Category Archives: installation

Ruth Catlow -Time is speeding up

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Time is speeding up (2016, 11MB, 1:00 min)

This is a beautiful piece, a distillation down to a minute of a three month installation by Ruth Catlow, artist and co-director of the marvellous Furtherfield.
She explains its premise and construction better than I can, so I’ll hand over to her:

This networked video performance and installation is about how life seems to speed up as we get older; based on the reflection that when I was one day old, a day was my whole life but on the second day one day was only half my life etc.
The work was commissioned for ‘We Are Not Alone’, an exhibition for 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK.


During exhibition opening hours between 23rd January -24th April 2016, viewers could watch a live looping video online. At the exhibition people could pose for the web cam, or might be caught looking at the video in which they were soon to be portrayed.
Using a computer programme called Geological Time Piece that I created with Gareth Foote a still webcam image was captured every 3-5 minutes during exhibition opening hours. The camera pointed at a wall in the gallery, upon which a changing text was displayed. The software added each image as a frame to a looping video, of fixed 3 minute duration. The frame density increased every 3 minutes, as each images was added to the video.
In the exhibition space full of movement – of light and shade and people coming and going – people could insert themselves into the video by standing between the webcam and the text. Over three months the human presences started to flicker and disappear and the moving image progressively conveyed a more geological sense of time, the arc of daylight moving through the space, the architecture, and other more static things came to dominate the image. The computer programme stopped running when the exhibition closed by which time the video contained over 3600 images. The final video runs for a minute at 60fps.

Lior Shvil – Rough Cut

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Rough Cut (2007, 54MB, 4 min.)

Born in 1971 in Tel Aviv, Lior Shvil currently lives in New York and recently attended Columbia University’s School of the Arts MFA program.

Shvil works primarily in video, installation and sculpture. His works are multi-layered, both poetic and critical; they tap into collective memory (cultural, mythical, historical), and are inspired by television, cinema and story telling.

Shvil received his B.A. from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem. He has had a solo shows at the Herzliya Museum of Art and the Heder Gallery in Israel. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Haifa Museum of Art in Israel, Milliken Gallery in Stockholm, The 7th International Istanbul Biennial, and NGBK Gallery in Berlin. Shvil won the Samuel Givon Prize for Young Artists, awarded by the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, as well as the Israel-America Fund for Culture, Israel. – See more at: givon art gallery.

Constellation – Covent Garden Winter Lights

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Constellation (2008, 17MB, 3 min.)

“Commissioned by Covent Garden, United Visual Artists lit up the market
halls of Covent Garden with a responsive light installation. Launched as
the flagship piece of the winter season program at Covent Garden the
installation featured 600 custom-designed mirrored LED tubes hanging
above the entire Covent Garden market space.


The volumetric arrangement of the tubes created a canvas in which three
dimensional light formations were made possible. Constellation was also
individually controllable using a custom-designed control panel, giving the
installation an intimate connection with the public.”

United Visual Artists are a British-based collective whose current practice spans permanent architectural installation, live performance and responsive installation.

Jim Punk & Antonio Mendoza – Dysleksic

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dudeboat
dudeboat (2012, 2 MB, 11 secs)

misteriosoxxx
misteriosoxxx (2012, 4 MB, 41 secs)

Slightly traducing the spirit of the project where
the two artists mix, hack and otherwise mutate
and abut up to 9 videos simutaneously in the same web page
as a (very welcome) online adjunct to the current Drawing Surrealism
show at LACMA, we’re featuring a couple of the component parts.
(Because we love both these artists and we want to publicise
everything they do, which is never, ever, dull.)
To view it properly go (and keep on going back) to the
project page and to learn more go here.

An Object At Rest, Must Stay At Rest – Michael Guidetti

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An Object At Rest, Must Stay At Rest (2007, 3MB, 30 sec. loop)

Video projection (loop) & ink on paper
by artist Michael Guidetti.

self.detach – decomposing identities

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self.detach (2008, 13MB, 2:24 min.)

‘self.detach is a dynamic Object, which adopts a critical position
towards the celebration of the ego on the internet by dissolving
self-portraying pictures into coloured particles.’
A project by Tim Horntrich and Jens Wunderling.

Alan Sondheim – Disappearing Body

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Disappearing Body (2012, 44MB, 1:02min loop)

Time marches on but some things don’t change and one of these is
our unbounded admiration here for the work of Alan Sondheim.
This is a perhaps a lollipop in comparison to some of his work but
it is, as always, rich and beautiful and lodges both in the conscious
mind and in our dreams.

Says Sondheim:

Mark Esper’s Two-Tone Enlightenment work forms the basis
of this short video. The screen presents shadows as positive,
not negative; infrared light forms the projection source
which is read and interpreted by revolving LEDs.

