three ‘rooms’ built six feet off the ground, Abramović slept, drank water, urinated, showered and gazed at the viewers wearing a differently colored outfit each day. She could walk between the three rooms, but the ladders leading to the floor had rungs made of butcher knives. Set to the sound of a metronome, Abramović ritualized the activities of daily life, focusing on the self and simplicity while eliminating all aspects of narrative and dialogue. She saw this piece as an act of purification – not just for herself, but also for any viewer who entered the space. This piece was a shift from the masochism of her earlier works to performances that focus more on ideas of presence and shared energy, although there is still the element of danger present in the butcher knife ladder. In addition, it was an extension of the challenging durational works that have long been a significant aspect of Abramović’s career.

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21 October 2011 – 29 January 2012
Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku, Finland
Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker
Curated by Mia Hannula

This is a project of multiple video installations through which the idea of ‘madness’ is given a variety of interpretations. It is an experiment in audio-visual story-telling. Distinct from cinema, in the installation the ‘second-person’, the visitor, is in charge of making the stories through their own itinerary and combination of stories, portraits, and scenes on view.

Landscapes of Madness constitutes a voyage of discovery that can take any length of time, from several minutes up to several hours depending on your interest. But we hope all visits will be immersive experiences, leading up to engaged and engaging encounters. ​The exhibition offers experiences both familiar and unfamiliar. In a combination of shock, pleasure, strangeness and beauty, you make a journey through what is usually called “madness”. You wander through the spaces and keep encountering new forms of madness—some tragic, some humorous; some play-acted and some “really mad”. This raises the question that you are implicitly requested to ponder: are these people, and the people I encounter mad, do they play the fool, or am I too rigid to allow them to be sane; and what does the answer to that question say about me?

The author of the book from which our project originated and her husband are sitting in the 10-minutes two-screen projection installation “The Space In-Between”. Another serendipitous mise-en-abyme: Françoise appears in the left screen, as the analyst treating the homeless Herlat, a man traumatised by the war history of his family and his status as “ersatz Kind” – two siblings died before his birth. In the end, his problems are resolved. In the foreground the three-screen video sculpture “Office Hours”, showing brief interactions between patients and analyst.

A near-but-not-quite immersive experience of witnessing the dynamic and effect-laden process of an analysis. In the last part of the gallery, with two-screen back-projection, a domestic rug indicates the space of the psychoanalyst’s office where the “treatment” takes place. On both edges of the rug an arm chair is available for visitors to sit in and peek into the “office”. The chairs may be moved. This gives the visitor the freedom, but also the near-compelling need, to take a position. Memories of both analyst and patient circulate and sometimes seem to invade the present of the analytic event. As in Psychoanalysis on Trial, one can listen and look with either party, or shift from one position to the other. But this time we are in the privacy of the consultation room and witness the individual interaction between analyst and patient, This most dramatic installation stages a situation where indifference is an untenable position, and the identification with the patient is inevitable.
Two-channel video projection (10:31:01)

Psychoanalysis on Trial
On two facing walls, a court consisting of Fools and “Mad” Geniuses attack Françoise. In the name of the culture of gesture, they indict psychoanalysis for repressing gesture in favour of the word. Françoise protests that she cannot be identified with psychoanalysis – the deeper reason for this denial being that she has her own qualms and doubts about her profession. The great confusion that runs through this work is that between justice and helping the patients. Failing in the latter – is that a matter of guilt? The question remains unresolved, during this pastiche of a late-medieval “sottie”. This political theatre took the form of a mock court case. The piece with its facing screens also has a theatrical form. Seats are positioned between the two screens. As a consequence, visitors will have to turn around to follow either side of the case, and since the sound bounces back and forth whereas the subtitles appear on both sides, a certain restlessness of the body translates the hesitations of the mind.
Two-channel video projection (08:45:24)

The nature of the exhibition encourages the “audience’s consideration, contemplation and confrontation.”

Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice edited by Kathryn Brown pg19

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WIN><WIN @ tHE eXIHIBTION eCO-viSIONARIES AT THE ra

“We are in this crazy, unforeseen and incomprehensible situation where we are competing against jellyfish. And they are winning”, says the Australian marine biologist and jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin. For at least 670 million years, jellyfish have been floating unchanged through the world’s oceans and almost anything that damages the ecosystem seems to do them good. Overfishing, plastic trash or ocean warming: none of this harms them; instead the spread of jellyfish continues to increase. In collaboration with marine biologists and animal keepers, in win > < win Rimini Protokoll is flipping the view of these creatures around and staging it as a gaze directed back at their observers. What happens when humans and jellyfish compete for the planet’s ecosystem? What species are best prepared for the threat of global warming? Will humanity survive?

The work comprises of a small seated auditorium, with headphones that plays a narrative speech to each individual viewer. The viewer watches a reflective circular screen in front of them which reveals itself to be a jellyfish tank. The narrator in the headset discusses about the longevity of a jellyfish. Regarding the simplicity of the jellyfish having a small and simple system, we are forced to contemplate on the fragility of human existence and to reflect on the fact that jellyfish will probably outlive humanity. We are forced to reflect on our impact on the the world and ecosystems in the small time that we have on this world. This conclusion is formed when the screen reveals another set of people through the glass/tank having the same experience (listening to the same narration) but in a different timeline, being compared to the jellyfish.

I like this work because its very clever, in the way that it uses other humans (viewer) as part of the work to make the comparison with the jellyfish. It confronts us to reflect on our temporary existence whilst exploring the role of the viewer. The viewer becomes part of the work. Not only do they become part of the work, but the confrontation is moving as it is with other humans that are currently the other part of the room. The installation works by making us confront other humans.

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BOB at Serpentine Galleries

Ian Cheng is an American artist born in 1984, having graduating from University of California, Berkeley with a dual degree in cognitive science and art practice.

He is known for his live simulation that explore the capacity of living agents to deal with change. These ‘simulations’ are also known to be ‘virtual ecosystems’. The work has less of a focus on the technological aspect and instead, focuses on the how the work can self-evolve and adapt, just like an ecosystem would if any changes are applied to it. The simulation will change and adapt and progress as different factors interact with the work. “It is a format to deliberately exercise the feelings of confusion, anxiety, and cognitive dissonance that accompany the experience of unrelenting change. I wonder if it is possible to love these difficult feelings, because when you love something and there is an abundance of it, you can begin to play and compose with it.“

Cheng’s work highlights the capacity of simulation to express the unpredictable dynamic between order and chaos in a complex system.

Ian Cheng’s work explores the nature of mutation and the capacity of humans to relate to change. Drawing on principles of video game design, improvisation, and cognitive science, Cheng has produced a series of simulations exploring an agent’s capacity to deal with an ever-evolving environment. These works culminated in the Emissaries trilogy, which introduced a narrative agent whose motivation to enact a story was set into conflict with the open-ended chaos of the simulation.

Most recently, he has developed BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI creature whose personality, body, and life story evolve across exhibitions, what Cheng calls “art with a nervous system.” He exhibited BOB at the Serpentine Gallery in 2018, a sentient artwork that was continuously growing and evolving at all times, with every interaction. A grid of monitors shows a limbo space within which an animation of a bright red, spiky serpentine creature slithers about. That’s the titular “BOB.” Depending on when you see the show, BOB will be longer or shorter, and have a greater or fewer number of heads, which branch, hydra-like, from its body, as it evolves in relation to different stimuli.

BOB advances Cheng’s use of simulation to focus on an individual agent’s capacity to deal with surprise: the subjective difference between expectations and perception. Over the course of its lifetime, BOB’s body, mind, and personality evolve to better confront the continuous stream of life’s surprises, and metabolize them into familiar routines. Crucially, BOB incorporates the tutoring influence of the viewer to help offset BOB’s temptation to only satisfy its immediate impulses and childhood biases. As BOB dies many deaths – whether through failures of personality, bad parenting, random accident, or a life well lived – BOB may become synonymous with a reoccurring pattern of behavior, common across all BOB lifetimes, thereby manifesting the undying eternal characteristic of a god.

