the refeatured landscape: notes on the aesthetics of digital video

8/13/2019 the refeatured landscape: notes on the aesthetics of digital video

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THE REFEATURED LANDSCAPENOTES ON THE AESTHETICS OF DIGITAL

VIDEO

Susan Clements-VivianBFA Emily arr Institute of Art and Design 1999

PROJECT SUBMITTED I N PARTIAL FULFILLMENT O FTHE REQUIREMENTS FO RT HE DEGREE O F

MASTER O F APPLIED SCIENCE

In theSchool OfInteractive Arts and TechnologyComputing rts and Design Sciences Graduate Program

Susan Clements-Vivian 2005SIM ON FRASER UNIVERSITY

Spring 2005

All rights reserved. This work may not bereproduced in whole or in part by photocopyor other means without permission of the author .


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pprovalName:Degree:Title of Project:

Susan Clements-VivianMaster of Applied Science, Interactive rtsThe Refeatu~d andscape: Notes onthe Aesthetics of Digital Video

Examining Committee:Chaic Jim Bizzocchi

Assistant ProfessorSchool of Interactive Arts and Technology

Dr. Susan KozelSenior SupervisorAssociate ProfessorSchool of Interactive rts and Technology

Chtis WelsbySupervisorFacultySchool for the Contemporary Arts

Dr. Laura MaExternal ExaminerAssociate P rofessorSchool for the Contemporary rts

Date Defended/ Appmved: Friday February 5 2005


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SIMO N FR SER UNIVERSITY

P RTI L COPYRIGHT LICENCEThe author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has grantedto Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project o r extended essay tousers of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to m ke partnl or single copiesonly for such users or in response to a request from the library of any otheruniversity, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users.The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep orm ke a dlgital copy fo r use in its circulating collection.The author has fu rther agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work fo rscholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of GraduateStudies.It s understood that copying or publication of this work fo r financial gain shall notbe allowed without the author s written permission.\Permission for public performance, o r limited permission fo r private scholarly use,of any multimedia materials forming part of t work, may have been granted bythe author. hs nform ation may be found o n the separately catalogued multimediam a t e d and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence.The origlnal Partnl Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by t hauth or, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the SimonFraser University Archive.

W. A. Bennett LibrarySimon Fraser UniversityBurnaby, BC, Canada


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bstractThis thesis explores the relationship between the emergence of postimpressionist paintingand the breakdow n of the camera obscura as a model fo r the fixed stable capacity of hum anvision. This relationship is posited as a possible fmmework fo r understanding digitalcomposite-images in a b roader cultural context. The construction of my video-conceptualistwork Hope B C Chainsaw Ca rv in ~ apital of the W orld is situated as the prim ary researchobject. Writings by Paul V d o on vision will be used t o construct a relationship betweenvision media and the vi rt u ah ti o n of experience that is inherent to technologically mediatedenvironments. The idea of the space-constructed image is extrapolated from the writings ofJonathan Gary in particular the relationship he constructs between cultural practicestechnological innovation and the aesthetics of representation acts as a m odel in which thecom posite-im age can be exam ined in terms of a larger field of cultural practices.


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edicationToEliot


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cknowledgementsThere have been several people who have given their time expertise and supp ort in thecompletion of this project. I would like to thank Susan Kozel my senior supervisor forbelieving in and supporting the divergent paths that artistic practice and growth often take.Chris Welsby supervisor for his insightful talks and interest in my project. Kahn Lee forspending many Saturday mornings helping to work through the planning implementationand shooting of th e video. Jacky Sawauky who without which I would have been lost inpostproduction. Mark Soo for showing up in the final hours to w ork on the sound. aryVivian who not only edited this thesis but has offered to do so again for my PHD AndElio t Vivian who has been so much apart of m roject that it is as much his success asmine.

I would also like to thank myfam ily for their unwavering support through all these longyears that I have kept going to school.


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Table of ContentsApproval

edication ivcknowledgeme nts v

Table of Contents viist of Figu m VII

Material Space and Imagined SpaceThe Landscape ImageHBC: Project Backgrounderceptual Goal of m C 8Practice Led Research: Methodologies and ApproachTheoretical Framework 2

The Space-Constructed ImageThe Logics of Perception 3Analysis of Hl C

4 Conclusion 5Works Cited 57Appendix: Hop e BC Chainsaw Capital of the W odd 58


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List of Figuresigure By Permission. Jeff Wall. Ke ine o onaeY 1990). VancouverArt Gallery. Vancouv erigure 2 Produc tion Sequence, H C 2004) 36

Figure 3 Final scene before composite,H C 2004) 8Figure 4 Final scene after composite, H C 2004) 9

igure 5 Background Sequence, H C 2004) 42Figure 6 Middle Gro und , H C 2004) 3Figure 7 Green screen set.up, H C 2004) 4Figure Transition scene,HBC 2004) 5

vii


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Material Space and Im agined Space

Hope B C Chainsaw arving Capital of the World, subsequently referred to as =C is avideo that examines the desire for authen ticiv in a culture which is characterized by thesimulation or virmalization of experience, whde exposing the a rti fic ialq of the mediumof video to catalogue h s xperience. It explores the possibilities fo r the openlysubjective post-photographic image, which is characterized by synthesis andmanipulation, to be able to articulate this experience. The connection between thearticulation of experience narrative) and representational practices form), s they evolvewithin a broader set of cultural conditions are at the core of this thesis.