The body disappears. In the video, I imitated the effect
using video echo in an attempt to erase the body almost
entirely. Mark’s piece is brilliant, and the video is a
byproduct; I take advantage of the illumination to create
a somewhat clumsy series of movements.

Thus the mechanical is made virtual, and the virtual made
mechanical; such reversals form the core of theory povera.

Pierre Huyghe

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Pierre Huyghe #1
Pierre Huyghe #1 (NK, 2.69MB, 1:43 min)

Pierre Huyghe #2
Pierre Huyghe #2 (NK, 1.59MB, 3:03 min)

Pierre Huyghe #3
Pierre Huyghe #3 (NK, 2.33MB, 1:29 min)

Pierre Huyghe #4
Pierre Huyghe #4 (NK, 2.29MB, 1:30 min)

Four short videos by the often vexing, occasionally brilliant, Pierre Huyghe
from the website of the PBS Art in the 21st Century series.

Roel Wouters – zZz – Grip

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Grip
Grip (2007, 101 MB, 4:13 min.)

Grip is a video clip for the band zZz.
It is a one take, top shot video with trampoline gymnasts simulating
video effects, and has been recorded live as part of the opening “Nederclips”,
a showcase of Dutch videoclips at the Stedelijk Museum.
The important criteria were that the audience at the opening would be able to
witness the whole shoot, and that the videoclip would be added to the exhibition
immediately after the shoot.
The project developed by Roel Wouters.

Ant Farm – Media Burn

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Media Burn by Ant Farm (1975, 202MB, 25:46)

Infamous July 4, 1975 “pseudo-event” featuring a
speech by “JFK Jr.” and a 1959 Cadillac turned wacky
crash test car through a wall of burning television sets,
produced by video artists and activist collective Ant Farm.
The first four and a half minutes of this particular video
feature actual news coverage about the event.
The rest is the full speech and crash. Inspiration.
Video via the Media Burn archive.

Nathaniel Stern & Scott Kildall – Tweets in Space

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Tweets in Space
Tweets in Space (2012, 52MB, 2:27 min)

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern of Wikipedia Art return with another
project both odd, lyrical and utopian.
“Tweets in Space” will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide
towards GJ667Cc: a planet 22 light years away that apparently might support
earth-like life.
Anyone can take part, simply by adding #tweetsinspace to their tweets during
two performance times in September, when Stern and Kildall will be doing live
projections at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in New Mexico,
and boldly tweeting where none have tweeted before.

They say:
“This differs from every past alien transmission in that it is not only
a public performance, but also performs a public: it is a real-time
conversation between hopeful peers sending their thoughts to everywhere
and nowhere.
Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive unmediated thoughts and responses
about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything
in between.
By engaging the millions of voices in the Twitterverse and dispatching them
into the larger Universe, “Tweets in Space” activates a potent discussion
about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders or understanding.
It promises more than could ever be delivered.”

This is their fundraising video – please consider making a donation to make the
project happen and also publicise and share it on lists, facebook, twitter, etc.

Ben Pranger – my life is not a happening

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my life is not a happening
my life is not a happening (2007, 17.3MB, 1:31 min)

I really like this genre of physical theatre/dance/happening/what-you-will
put through the video mangler (apparently jitter does its stuff here)
& the splendidly named Ben Pranger & his accomplices
carry it off rather nicely.
I gather this piece arose out of some workshops in 2007.
I love the excitement of that sort of voyage of discovery; there’s a kind
of frontier feel to it which is really captured here.
It’s also a philosopher’s stone job – out of apparently prosaic fragments
comes forth a small kind of magic.

Joan Healy: Deranged, but in a Good Way

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Sithair
Sithair (2007, 6.4MB, 1:49 min)

Cyberskin
Cyber Skin (2007, 38.8MB, 3:05 min)

Meat Market
Meat Market (2007, 39.6MB, 7:14 min)

I was lucky enough to see young Irish artist Joan Healy
present her work at a 2008 DATA event in Dublin.
It was strange.
First off, consciously or not, she has this innocent
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth demeanour and then she
shows this.. er..stuff
Documented here, in ascending order of weirdness, there’s a performance piece
where she transforms her hair into a musical instrument,
a piece where she satirises the current bio-art fashion by
getting into a box, exposing some of her back (the installation
claims this is especially grown cyber-skin)
& then attempting to draw to screen the patterns the punters trace
out on her.
Last is ..well.. (vegans avert your eyes), electronically assisted dancing meat
– you know.. chops.. steaks.. & the like..
After she gave her talk I said to her I thought her work was ‘utterly deranged’
She smiled sweetly and said she would take it as a compliment.
It was.

