From: Sam Wells (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Sep 06 2005 - 07:45:25 PDT
Right on, Arturo !
> One has already been mentioned: video art demands little to no
> attention span from the viewer. A person can enter a room where an
> installation is, watch 25 seconds, and "get it." Or, just as likely,
> they don't actually "get it" because they haven't seen the full
> 5-minute video loop, but they figure "oh, it's just more of this" and
> move on. In this sense, filmmakers are lucky: we more or less have
> the viewer's full attention. It takes more effort to not look at
> what's on-screen in a darkened theater than it does to actually watch
> it. It also takes a lot more energy to get up and leave a theater
> than it does to move on to the next room in a gallery. You have to
> get up, step over all those people, whisper "excuse me's" left and
> right, walk down the aisle, and even then you're still not to the
> exit! This versus moving effortlessly through a near-empty room...
Really I think you've identified the key critical problem point.
But, for me as I AM interested in doing installation - type exhibition
as well as traditional there is some real negotiation to be thought out.
Something that is neither the fixed in your chair like a lecture aspect
of film viewing - which despite it's very real positives as you've
articulated, has for me *at the specific point I'm "at" with what I'm
doing some limitations also - and the laissez-faire of audience grazing.
This _is_ related, in my case to "digital" in the sense that I'm trying
to work differently with (hermetic i.e. within the image-stream) time
also; so need the fluid iterative capabilities of some kind of digital
playback. Given that I question whether or not I want to strap the
spectator to his or her seat: in other words if *I* want to indulge in
"fluidity" should I demand "linearity" from the viewer ? (If I make a
"river" of images, can I say to the viewer "you must sit right HERE on
the bank"
(I don't rule out exhibiting film print(s) either, but for logistical
and cost reasons, all my models of this are digital at this point, and
in some respects are working very well, the downsides are that the film
originated material is truly compromised size-wise @ 720x480 and even
in HD - which is where I hope to take this, I'm up against size/grey
scale issues. In fact this limitation is one reason I'm questioning the
'fixed vantage point' for the first time; it's one thing to ask for
that constraint if showing a glorious print on a 35' wide screen, a
mural; another if Persian miniatures !
What we lack here is the Church or Temple or other privileged space,
(**and the contract of attention that that space socially requests !!**
) so I think the challenge is how to do something with what we can
construct in what ways might be available.
-Sam Wells
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