I wdl use the writings of Jonathan G-dry, in particular the relationship he constructsbetween cultural practices, technological innovation and the aesthetics of represen tationto act as a framework in h c h he process of making the video and the researchinvolved in t h ~ ~ext wdl be integrated. Just s Cnryplaces a single work of art at thecenter of each of his chapters, I wdl explore both the process of construction and theaesthetic surface of m s the lens through which to focus and filter my ideas. Itshould be noted that m was not created as an articulation or as a demonstration of theconcepts in this thesis but instead can be seen as coming from the same field of interests.

' Vito Acconci, 10 Packed Minutes, narr., Sound, 10Nov 2004~ ~ r t ~ : / / w w w . u b u c o m / s o u n d / a c c o ~ .


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While this thesis is pnrnanlyconcerned with constructing a framework in which theseinterests may be articulated, the video comes from the desire to surface the sensation ofliving within these fields of events. The video strives to find a h e of empathy orrecognition with the viewer as opposed to being an explanation or demonstration ofideas discussed.

While ry will be used as a theoretical model, the writings of Paul V d o e usedto define Western postmodemity as a situation in whch the virtualization or abstractionof experience has been a pervasive condition. ms v i m h t i o n e explored as botha theoretical model and as a first person-experience which d orms the construction ofthe video. V d o makes a connection between the dissolution of the time and place inwhich an event takes place and the immediacy of new telecommunications technologies.He equates this loss of duration as the loss of our immediate horizon (both mentally andpictorially>,which constructs a stable ground from which we can participate andlorconstruct meaning. Landscape for Virilio is not just an image or a place but afundamental condition for human happiness.

One feature of Western post-industrial society over the last twenty years has been thecollapsing of distance. As has been mentioned, V d o ees thls collapsing of distance ina durational sense. However, It can also be seen as a broader cultural phenomenon.Distances that used to exist between the sites in which cultural meaning are derived, suchas media and event, have also evaporated. The boundaries between entertainment and

In this instance am equating Virilio's use of the term horizon to that of landscape. Hedefines the term horizon as both what are visible to the human eye and as a backgroundfrom which figures can appear (as in painting). Paul Virilio, O ~ e n y (London: verso, 1997)1


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news, politics and fic tion , marginality and popular culture are lost; each experienceinterchangeable. In my artistic practice I construct a critical ls ta nce in which this loss ofactual distance can be s een, measured, or felt.

Once have defined the panmeters in w hc h will evaluate the pictorial forms inHBCnsert it into the historical language and fabric of the defea tured landscape , tracing

a direct lineage in my work to the use of the techno logy of the camera and the socialconditions of late Modernism, in which the defeatured landscape is said to have beenable to be articulated. Scott Watson idenufies in Discovering the DefeaturedLandscape the development of an &an semiotic o r lexicon which is able toarticulate, through the aesthetics of the artless pho tograph , a modernist indust&dlandscape (Watson 256); The defeatured landscape first appeared in the work of a groupof Vancouver artists in the late 1960's and lasted (in its first iteration) until the mid 1970sonly to reappear in the 1980s and remains influential until this day. By drawing on thehistory of the defeatured my intention is neither to rehash an already well-documentedh t o r y of Vancouveis p hoto -con cep tdst practices; nor to draw out a new untappedreading of these works. xplore the relationship between the medium ofpho tograph y and the articulation of a modernist landscape as the basis to articulate thepossibilities of a new landscape , a landscape refeatured.

For painting in B.C., the representability of the new industrialized andscape is the m ostimportant problem, and the new post-conceptual pictorial pho tography he m ost crucialdevelopment and challenge; painting's nability to recognize these facts and to respond tothem has condemned it to a secondary and minor role to this day . Robert Linsley, Pain tingand the Social History of British Columbia, Vancouver Anthology: The Institutional Politics ofArt, ed. Stan Douglas (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991 235. 3


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1 1 The Landscape mageThe shifting to a more fluid, or as some would term fragmen ted, sense of place due tothe increased use of simultaneous communication technologies, such as cell phones, chatrooms, e - d , tc., is having a profound effect on our sense of the world around us andour place w i t h it. T h r o q h an investigation of the landscape image as it is form ed in_H C there is the possibility of collapsing critical distance, or m k q visible , the ofteninvisible shlfts that are occurring between ourselves, place and time (About MakmgLandscapes, Wall 1 2 ) .~Often, however, Landscapes obscure thls relationship.

Robert Linsley, in Painting and the Social His tory of B ritish Columbia , articulates howtraditional landscape paintings serve to hide the relationship of urban centres and theirreliance on, and exploitation of, nature as resource (Linsley229). e writes, distance isa fundam ental constituent of landscape painting in the m odem world , for landscapepainting is a product of the d a n xperience of nature as spectacle (Linsley 229). Thedistance in landscape is the distance between the presented image and what it serves tohide, or the unspoken dw that is implied but never named. How ever, the collapsing ofthis distance, in effect constructing a critical distance can also be seen as recurrent themew i h ontemporary art, from close to far, inner and outer, that landscape can reveal aswell as hide.

4 Wh ile I am referen cing Jeff Wall's use of this phrase, it is comm only attributed to Pa ul Klee'saffirmation, Art does not reproduc e the visible; rather, it makes visible. Paul Klee, CreativeCredo, Theo ries of Mod ern Art, ed. Herschel B. Chipp (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1968) 182.


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Figure 1 y Permission Jeff Wall The Pine on the omer 1990),Vancouver Art GalleryVancouver.

