Saturday, January 27, 2024

Three Parameters of Installation Art

 Anne Ring Petersen, Installation Art, pg. 41-45 

 

Activating Space and Context

       Elements in interplay with space, creating a heightened sense of the space

       Context: Institutional or makeshift; confrontational, neutral, or unifying

 


 

 


 

 

Stretching the work in time

       Instantaneous viewing vs. moving through

 


 

Phenomenological Focus

       No separation of space

       Viewer’s body is within the art

       Experience may be familiar, but altered to a subtle or profound degree

 


 

Beyond space

       The installation as set, activating activity

       Time and movement become cinematic, dreamlike in character

 


Awareness is altered, collaborative participation happens intuitively

 


. 41-45

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Claire Bishop's Book 'Installation Art' Can Provide Us with Strategies for Installation Making

 In the book Installation Art by Claire Bishop, the work featured therein is divided into four categories. As makers of installations these can become specific strategies to help us understand how our viewer may interact with the work and help us to craft an installation that effectively conveys meaning. The text that follows is based on my interpretation the book.

Dreamscapes

The dream may be psychological, in the Freudian sense, using metaphors and symbolism to evoke elusive content. 

George Segal Couple in Open Doorway 1977

 

Mystic spirituality can function in a similar manner. A bit of both may be found in the work of Paul Thek, highly influenced by his Catholic upbringing;

 
 
 
 
Heightened Perception

Minimalism escaped from expressionist dogma with pure formalism. It only asks...'what am I seeing?'

Robert Morris, installation in the Green Gallery, New York, 1964

 

A counter 'anti-minimalist' movement added content to the language of minimalism;

Here a simple gesture is accompanied by a message, often disruptive.


Mimetic Engulfment

Here you are absorbed, or reflected into, the environment. In Larry Bell's works viewer's reflections can be absorbed into the piece.

Larry Bell. Photo: World Red Eye.

Or in the case of Yayoi Kusama's chamber rooms the viewer's multiple reflections combine with the illusion of infinite space.


 

Activated Spectatorship

 These works provoke actions from the viewer. They usually have political leanings, sometimes governmental and sometimes personal. Joseph Beuys is a seminal example.

Not only was Beuys an artist but also active in government as a founder or co-founder of the German Student Party (1967), Organization for Direct Democracy Through Referendum (1971), Free International University for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research (1974), and German Green Party Die Grünen (1980).  

Rirkrit Tiravanija's installations often have had political content, but he wants you to be physically nurished as well.

This exhibition at the Hirshhorn includes a communal dining space in which visitors were served curry and invited to share a meal together. The installation included a large-scale mural, drawn on the walls over the course of the exhibition, which referenced protests against Thai government policies.


Friday, December 29, 2023

ART/FIST 245 Interarts/Installation...Some Installation Artists...

 The idea of installation art is usually considered something that arose from what was referred to as 'Happenings' and 'Environments' and the scene that somewhat centered around the artist/provocateur Allan Kaprow in the US in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

In 1960 Jim Dine created Car Crash, a happening that played out in an elaborate construction that both performers and the audience where immersed in.



Another prototypical installation is Claes Oldenburg's The Store, seen here re-created in a museum setting.



Again the border between 'Environment' and 'Performance' are blurred. This was also the case with Judy Chicago's Womanhouse, but her later work The Dinner Party existed purely as an environment where the viewer moved through the piece.



Gordon Matta-Clark's work physically deconstructing architecture is known mostly through documentation, although he did create 'souvenir' cuttings of his buildings to circulate as product.


Sometimes the artifacts of a performance become an installation, as seen in Carolee Schneemann's Up to and Including Her Limits,



Many of installation art's pioneers kept re-inventing the form, as we see in Yayoi Kusama's interactive Obliteration Room.



Some artists wanted to make their installations more accessible over time, like Dan Graham.



And also Ann Hamilton, whose The Event of a Thread becomes an amusement-park-like spectacle.



This can be taken to the monumental level, as with James Turrell's work in process, Roden Crater.


Video can be placed in a site in a way which perfectly integrates with it, as seen in Bill Viola's Tiny Deaths.


Or it can totally dominate the architecture, as seen in the retrospectives of Pipilotti Rist. Although primarily working in video, abstraction informs much of their work.




Judy Pfaff's installations reference nature but also embrace abstraction.



Rachel Whiteread's work uses the literalness of the imprint, creating a negative reproduction of her subject matter.




Sarah Sze uses everyday objects in a way that defies their former functions and transforms them into formal constructions.




Danish artists' group Superflex constructs a fake McDonalds here, which they flood, with the final work consisting as a semi-documentary video. Often work falling into the installation realm defies categorization.



Rirkrit Tiravanija's Untitled (Free/Still) serves free curry in a very intentionally constructed, though makeshift looking, environment.



Although solidly viewed in an art context, teamLab is actually a for-profit company, pushing the boundaries between fine art and entertainment.




Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Missing from 'The Medium is the Massage'

 Who's face is missing from 'The Medium is the Massage'? Well many, but given that this book was put together right after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we need to seriously contemplate the exclusion of Dr. Martin Luther King. The March on Washington of August 28, 1963 was instrumental in getting this legislation passed, and was also a feat of new technologies. About 260,000 people were transported to Washington, mostly on buses traveling on the new interstate highway system. An adequate sound system was considered essential in maintaining order. Equipment was rented at a cost of $19,000. The elaborate set up was sabotaged on the day before the march, and then was successfully rebuilt overnight by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Television had contributed greatly to the success of the event. President Kennedy had watched Dr. King's speech on TV and was "very impressed", and agreed to meet with the march's organizers.

Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on TV. Washington D.C., USA. 1968. © René Burri Magnum Photos

“The civil-rights revolution in the South began when a man and the eye of the television film camera came together, giving the camera a focal point for events breaking from state to state, and the man, Martin Luther King Jr., high exposure on television sets from coast to coast,” wrote the journalists Robert Donovan and Ray Scherer in their history of television news, Unsilent Revolution

Many people spoke and performed that day, including Bob Dylan...


The choice of mostly white singers was criticized at the time, and Dylan himself questioned the validity of his own participation, but this is certainly one of his most moving performances ever.


James Blue's monumental film, The March, 1963, restored in 2008.

Monday, October 23, 2023

Sunday, October 22, 2023

Garagebandland

Three ways to use garageband;

Using MIDI  technology (there are MIDI keyboards at every station in the 013 lab)...

Using pre-recorded loops...

Or multi-track recording...


Software instruments, loops, and multitrack recording...used individually or together. The possibilities are endless, especially when you consider that a project may start with a recording conveniently made with your phone. These how-to videos are all by... 

https://thegaragebandguide.com 

which has exhaustive and always up to date info on using garageband.

Before you export your garageband track try some basic mastering. I discovered the genre-based presets are still there and that may be all you need. Click on master and output on the mastering window at the bottom of the interface. If you double click on compressor, exciter, and limiter and if you go past 'manual' you will see presets. From there you can really beef-up your track. Here's a really well-done article on mastering...