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• South Korean born
• 1932 -2006
• Fluxus
• Worked in Japan, Germany and USA

Tate Exhibition – Nam June Paik 17 October 2019 – 9 February 2020. This major exhibition is a mesmerising riot of sights and sounds. It brings together over 200 works from throughout his five-decade career – from robots made from old TV screens, to his innovative video works and all-encompassing room-sized installations such as the dazzling Sistine Chapel 1993.

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) brought the television to fine art, treating it as a tactile and multisensory medium and object. Trained as a classical pianist, he came into contact with protagonists of the counterculture and avant-garde movements of the 1960s through his early interests in composition and performance, and this engagement profoundly shaped his outlook at a time when electronic images were becoming increasingly present in everyday life. His groundbreaking work is considered seminal to the development of video art.

Alongside his robotic works, Paik maintained a dynamic drawing practice, both in works on paper and in multimedia sculptures and installations. His modified television sets, in particular, combine the moving image with the free, expressive gesture of abstraction; using brightly colored markers, paints, and other materials, Paik would add expressive layers to the screens.

This sculpture centers on an 18^th-century sculpture of a brassy Buddha posed with a tranquil meditation mudra (a symbolic hand gesture used in Buddhism). A video camera in front of him simultaneously records the statue and displays his reflection on a futuristic looking, sleek white television screen. In this closed circuit loop, the Buddha constantly faces his own projected image, caught in an eternal present tense and unable to transcend from his own physicality. The infinite play of the live electronics indicates that the Buddha is doomed to stay on the surface of reality forever caught in the dance between the mind and object reality. It reveals some fundamental issues brought up by technology, including the ambivalent position of religion, history, and images of our selves in contemporary society when viewed upon a screen, once removed from reality. 

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“Citizens of Nowhere” is the first solo exhibition by Yuri Pattison in Austria – about explores contemporary relationships between truth and artifice conveyed through visual cultures, communication technologies, information circulation and the organisation of space. …. he exhibition set up borrows aesthetics both from marketing suite or showrooms and set dressings of curious urban environment that relates to Pattison’s exploration of global cities as sites of financial interactions between digital devices, bodies, architecture and objects …. “Citizens of Nowhere” presents new organisation and presentation of information – both visible and the invisible – through communication technologies and the urban space, testing out the making, manipulation and simulations of experiences that significantly shape complex and contradictory national or global identities. With distinctions between reality and simulation becoming increasingly porous through the use of intersecting visual, spatial and affective languages, Pattison likewise suggests the artificial to be distinctively meaningful.

Yuri Pattison (born 1986, Dublin) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include “sunset provision”, mother’s tankstation limited, Dublin (2016-17), “user, space”, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2016), “Architectures of Credibility”, Helga Maria Klosterfelde Edition, Berlin (2015) and “Free Traveller”, Cell Projects, London (2014). Group exhibitions include British Art Show 8, Leeds Art Gallery, touring UK venues (2015-17), “The Weight of Data”, Tate Britain, London and “Transparencies”, Bielefelder Kunstverein and Kunstverein Nürnberg (all 2015). Pattison is the recent recipient of the Frieze Artist Award 2016.

New media artist Yuri Pattison uses digital technology, video and sculpture to investigate the political and social ramifications of rapidly developing technology and the depth of visual culture in the Internet age. His works are both physical and digital, taking space both on and offline to explore the notions of open communication, and the flexibility of labor boundaries in the modern workspace. Often taking the form of multi-screen video installations or technology-based sculptures, Pattison’s work is at once relevant and thought provoking.

Frieze London this October, is the winner of the 2016 Frieze ….. “Yuri Pattison is one of today’s most important young artists looking in a critical way at new technologies,” said Frieze Projects curator Raphael Gygax in a statement. He hopes the award will allow “Pattinson to build upon his thought-provoking and increasingly relevant work, exploring cultures of ‘trending’ in the digital economy and the implications for human industry, creativity, and control.”