If the landscape image is a double-edged image, then what is found on the reverse side isthe subject. That while landscapes often exclude or relegate to a secondary role theindividual or group, they reveal an implied social order. Jeff Wall, in About akingLandscaps. articulates his own photo-conceptualist landscape works as being involvedwith making visible the distance we must maintain between ourselves in order that wemay recognize each other for what, under constantly varying conditions, we appear tobe Wall 12). It is this visible distance or threshold in which we can recognizeourselves in concert with a larger synthetic social order that I seek to explore through thelandscape genre.

Landscape is a way to work out what type of place I live in, to understand the decisionswe are making, and that society is making. It is a way to understand how these decisions


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w ll define what type of person am, how I experience the world, my body, my sense ofself and others. Thts is a field of some debate at h s articular historical moment.Concepts that have been secure markers of self, others, place o r meaning, are in flux.The world just doesn t look or feel lik the place I grew up.

Thts is worth noting, as am not very old, only in my early 3OYs, ut have found myselftelling mythologized stories to slightly younger friends of what it was lik when the firstbank machme came to my neighbourhood , how it felt to be alive before cell phones o rthe Intern et and, most poignantly, how it felt to be able to sull be ahead or outside ofcornm erciahm. It was before counter-culture had been fully co-opted by corporationslike the Gap , brandmg and cultural marketing was just beginning to surface as ou r mostviable form of social identity, and when I envisioned my world, still thought of myneighbourhood. In short I was on the cusp of the last analogue generation, and I feelthat ddference. I feel it in my bones.

1 2 HBC: Pmject ackgmundI watch; Eliot dnves. I point out deer, a small vaguely f a d a r creature, op en fields, gasstations. I feel the window of the car. I roll it down a bit , Sitting sideways as the scenerolls by. We stop, we start, we stand on the side of the road. We watch television in amotel, sneak out at night, and watch the stars.

Three years ago El iot and I began taking progressively longer car trips across C andthen across the prairies to Toronto and back If we only had a week-end, we would dnv eto H ope , which is historically and actually the last stop before we drop off the edge intothe expanse of the Interior. Hope communicates the overwhelrmng sense of being on


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the way to somewhere else. It was t c w t t h e q b s hat all these trips had incommon, no matter how long o r how short.

These trips were motivated by a vague desire to touch the outdoo rs. Whde the caroffered the possib ilityto leave, in the end the surface and the movemen t of the carsupplem ented the possibility of any non-technologica llymedlated experience. Westopped at campsites, small towns, tur offs; we poin ted to wdd animals, stood besidefences, bough t firewood. Each of these activities seemed to be on the wayto somewhereelse, never rooted in the moment. When we stopped, there was the p u h g desire to getback in the car, to get going, to am ve.

Throu gh these trips I became interested in layers or surfaces of experience and how theyfold in on and interact with each other. The inside of the car, the window, the road, thelandscape all occupied dstinctly ddferent spatial coordmates- the still body, or theobserving body from inside the car to be the most m d foun d a strong correlationbetween the experience of viewing from the car s windscreen and the viewing of otherscreens, such as the com puter or television screen. The windscreen was a world ofsensation rather than experience, of instantaneous memory, such as a photog raph , wherethe before or after moment is filled in, in reverse, after the mom ent has passed.

Through these trips I began to question how I had been conditioned for h s ype ofabstracted viewing o r consuming experience, to question why1 felt more comfortablewith the world through the windscreen as oppose to a world of participation.Intellectually I fou nd this abstracted viewing experience particularly uncom fortable as itwas caught up with the desire to supersede it. These trips form ed a physical site in whicha complex set of desires between artifice and an imagined reality took place.


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1 3 erceptual Goal of HBCIn 998 at the O r Gallery Artist Run Society as part of the exhibition Monument ValleyScott Myles, Here, There and Everywhere In-between w s on display. The memoryofthis work has been influential in terms of the overall effect which I wanted to achievewith the video. It is the mem ory of seeing this work and not the actual work that Idraw from in this instance, as it is the mem oryth at has guided me.

To my memory the w ork consisted of two photographs that looked at first glance to beidentical. They where obviously vacation photographs, the kind that students take whiletravelling around Europe between high school and university. The first image consistedof a young man s h g n fron t of a billboard, head tilted back, faded baseball cap o n.The visible part of the billboard constructed a backdrop of r o h g desert hills, making itappear as if he w s in this landscape. W hat w s obscured in t image by his body, wasthe Marlboro man, sitting on his horse, smoking a cigarette. The second photo w sidentical in composition, the young man standing in fron t of th e rolling desert hills, capon, same t i t of the head, s&g. However in this photo everything was new, the cap,his clothes, even the crispness to the landscape behind. I spen t several minutes, my eyesbouncing back-and-forth, trying to reconcile these two dispante yet identical images.Each seemed to cancel out the possibilityof the other's existence.

The second image was an analogue reconstruction of the first. In the second, the subjectof the photograph is standmg somewhere in a desert in the United States, in the exactlocation and position tha t the Marlboro advertisement was taken. The artist hadengineered himself backward into a real landscape from the illusion of th e f i t . Even theclothes he had been wearing in the first had been professionally remade, the illusion


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seamless. What remained with me from this image was the sense of spatial distortionthat to ok place in those first few moments of viewing, how the images traveled frombeing the same, to moving apart, to coming back to the same, and then to a fiialdissolution of the artifice. It is this sense of perceptual shifting which I wanted tocapture in the last scene of the video, a mom ent in whlch the spectato r loses hidhe rperceptual position to the work, only to have the image shdt from one spatialrelationship to another.

