Discussion for Next Week - April 30

So all the lectures, and therefore all the readings, are over for the semester. For next week, think about the interconnections or themes that have emerged in our discussion of Pierre Huyghe, Matmos, Kaja Silverman, and Doug Aitken. Please be prepared to discuss these threads in class on the 30th.

We will meet on Monday, May 7th as well for some wrap up and evaluations.

Afterthought on Aitken

After our discussion yesterday, it occurred to me that there is a link between Aitken's use of archetypal characters (such as the young, dancing black man) and the inherent limitations of the tourist's experience. His characters must be of recognizable, predictable types (regardless of their talent or hypnotic quality) such as commonly recognized celebrities (who bring with them the collective societal memory of their past roles). Viewers instantly can connect with an archetype, because they fill in the details of that archetype from their memory of that archetype's stereotypes. Aitken has turned the tourist's affliction--difficulty in achieving deep understanding--into a tool, by coopting the recognizability and instant connectivity archetypes can support.

Aitken recap

I was impressed by Aitken prolific body of work. He has consistent inpirations or conceptual obsessions that he has been working on since the beginning of his career. I don't necessarely think that his work is about nomadic life , and information overflow than it is about bending and distorting time, and hence the conventional narrative of cinema. He is dedicated to telling stories through his charaters, sometimes stereotypical, other times ideosyncratic in nature. In his films, the characters are always disturbed or influence by the "time" or sequence of the film as if the syncopation of the editing affected their own rhythm. He is an architect of time and space.

Questions for Doug Aitken

1. Your video installation work intrinsically involves elements of the cinema--large screens, immersive environments, notable actors, precise editing. But at the same time, the nonlinear nature of the "narratives" you present seem to contradict the traditional notions of cinematic plot. So to what extent would you say your work is cinematic? How conscious is your effort to refute, embrace, or contend with the traditional elements of cinema in the video installations you create?

2. You've described the protagonist in Electric Earth as someone "in a constant state of flux and perceptual transformation," consumed by a perpetual present. And it seems that this "state of flux" permeates other work you've done as well--whether in video installations, neon light animations, or photography. How has your understanding and articulation of that "state of flux" changed and evolved over your time as an artist? Has a new iteration or interpretation emerged as a result of your work on Sleepwalkers?

Questions for Doug Aitken

What does it take for pieces on such the scale of sleepwalkers (both in terms of physical size, and the recognizability of the actors) to not become perceived as just more advertising noise?

How do you want us to think about spirituality when experiencing the multiple human layers of your work?

What is lost when your work is YouTube-ified?

Question for Doug Aitken

What concepts, techniques, and/or elements have you seen in recent mainstream media which most typify your conception of the disembodied, "in-between" nature of modern life? To what extent do you feel the pace of modern media affects one's own perception of spatiotemporal concurrency (or lack thereof)? (Jeremy asked this to the class last week, I'm curious what DA himself thinks.)

8-bit reminder

A screening of 8-bit is happening this wednesday at 8pm at the Pacific Film Archive. I'm going to have something going as a kind of sideshow, probably a game called "Big Ups" so come a little early. And there's going to be some gameboy music after. should be sweet.

JOE

Your work at the MOMA resonates visually and conceptually with the displays at Times Square a few blocks away. Do you think about this work in relationship to advertising? Does the piece consciously function as an ad for the museum? Or is that a side effect?

Question for Doug Aitken

Regarding "Electric Earth" you speak of opening yourself to "a larger field of experience and information," changes in time and perception, and sensitivity to the "in-between." This sounds almost akin to many accounts of ritual drug or hallucinogen use. To what extent is modern technological change -- or any period of rapid technological change -- a "drug"?

question for Aitken

Pierre Huyghe has said that your work encourages a "subjective editing" on the part of the viewer. You've also advocated nurturing and presenting an "open-ended and interpretive" narrative in your work. To what extent, if at all, does this relinquishing of control to the audience relate to the current state of "amateur" production, the democratization of personal media & tools and the participatory culture that has emerged online?

-- steven l.

Questions for Aitken

How do you envision audiences will experience your work in 50 years? Do you hope or expect Sleepwalker to always be installed in its current location and in its current media and form?

How involved were you in the creation of Sleepwalker’s “trailers” that the MOMA uses to promote the work? How do think they shape our expectations of the piece? To what extent does watching the trailer on a personal computer and on a reduced scale undermine the 'real' experience?