 At Frieze London 2016, Pattison installed a networked artwork entitled Insights (crisis trolly) throughout the fair, involving a series of ‘Big Board’-style monitors – often used by media companies to visualize sales statistics or popular news articles, enabling a live response to consumer behaviour. The screens collected information from the fair environment as well as the ‘Internet of Things’, speaking to visitors about the ever-expanding universe of data being produced and consumed daily – as well as the politics of data-driven systems, as prophesized in science fiction.

Born in Dublin, 1986, lives and works in London. Yuri Pattison is a tireless, natural thinker at the forefront of a group of emerging artists / intellectuals whose practices, in an inherently 21st century manner, are informed by a seamless merger of hard and soft realities. He works in sculpture and digital media, exploring the visual culture of digital economies and the natures of online/offline skill sharing. Typical, recent examples of his artworks thoughtfully list medium and/or displayed interior contents, as if listed by border security agents: “custom made perspex 1U format box, server PSU & switch, server case fans, AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier (book), PDLC switchable privacy film, cables, generic unpainted architectural 1:100 scale model figures, dust, sebum [an oily secretion of the sebaceous glands], digital timers, travel power adapter…”

Pattison is interested in ideas of transparency – from the open communication of data, to the transparent architectures of new models for shared live/work space, symptomatic of the increasingly flexible and permeable boundaries between life and work. The edition comprises a set of three individual photographs encased in an acrylic box and overlaid with a sheet of 3M™ Privacy Filter. When viewed from a specific angle, the photographs depict scans of sourced objects related to work and productivity, such as the sleep suppressant drug, Modafinil, an Acme Klein bottle and Mac computer parts. user story (power scan), 2016further explores Pattison’s ongoing interest in how contemporary start-up companies, particularly in the tech industry, often draw on the aesthetics of historical speculative environments and the values of progress and transparency are employed for enhanced productivity.

user story (power scan), 2016  – Acrylic box, 3M privacy film, C-Type photographic print, polyester and antistatic tapes, security screws
Size: 33 x 24.5 x 2.5 cm
Edition of 7

LABOR is pleased to announce the first exhibition of Yuri Pattison in Mexico, crisis cast. Pattison’s work explores the multiple relationships between visual cultures, space, communication technologies and the circulation of information. Pattison uses digital technology to investigate the political and social ramifications of the rapid development of technology and the depth of visual culture in the Internet age. His physical works take advantage of the space outside the web to explore the notions of open communication and the flexibility of labor borders in the modern workspace. The artist creates complex scenarios to construct narratives with fictitious scripts that lean towards the theory of conspiracy and the Science fiction. Pattison’s works seek to make visible the vectors of these decisions. In the work that lends its title to the exhibition, Pattison collaborated with a private security firm called CrisisCast to visualize both the visual dimensions of disaster preparedness and the underlying technical infrastructure. Pattison commissioned CrisisCast to produce the preparedness scenario featured in the public solitude video. The firm’s founders use their background as theatre-makers to devise plausible scenarios in which “crises” could emerge.

The work Pattison commissioned features the firm’s performers – some of whom are erstwhile security professionals – traversing a simulated airport. Shot from multiple perspectives, the video referencing the disjoint, ostensibly neutral gaze of CCTV cameras, Tower II integrates the viewers into the spectacle of pseudo-security, displaying a live feed of the gallery spliced into the video footage housed in a server rack. Tower II evokes the material architecture that lies beneath notions like the “the Cloud”.
The cameras installed in the gallery are articulated to pan, zoom, and tilt according to automated settings, creating unique “non-human” perspectives on the space. The gallery’s infrastructure is included in this process as well, integrating the cabling and lighting for the show within a Unistrut grid installed overhead. The gallery’s lighting structure will also be modified to create lights themselves constitute a work entitled always golden hour somewhere, an ongoing piece Pattison conceived which is designed to mimic the color and light patterns of solar cycle within a circuit of preprogrammed interruptions. Evolved from the lighting schemes used in locations like casinos – where a controlled environment and heavy surveillance are combined to produce a form of carceral entertainment – the work also seeks to reify the global, even galactic, discourses brought to bear on the appurtenances of our contemporary “surveillosphere”.

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