1 4 Pnc tic e Led Research: Methodologies and ApproachAnne Douglas et al., in their paper Research as Practice: Positioning: the PractitionerResearcher seeks to establish some clarityaround the definitions used and the types ofresearch being done in the fields of art, and design. They identify three types of practice-based research. They are 1)personal research, (2) critical research and 3) criticalpractice, and form al research (Douglas, Scopa and Gray). The combined effort of thedevelopment of the video project = and the writing of this thesis em ploy aspects ofwhat Douglas et al. terms personal research and critical practice and formal research .Douglas e t al. awards no hierarchy or incremental value to the research comm unity inany of these approaches.

The central argum ent of Douglas et 4 .5 research is that these research routes be clearlyidenufied and that the m ethodological practices behind them transparent. That one ofthe major ddficulties facing research in art and design today is that the same language isused to idenufy different types of pmctice research (Douglas, Scopa and Gray). Thebasic criteria for personal research is that the work reveals results through eitherprofessional secondary sources (such as sketchbook, interview, etc.) or as evidenced in


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the final work In this instance the embodied knowledge w i h he artw ork relies onthe ability of the research community to understand the particular artwork and theresearch within it (Douglas, Scopa and Gray . The context in which this research isshared with the comm unity is generally through that of public eh b it io n .

Critical practice and form al research is more closely ahgned with the goals anddissemination practices of science and technology. Its basic criteria are tha t it takes placewithin an academic community and employs, recognisable and relevant research skills asa means of being able to make a contribution to a shared body of knowledge through arecognisable and generic process- i.e. statement of research aims and objectives,contextua lisation of these through a literature review, identification and description o fappropriate methodology fo r addressing the stated aims, analysis and conclusions(Douglas, Scopa and Gray). Whde my research fulfils the basic criteria above, I considermy work as a blend between this route and persona l research .

In Doug las et al.'s critical practice and formal research model, they place an emphasison the artwork serving as the primary source in which data is generated to su pport theresearch aims. In the examples cited, the artwork engaged the audience in a participatorymanner and this participation w s evaluated in much the same way as field researc h inthe s o c d sciences. They illustrated this process through examples such as,Collaborative Drawing which used video and still pho tography docum entation to

explore drawing as a tool that can facilitate collaboration in different environments(Douglas, Scopa and Gray). HBC does not engage the audience in a participatorymanner, nor d o I quantitatively or qualitativelyevaluate audience response.


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The construction of the video w o r k m C clearly falls into personal research . Theresearch was conducted through the evolution of the artwork and is communicated tothe audience through the act of viewing. I found this to be a highly rigorous process,which required continual reinvesugation of the aims of the work, in-depth questioning ofhow, and if they were being reabzed, and stringen t adherence to both self and peerreview. The video project became a reflective tool from which a literature review couldbe tested , analysed and expanded into new areas of research. I believe there are certainadvantages to using practice as a primaryfo rm of research, in that it allows fo r otherforms of awareness and critical analyses that may be missing from a purely litemurebased review. An example from my own work is that whde I would have been able tolook at and define a space constructed-image from a variety of contexts (video games,films, etc.), I would not, in the same way, have been able to evaluate its historicalrelevance as opposed to faddishness and accessibility. My critical engagement with awork of art that aimed to spQzk to a certain cultural mom ent allowed for an in-depth andpersonal evaluation of thls form. This is not t o imply that literature based research is insomeway h i t e d , just that both approaches offer unique research opportunities.

s I have taken several ddfe rent avenues to deve lop t is thesis, academic voice hasbecome an important aspect of how these practices are distinguishable, and alsoinfluential, on each othe r within the writing. There are three d istinct voices which areused throughout t is thesis: 1)personal reflection, (2) persona l analysis (as in videodescription), and 3) reflective academic. Each of these dd ferent voices is chosen for itseffectiveness in both communicating the concept at hand and clarifying the merit andundemanding of the ideas w i t h myself.


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1 5 Theoretical Framework

Later in this thesis the aesthetic qualities of the video-surface e explored inrelationship to the late work of Ckzanne, from 1900 onward. Ckzanne sought to abandonthe historical codes of perspective and the type of worldview they embodied for one thattook into account the role of the observer. l h s will act as a framew ork in which thespace-constructed image can be explored in relationship to new types of percep tualexperience brought o n by the increased use of telecommunications technologies.

In the introduction to his book Suspensions of Perception: Attention. Spectacle. andModem C u lt m , Jonathan G ar y identifies the emergence of what he terms space-drained images by Manet, Seurat, and G za nn e (1879- 1900) as part of a larger set ofcultural practices which redefined the subject in terms of an observer's capacity fo rpaying attention. These paintings break with the cohesive space of Euclidian geom euy,which had previously dominated painting and are characterized by disruptions,vacancies, and rifts within a perceptual field (Suspensions, G a ry 9). Garyplaces theaesthetic practices on which these artworks are based in the same fie ld of events (and notjust symptom s of) that redefined the subject in terms of an observer's capacity for payingattention. Accordmg to G ary, Westem M odernity has resulted in a dramatic shift in howwe look at, listen to, o r concentrate on an objec t in the last 150 years (Suspensions, G-ary1 . He identifies these sM ts as being brought about by the advent of photog raphy /f~lm,the modem production of labour, and a set of institutional practices that identified anarrowing field of perceptual states as nomzzl

Suspensions is a continuation of an earlier book by Gary, Techniques of the Observer,in which he lays the foundation for his argum ent challenging the accepted narrative


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around the historical construction of vision. U most ht o r ie s of vision, which positthe break with Renaissance perspective as happening in the 1870's-80's with m odern istpainting, G-ary identifies thls break as apart of an already established process whichbegins in the 1820's-30's with the camera obscura. According to Crary there is adominant narrative of vision in the twentieth century that goes somethmg like thefollowing: with bla.net, impressionism, and lo r postimpressionism, a new model of visualrepresentation and perception emerges that constitutes a break with several centuries ofano ther model of vision, loosely definable as Renaissance, perspectival or normative(Techniques, q ). He argues that the site of t h reak is not to be measured bychanges in representation but in the formation of a new type of perceiving subject.