‘Want’ by MTAA & RSG

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want
Want (clip) (2008, 74 MB, 2 min.)

‘Want was a new multiple channel algorithmic video installation as part of the exhibition
‘Live’ at the Beall Center for Art & Technology.
The life-sized six-screen video display uses custom software to monitor real time
Internet searches. When the software finds a programmed keyword, it triggers a
video clip of one of several actors/avatars who translates the virtual request to reality.

A soccer mom says,’I want French.’
A rocker dude says, ‘I want Star Trek Enterprise.’
A nondescript middle-aged guy says, ‘I want Little Girl.’
A girl says, ‘I want Forever.’

The six video screens are triggered almost concurrently, causing the voiced requests
to overlap. The result is an audio-visual cacophony of desire; an online echo chamber
of warped reality.‘

By MTAA and RSG.

Santiago Sierra – NO, Global Tour

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NO, Global Tour trailer (2010, 21 MB, 3:11 min)

Team Gallery, Lisson Gallery , Galería Helga de Alvear & Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani,
in association with Artprojx Cinema, present the UK premiere of NO, Global Tour,
2010 by Santiago Sierra.
The 120 minute film consists of the manufacture and transportation of two monumental sculptures
in the form of the word “NO”, travelling through different territories on a flatbed truck.
The NO, GLOBAL TOUR has resulted in a feature film that documents the passage of this
large NO through various world cities.
A monumental sculpture – unchanged both in its form and immediate meaning – that gradually
assumes a complex semantic load during a journey full of eventualities, accidents, and unexpected events.

Cory Arcangel – Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures

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Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures (2010, 30 MB, 3:09 min)

“Sculpture made from 2 over the counter “Dancing Stands” (the tacky kinetic product
display stands you can often see in down market stores) which have been modified to
spin at slightly different speeds. When these modified stands are placed next to each
other they go in and out of phase about every 4 minutes. I first showed a version of
these sculptures in my show “Creative Pursuits” at the University of Michigan Museum
of Art. This is a video of a version of these sculptures in action at my show The Sharper
Image at the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (the music is Dj Icey, a nod to Miami)”
By Cory Arcangel.

Wikipedia Art in London

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Wikipedia Art Intro (2011, 114MB, 2:29 min)

And, appropriately following on from yesterday’s post, a little intro
to the splendid Kildall/Stern Wikipedia Art project which is showing, as part
of a two person show at London’s Furtherfield gallery (formerly HTTP)
from this Friday.
(One individual piece by each artist too – promises to be a real treat)

Private view tonight 6:30 (Thurs.) – all welcome, maybe see you there.

This piece narrated in Stern’s breathless-puppy-dog-with-an-off-the-dial-IQ
trademark delivery with reassuringly measured interventions by the
no less smart & talented Kildall.

Edit by Foster Stilp, plus suitably keyed up and excited music by Stilp and
Kevin McGillivray, who together trade as Felixsofia

Cory Arcangel – UMMA Projects: Creative Pursuits

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creative_pursuits
Creative Pursuits (2010, 12 MB, 1:03 min)

Images from Cory Arcangel show – Creative Pursuits at
the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Can I get an Amen? – Nate Harrison

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Can I Get An Amen
Can I Get An Amen? (2004, 34.3MB, 18:08 min.)

from Nate Harrison.
This documentation of an installation by Nate Harrison,
includes an in depth lecture on the history of a single breakbeat.
It follows this small fragment of a song from its origin in a 60’s soul
recording through the invention of house and contemporary hip-hop.
It also speaks very eloquently on the important issues of copyright in
remix culture. This is fascinating to listen to.

By Mica

Nam June Paik: Venus / Art Cologne 2009

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namjunepaik_venus
Nam June Paik: Venus (2009, 62 MB, 5:28 min)

At Art Cologne 2009 Hans Mayer Gallery showed a piece by Nam June Paik,
a painted aluminium infrastructure with a multi painted satellite dish,
24 color TV sets and laser disc player. In this video, Hans Mayer gives us a
short introduction to the work. From VernissageTV.

Ran Slavin – Organic Urbanic

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organicurbanic
Organic Urbanic (2002, 14 MB, clip, 1:17 min)
“Organic Urbanic is a reality-fiction video based on an ambient
micro/macro cosmos of the urban-organic tapestry of the city.
The local and familiar transgresses into a dense textured
urban scape. The city is featured and filtered as a distorted
blue print image of itself.
The streets cars and buildings reveal an organic living machine-symbiotica.
Organic Urbanic amplifies what is already there. Among others, a complex
inner connectivity of city factors amplified and relocated.”

By Ran Slavin
Full duration: 9:00 min.