Aitken: Jet-setting Flaneur

From what I can gather, Aitken seems interested in the spatiotemporal dynamics of modern perception. With all the talk of fractured experience and unsure presence, I can't help but think about how various film theorists have tracked the experiential evolution of the Baudelarian flaneur, or the city "stroller." Especially when thinking about what it'd be like to witness the Sleepwalkers exhibit, the image of a city-wandering observer is unavoidable. From what I've read, most see the physical mobility of the flaneur in the city transforming into virtual mobility in the cinema. When looking at a screen, spectators experience virtual presence whereby they move about virtual spaces miles away from the physical space of the screen. So what happens when you combine the physical mobility of the flaneur with the virtual mobility of the spectator? I assume you get something close to Aitken's Sleepwalkers. For me, the metaphor of the "moving sidewalk" is more accurate--and less precarious than a hurricane--for this art exhibit in particular. While riding a moving sidewalk, we are both "moved by" the conveyer belt and "move ourselves," as is often the case. The idea that one can walk through NYC while being "moved by" the projected films achieves the ideal of accelerated motion provided by the moving sidewalk. But I also see the moving sidewalk as a helpful metaphor for combatting some of the disquieting conclusions that most seem to draw from Aitken's work. For instance, walking on a moving sidewalk need not be a daunting task. In fact, once one takes the first, frightening step, it becomes clear that the moving sidewalk is a useful collaborator for achieving swifter, more efficient movement. Furthermore, moving sidewalks allow one to stand still--but still move--without moving one's body (think of just watching a movie in a theater). The notion of a moving sidewalk does not conjure up the idea that we are surrounded by harmful distractions, as does the hurricane example, but sees these "distractions" as optional modalities for active experience: I can avoid the moving sidewalk and walk like a normal human being should that be my preference. While living the nomadic life, I'd imagine that Aitken has ridden his share of moving sidewalks, both literally and figuratively, and I strongly believe that he'd associate the wildly ambiguous experience of riding them with the perceptual gray zones he depicts in his work.

In translating this midnight musing into a question, I guess I would ask Aitken the following: Your work seems to draw heavily on the perceptual capacity of a very particular subject, namely a traveler who is both moving through and moved by modern spaces simultaneously. Do you work mostly to communicate with this particular demographic, or is it your hope that your work will convey the freneticism of a modern city to those who do not occupy such a space?

Question for Class: Aitken

Since Aitken created Electric Earth in 1999, has the meaning of his piece intrinsically changed based on the more ubiquitous nature of information technology? Are we still overwhelmed by the amount of information in which it immerses the viewer?

Is Aitken's idea of "in-between spaces" in Electric Earth also present in the Sleepwalker project? In what ways do in-between spaces become realized within the metaphor of the story - projecting films without narrative, journeys with no beginning or end?

Questions for Class: Aitken

Does it mean something to you guys that all of the assets for aitken were on YouTube and Google Video? Is anything gained from viewing amateur video?

Does the fact that advertising first put up images on this scale necessarily temper your reading and perception of Aitken's sleepwalkers?

Question about Aitken

In Aitken's discussion with Huyghe, Aitken outlines the effects of cinema on culture saying that we continously reference the stories of cinematic media in our everyday lives. What does Aitken's piece Sleepwalkers relate to this idea?

Aitken Question

Aitken's interest in the way we experience and perceive time seems central to his pursuit of nonlinearity. He mentions a desire to collapse or expand time. How is our perception of time conditioned and changed by the media with which we interact?

Questions for Aitken:

does outdoor screen extend spatial experience other than 2D for the audiences?
does largeness and repetition of elements help in expressing personal experience?

Aitken Overload

Aitken, on the one hand, claims that he uses his work partly to deconstruct the linear, predictable nature of cinema. On the other hand, he is concerned with the "deluge" of information available to us via modern technology. My contention, up for discussion, is that human life pre-tech was just as much a whirlwind of information as with modern technology, and that cinema itself has created a false history of linearity through its intrinsic limitations in temporal expression. The "deluge" has always been there, and a key aspect of the story of the struggle of the individual human to thrive is directly related to the struggle of the human mind to comprehend, to quote Kaja Silverman out of context, "vast amounts of data".

Q about Aitken

Can one view Aitken's work as having affinities to the situationists? Or as a form of video "derive" as the narrative drift from one condition into another?

Question for the class re: Doug Aitken

A sense of being overwhelmed recurs in Aitken's discussions, e.g., "the deluge of information" (Artforum) from "the hurricane of modern life" (Broken Screens). As much as he feels that the current mutations in communication, mobility, and physicality are transformative and especially relevant, how is this so essential and different from other periods of rapid development and sometimes violent change throughout history? Is the human body and mind not capable of attenuating a nearly infinite number of stimuli, sensations, actions and reactions to be tolerable and tenable? What is it about technology, information, and any other relics of modernity that motivates and beguiles him, and us?

Sleepwalkers site

here is Aitken's sleep walker's site. please check it out before class on monday.

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2007/aitken/index.html