On the first page of the in troduction to Suspensions, Gary states that while manytheorists in the twentieth centu ry have focused on the idea of reception in a state ofdistraction he argues that modem &traction can only be seen in relationship in the riseof attentive norms and practices (Suspensions, G-ary 1). W e -ary evolves t h ~ ~ewsubject over the co m e of wo books, at the core of his argument is a subject remadeby the growing influx of images, commodities, and signs that has characterized consum ercapitalism since the nineteenth century. While he focuses his argument on the latenineteenth century, he reminds us that through ou r curren t cultural obsession with thetreatme nt of attention &orders such as ADD (attention deficit disorder) atten tionremains an impor tant category of institutional power (Suspensions, G-ary 35). We areleft with a perceiving subject whose ltfe is increasingly characterized by new levels ofdistraction on the one hand and more strident hc ip lin ar y controls on the other.

G-ary sums up the primary art works of tudy, In the Conservatory by Manet (1879)'Parade de ciraue by Seurat (1887-1888),and Pines and Rocks by G za nn e (around 1900),

3


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as having an engagement with a general problem of perceptual synthesis and with theinterrelated binding and disintegrative possibilities of attention (Suspensions, G a ry 9).e also states his simultaneous interest in how these s p a c e -d h e d (but hardly flat)

images are inseparable from emerging machine forms of 'realrim' and opticalverisdtude (Suspensions, Crary9). If I turn Crary's statement around so that it fitsmy own project, I would pose the question: are s p m mages (images which areproduced throug h digital compositing but are hardly abstract) inseparable fro m emergingdigital forms of po st-r eah m and optical disen franchem ent? This question is related tomy broader field of interest: how aesthetic forms in art emerge from within a broaderfield of cultural experiences and are insightful research objects tha t reveals the often-obscured subject as it is changed by technological invention.

This research has been lnformed by Crary's approach to perception as being conditionedby external forces; however, as I e exploring a very ddferent field of events thanGar y, it w ll require substantivelyddferent methodologies and methods of approach. Itis also worth noting that my work exhibits more ddferences from G-ary than s d a r i t i e s .Rather than my work being seen as an updating of Crary's framework to apply to a morecontempora ry field of objects, my approach could be more accurately understood aswriting through Crary. In h s do not propose to cover the range or to have the sameunderlying intentions as G-ary but t o use his initial statement to draft a relationshipbetween the social integration of new technologies and an evaluation of representationalpractices in the image.


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1 5 1 The Space hinedImage and Perspective CodesA starting po int is the relationship raryconstruc ts between the pictorial surface of thepaintings byMane t, Seurat and G za nn e and machine vision. While raryis careful toarticulate the distance between these three works, the untying of the mimetic codes ofRenaissance o r classical perspective is central to all t h e . That is, each is drained ofthe depth that these techniques construct; space no longer conform s either aestheticallyor conceptually to the observer's relationship to an external world that these formsimply.

In the first two chapters of T ec h qu es , r y harts the historical course that visionmoves in the n ineteenth century, from a classical stable model to one that is determ inedby the instabilities of the human body. He constructs the camera obscura s both atechnological object and s a site in which cultural beliefs manifest about the nature ofhuman vision (Techniques, Crary 1). Epistemologically the camera obscura has twoimportan t features. The first is that the observer is isolated from the physical world, andthe second is that there exists a pre-given external world avadable fo r observation. Inh s model vision is removed from the physiology of the body, there exists anunwavering eye which discovers an unf hc hi ng world. In thls worldview we can rely onthe purity of ou r observations to form a stable, coherent interpretation of the nature ofthe physical world. In the nineteenth century, however, the eye turns to lo ok inward; theexternal world becomes conditioned by the eye's own limits, gaps and movements.

The t e c h q u e of representing space in the image through perspective embodied thisview of the world as both stable and pregiven. However, anyone who has everattempted to learn to dm w apples that look ltke apples has been confronted with the


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stark difference between perceptual space and perspectival space. Errors are usuallyattributed to the student's inability to see correctly and no t to the artificiality of themeans. Erwin Panofsky, in is book Perspective as Symbolic Form, outlines howperspectival, or mathematical space is not only incorrect, but relies on two falseassumptions: [that] we see with a single and immobile eye, and second, that the planarcross section of the visual pyramid can pass fo r an adequate reproduction of o ur opticalimage (Panofsky 30).

Panofsky goes on to outline how perspectival space m s f o r m s psychophysical space toone in which there is a fundamental hc re pa nc y between reahty and its construction. eclaims perspective space should be understood as both a set of conventions and as atrium ph of the distancing and objectifying sense of the real (Panofsky67).