Trisha Brown Interviewed

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Interview with Trisha Brown (2007, 11 MB, 3:06)

Anyone in or near London should absolutely get to see the
“Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown & Gordon Matta-Clark –
Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” show,
currently at the Barbican. It’s fantastic!
I was particularly lucky to be there when a performance of the
Trisha Brown ‘walking on walls’ piece happened (worth
ringing in advance to see what performances are on and when)
I knew it would be interesting but, somewhat to my surprise,
I was immediately & intensely emotionally engaged by it too, finding
it lump-in-the-throat-&-tear-in-the-eye moving…
Although we’re concentrating here on Trisha Brown with an interview
conducted in 2007 at the Documenta 12 event (and after you’ve
watched that, the Guardian has a nice audio slideshow about the
walking on walls piece), all three artists shine in this show.
It’s all great but particularly interesting are the rooms of drawings
related to their various performance practices.

Ran Slavin – Everything Is Urgent

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EverythingIsUrgent
Everything Is Urgent (2008, 4 MB, 42 sec (Excerpt)

Ran Slavin
confronts the human figure in conjunction with the annoying barking of a dog. 4 figures, 2 young men and women, stand in front of an unknown audience, in front of a void and bark ferociously.
Driven away from systematic and social norms, the human barking figures attack us from within the digital domain, outward.
They present an uncompromising hybrid human, a cross between man and animal. Do they try to warn us, scare us like an omen or blame us? We see a human but hear an animal. Like a shout of desperation of a person who can no longer use his voice.

2008, 4:12 min. Single or 4 channel installation

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

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‘Flock’ in Liverpool (2008, 152MB, 2:44 min)

How many times do you read artists’ descriptions of their own work
and think ‘naaaaa…’ totally failing to recognise their stated ambitions
in what appears to you to be, at best, somewhat pedestrian and at
worst, a total disconnect from what they write.
This is the complete opposite of that, utterly living up to the makers’
stated intentions, and an absolute spine tingler to watch even through
the distance of video documentation.
Check out the KMA site for a complete description of the piece,
an ‘interactive light installation’ based around Swan Lake,
but not until you’ve watched this beautiful bit of documentary.
Particularly touching is the genuine joy in participation it evokes.

Very hard to pull off and very moving to see.

Omer Fast – The Casting

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Omer Fast – The Casting (2008, 38 MB, 3:29 min)

Omer Fast, discusses his 2008 Whitney Biennial work, The Casting (2007),
a four-channel video featuring a young American army sergeant who recounts
two stories

Array – United Visual Artists

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Array (2008, 13MB, 2 min.)

“Array is a field of columns set in the courtyard of the Chuya Nakahara
Memorial Museum in Southern Japan. The columns create a field of
light and sound which gently shifts in response to the viewers

Tony Oursler – Studio: 7 Months of My Aesthetic Education (Plus Some)

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7 Months of My Aesthetic Education (2005, 14 MB, 1:45 min.)

Speed up documentation from Tony Oursler‘s installation, “Studio: Seven Months of My
Aesthetic Education (Plus Some)” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005.
It combined video, sound, music and poetry to create environments that truly reflect the dissolving
boundaries of twenty-first-century culture. The work is inspired by Courbet

Annie Abrahams

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mathematics
Mutant #2 (2010, 64MB, 4:04 min)

Annie Abrahams is a singular and compelling voice, her singularity
ironically copper-bottomed by her willingness to embrace the network
& collaboration thereon fearlessly, inquisitively and to always
striking effect. This piece is described as a video arising out of
the second session of a
“Telematic Performance / Experiment investigating communication and
relational dynamics in a dispersed group.”
and it’s bewitching.
The pages documenting it bear the motto
“Communication is never clean, smooth and transparent”
True – and to turn that truth into crystalline & affecting art is a little miracle.

Omer Golan – Non-Linear Creation

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Non-Linear Creation (2010, 58 MB, 3:16 min.)

Installation at ‘Fresh Paint 3‘ in Old Jaffa Port, Israel. the project is based on a live
camera input where the video camera is mounted above a the projection screen.
“The thought behind “Non-Linear Creation” is to think about video as some sort
of a “streaming deck of cards” which I shuffled again and again in real time using
Cycling74’s Max. I collected in a memory buffer the latest 60 cards/video frames,
shuffled them and played the outcome in 30 frames per second. The result is a video in
which the viewer is in constant, unnatural, flickering present, as it is reflected in the video.”
By Omer Golan.

Nuit blanches 2010 Metz, France with DIEZ and paradigme

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Nuit blanches 2010 – DIEZ and paradigme (2010, 41 MB, 1:55 min.)

Collaboration of Video mapping, light and sound installation, done for
Nuit blanches 2010 Metz.
Audio Visual design by paradigme.
Scenography and video mapping by DIEZ.