In much recent theoretical writing, the idea of the fixed (and usuallymonocular) eye has been posed as a formative element of classicalsystems of reorientation, functioning to arrest duration and change inorder to achieve a conceptual mastery of phenom ena. However, I amsuggesting the problematic and contrary notion that the fixed, immobileeye (at least as static as physiological conditions ever allow) is whata d a t e s the seeming n a d e s s of the world and discloses theprovisional and fluid nature of visual experience, whereas the mobileglancing eye is what preserves the preconstructed character of the world.(Crary, Suspensions 300)

In Panofsky's and Crary's appraisal, the monocular eye of perspective is not just aconvenient tool which enables a seeming extension of the physical world into the image;it transform s our understanding of our relationship to the physical world. Later in thisthesis I wi explore whether a new type of perspective, one that is based on h t a n c eimplied by the com puter screen, can be seen as having the same tm sfo rm ativ e effects.


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1.5.2 ion and ModernityVision in the n ineteen th cen tury becomes increasingly an object of knowledge in and ofitself. The conditions of the outside world are seen more and more to depend on thephysiological make-up of the human body. One of the more pro found consequences ofthis is that both the externa l and the internal world became open to the same modes ofempirical study Techniques, G a ry 70-73).

By the 1840s there had been both 1) the gradual transferral of theholistic study of subjective experience or mental life to an empirical andquantitative plane, and 2) the division and fragm entation of the physicalsubject into increasingly specific organic and mechanical systems. G-ary,Techtuques 81)

The sh ifting of the conception of perception from a mental process to one that isconditioned by the body was fundamental to both the new social imperatives of controland the incredible burst of creativityin the arts Sus ~en sion s,G-ary 13). As neweconomies restruc tured how we lived, worked, and played, inattention came t o be

regarded as a serious social prob lemAs vision became relocated in the body wo intertwined paths open up. On e led outtoward ll the multiple affirmations of the sovereignty and autonom y of vision. Theother path was toward the increasing standardization and regulation of the observer...Techtuques., G-ary 150). The demands by technology on the human body to conform to

modem forms of in dus tr ia hd labour, coupled with an increasingly saturated visual field,led to a social climate in w hc h sustained attentive focus became an economicalimperative but was hopelessly impossible to m aintain. G-ary places the c u lt m l andphilosophical implications of these shifts into three categories:


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There were those who posed attention as an expression of the consciousf an autonomous subject for whom the very activity of attention, schoice, was part of that subject's self-constituting freedom There werethose who believed that attention was primarily a function of biologicallydetermined instincts, unconscious drives.. which inexorably shaped ourlived relation to an environment. And there were those who believedthat an attentive subject could be produced and managed through theknowledge and control of external procedures of stimulation as well as awide-ranging technology of attraction . (Crary, Suspensions25

Crarydemonstrates the camera obscura in the seventeenth and eighteenth centurieswasa model for the stable observer relationship to the extemal world. Th~shanged in thenineteenth century when the camera obscurawas reconceptualized in terms of theconditions of the body (such as retinal afterimages) as a part of a larger cultural shiftwhich modernized the subject.

Without getting into the lively debates on the continuations and disruptions that may ormay not be part of the move from an industrialized modem culture to an information-based Postmodem society, I see our a mmt situ tion as germinating in the cultural shiftsthat Crary outhes . They are the continuous upheavals of the observer's relationship tothe visual field w i t h he twentieth century, that has opened the senses to everexpanhg methods of control (the use of pharmaceuticals to treat Attention DeficitDisorder for example) and the continued pacification of the body to work with machineswhich require the smallest of movements (the computer mouse).

The writings of Crarywill provide a measure or instance in whtch to formulate ananalysis of the video as being part of a larger cultural shift; however, I ot be lookmg

In original text footnote number 33 (5) reads, Freud, Origins of Psycho-analysis,p.417 .Jonathon Crary, Sus~e nsio ns f Per ce~ tion: ttention, S~ec tac le, nd Modern CultureMassachusetts: MIT Press, 1999) 25. 18


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Diso rder for example) and the continued pacification of the body to work with m achmeswhich require the smallest of movem ents (the com pute r mouse).

The writings of C r a r y d provide a measure or instance in which to formulate ananalysis of the video as being part of a larger cultural shdt; however, I w ll not be lookingto d~tmuch as Postm odem p roduction of labour and whether research on thephysiology of the human bo dy is still an active and political area of research. Throughthe relationship that rarydraws between pictorial forms and the subjec t as it is formedby society, I wd explore the video-image in to craft a mom ent in which theelusiveness of our historical moment can be felt.

1 5 2 1 Georges Seurat's Parade de cirqueSem t's Pan de de cirque is illustrative of this move from perspective codes to a dynamicand shd ting relationship of the observer with the picture plane. Whde rarygives amore detailed account of the multiple layers within thls painting, two aesthetic shtfts areof particular relevance in illustrating the move from depth to flatness (space-dminedness)which is fou nd in Seurat's work: (1) the abstraction of colour (160-162) and (2) the planardivision of pictorial space (187- 193). I will also show how these aesthetic constructionswere inseparable from the social reorganization which characterized modernity (152- 155and 176-179).

S e m t was the foun der of Pointillism; a technique in which tiny abstract brushstrokes ofcolour coalesce into a figurative image when seen from a drxance. This techniquesubverts the stable central eye which is the hallmark of perspective image, as thepainting's fo rm dissolves and reforms dependmg on the position of the viewer. Theactive observer demanded by Seurat's work prevents a single perceptual organization of

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the painting, and instead it subsists unc er tad y between its elemental composition and anever fully completed fusion (Suspensions. G ary 160). In Parade de cirque there is nobinding organiza tion of spatial cues th t are found in perspectival space that construc t astable, fixed image. The elemental or mosaic of colour that forms the painting is alwayson the point of dissolution.

The illusion of a three dim ensional image on the flat surface of a canvas relies on the useof orthogonal h e s to create the sense of space recedmg away from the viewer. Seuxatintentionally excluded all but one orthogonal h e rom Parade de cirque, creating a planaror flat d ivision of space (Suspensions, ary188). This lack of depth is also heightenedby the absence of m o d e h g to the figures; the P o i n t h t techruque doesn't require aconsistent light source from which surfaces re construc ted. Crarywrites that the lack ofdepth indicators in Seuxat's work has the effect of collapsing the stage area, denying theviewer one of the key elements of scenography, the ability to tell the literal position ofthe figures on the stage (S us~en sions, ary 189-190)- in effect, denying the observer astable frame of reference fo r the figure/background relationship.

In Crary's framework the move to a pictorial surface that iss or perspective drainedin Seuxat's work is inseparable from the modernizing of the observer. O u h e d earlier inthis essay, this is a process which involved the modem production of labour, newdiscursive forms of power and increased knowledge of the worlungs of the human body.However, u n k othe r examples that have suggested simultaneous developments as partof a general field of events, writings by Seuxat indicate that he w s aware of this processand actively addressed t in his wor k Seuxat's writing makes this clear: how asensory world is dismantled, resynthesized, and represented is inseparable from theprob lem of how a world of objects, individuals and social relations organizes itself 20


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[Suspensions, Ct-dry 176 . Seurat activelyresearched and addressed the durational,subjective processing of external information as an aggregate of sensations in hispaintings. H ork denies the observer as homogenous surface onto which externalstimulus can be projected.

l h s articula tion of Seurat's work s an example of Crary's concept of the s p a c e - b e dimage, w ll be used as a point from which to develop the criteria for the s ~ mi m z ~ n particular- how Seurat addressed perceptual experience within the pictorialcons truction of his work, and why thls led to the aba ndonm ent of perspective. Seuratacts s a guide fro m which G ; u y s use of the term space-dn ined can be fullyarticulated.


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The Space Constructed Image

The historical emergence of ddferent pictorial conventions can be understood as astriving to express a s h h i i g social construction of space and time. Mikhail Bakhtin inhis essay Forms of Time and of The Chro notope in the Novel: Notes Towards aHistorical Poetic gives the name chronotope to express the interconnected of spaceand time in literature (which has since been adapted to any number of art forms). Heidentifies the ddficulty n isolating how real historical time is assimilated into literatureeven though generic and novel forms do emerge (Bakhtin 84).

The Cubists were artists who recognized the need to bring the new twentieth cen turyexperience of tim to the forefront of space. It isn't that time hadn't existed in imagesthat relied on the seamlessness of Euclidean geom etry time is condensed into a singlemoment. Time is quite literally pushing the edges of the image into movement in theCubist painting. The act of observing recorded.

In the past hundred years artist first fragmented light (and thus t i e ) withimpressionism The cubists fmctured the space-time bamer itself,providing simultaneous images of the same moment from differentpoints in space and multiple views of a single scene at various pints intime.. (Friedland and Boden 2)


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The Cubist idenufied the stillness of the image and tried to bring the movement (time)into the inert medium of painting. They recognized, as did A4kha d Bakhtin, that spaceand time are where the knots of the narrative are tied and untied (Bakhtin 250).

The landscape image can also be seen as an art form that has developed both generic(reflecting dominant ideolog);) and counter techniques that both express and reveal thesocial construction of time and space. From the abstract to the realistic, aesthetic formsof the landscape image have struggled to a s s d a t e real perceptual experience. JeffWall describes landscape images s making visual the distances we must maintainbetween ourselves in order that we may recognize each other for what, under constantlyvarying conditions, we appear to be (About Malunc Landscapes, Wall 12). That is, swe renegotiate our relationship to our world, we also renegotiate ou r relationship toourselves; as we inscribe these inner shlfts on the physical landscape, we constructimages to help us recognize t h ~ s lace we call home.

2 1 The Logics of PerceptionG-arypinpo ints moments of intersection, across a diverse set of historical events throughthe lens of attention. e weaves together research on the optics of the eye, changingaesthetic forms, the needs of institutional power, and sites of machine vision to get aglimpse of the elusive nature of the subject as it has been modelled by modernity. In thisdialogue mechanical form s of reproduction, such as the photograph, have not just beentechnical devices but sites that have both illuminated and transformed ou r knowledge ofour internal and external world.

The ubiquitous use of digital imageryand its inherent abstraction from real worldcoordinates is a site in which perception has been destabdized. The space-constructed

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image is not just an aesthetic made possible by the flexibility inherent in k i t a l editingtools but is a reflection of t h erceptual sMt; and by analysing the aesthetic structure ofthe videoHBC we can glunpse how new technologies are reshaping how w vkw ndconcep& the world around ourselves.

The connection that is made between machme forms of recordmg and display andhuman perception has a long and diverse history. There is a tendency to simply glossthis connection over, as if it is something that we ll know by common sense and needsno further explanation. This connection is further confused by the lack of differentiationbetween optical devices, such as the lens, that enhances sight at the locations, andphotographs or computers that display images separated from both the body and fromthe time and place they originated. The bindmg thread, between display and the lens, ishow they &place the observer from a set point of view.

Without oversirnpldying the vast amount of writing that has been done on therelationship between the eye and the machine, there are two separate relationships thatneed to be clarified. The first is the machine as a site of conceptualization, an externalmetaphor in which the eyr (or any of our senses) can be understood in relation to theexternal world (such as the camera obscura) (whichw s detded earlier in t h ssay), andthe second is the effect of ma ch e or digital imagery on memory and imagination. Inthe second instance, it is how viewing images change how we perceive the externalworld.

This begs the question, what is this relationship between perception and ma c h evision? In the first chapter of Paul Virho's book The Machine Vision, he makes aconnection between memory and place; in another book, Politics of the Very Worst, he

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refers to this as mental-mapping .6 Virilio makes a connection between the ancientmemory practices of the Method of Loci, an imaginary-mnemonics which consisted ofselecting a sequence of places, locations, that could easily be ordered in time and spaceand the remapping of memoryw hich is taking place due to new forms of digitaltransmission (Machme Vision, Virilio 3 . An example of this Method of Loci would bea mental image of a house where the contents of a speech are assigned to each room ,with perhaps finer details of the speech being ascribed to chair or a table.

Accordmg to Virilio, optical devices that first appeared in the Renaissance, such as th etelescope, and which have prohferated ever since, alter the way in which ou r mem ory istopographically stored and retrieved. Our place-based mental-map is being eradicated byone that is no longer dependant on our physical location; distance is becoming irrelevant.On e of the consequences of this is that the site of mental images no longer conforms toa physical location. Vinlio quotes Merleau-Ponty's I can principle to emphasise theimportance of vision connected to the h t s of the human body's location in t h e andspace. Merleau-Ponty states that ''everydung I see is in principle within my reach, at leastwithin reach of my sight, marked on the map of the 'I can ' (Merleau-Ponty as quoted inMachme Vision, Virilto 7 . Virilio states that seeing at a distance is the dissolution of themap of I can7'- the I can of sight is the world w i h each. l h s s the fundamentalposition of perspective images, that when the viewer is placed in the center of thepresented universe, ev er yh ng seen is within the map of I can . Accordmg to V d o ,the logics of teletopography have destroyed this logic of perception. We no longer have

Mental-mappingevolves with the transportation revolution. The faster I ravel to the e nd ofthe world, the faster I come back, and the emptier my mental-map becomes. Paul Virilio,Politics of the Verv Wors t (New York: Sem iotext(e), 1999) 4225


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W e he space-dramed images of Manet, Seurat and G za nn e were dram ed of(abandoned,) the historical codes of perspective (and their cultural impentive), aperceived objectivity persisted through the mechanical lens of the carn en. The space-constructed image is built from the fragments of the cam en's claim to objectivity andtruth. It retains certain mimetic codes, such as cues that indicate depth, icon, figure etc.;however there is a disjunction between the representation and the site or location ofcreation. Vinlio refers to this &junction between figure and ground as the transparento r trans-appearance horizon (Open Sky, Virilio 36). l s s the figure against thehorizon h e of the screen as opposed to the horizon of the earth .

trans-appeannce whch then completes (fishes-off, so to speak) then a m l trans-appearance of the earth's atmosphere, producing in theprocess a sort of stereoscopic intensification of tangible appearances, ofrepresentation of the world and so, indirectly, of aesthetics itself. Theaesthetics of the appearance of objects or people standmg out against theapparent horizon of classical perspective's unity of time and place is thentaken over by the aesthetics of the disappearance of far-off chancterslooming up against the lack of horizon of a cathode screen where unity oftime wins out over the unity of the place of encounter. (Vlrilio, Op en Sky36)

In this passage, V i d o makes an analogy between the earth's atmosphere and theinvisibility (transparency) of the medium of the netw ork If the m horizon of the earthimplies a unity of space, time, light and position, then the f r @or digital horizon lacks aunifying structure. Classical perspective constructs a set context or backdrop fro m whichfigures and objects emerge, this stable context is missing in the digital horizon.

The image of information s opposed to the image of capture (such s the photognph),no matter how similar they may seem on the surface, has lost the chemical photograph'smost essential feature: the appeannce of truth. While the h t s of the frame of the


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2 1 2 Optical DisenfranchisementIt is important to reiterate the connection between the space-constructed image and theemergence of optical-disenfranchisement and post-realism The terms qt urlheqhano nsm and s p c e w d re a word play on G ;uy's use of the tenns opticalverisirmltude and s p a c e - b e d , and are meant to indicate a he ag e with hisargument. Post-realism refers to the s h f t in the cultural perception of the pho tographfrom one of capture to one of fabrication with the move from chemical to k i t a lph ot og ra ph y/ fh . The space-constructed image, the type of image that is exemplrfied by(but not limited to) the video HBC is an aesthetic that addresses the lived experience ofpost-realism and optical disenfranchisement. While they are both borne by the technicalpossibilities of the computer, the space-constructed image is a pictorial form, and opticaldisenfranchisement refers to a set of cultural events.

The cultuml events which define optical disenfranchisement have been encapsu latedearlier s the electronic horizon. Earlier hesis recounted how the sensation ofviewing the landscape through the windshield of the car was the initial inspiration for

There is a connection between how the images formed and blurred from view inmotion and the perceptual presence of the com puter screen. Throughout Open SkyVirh o makes a connection between forms of physical movement and those of wtu lmovement. Fo r example, the virtual movement of tele-messaging is seen s part of thesame field of events s air travel. Both are understood in terms of space /timecompression . In Virilio's view,w become a mobile observer staring into the transparent(artificial) horizon of the television set.


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With optical disenfranchisement, he crises in perception are not caused due to theinstabilities of the body but to that of the machine. Thls has caused another crisis orliberation (depending on view point) of what has now become an older regime of v ision,that of machme vision. V d o efers to the technologies of transmission (internetstreaming, fo r example) as a new form of optics. This is an optics that is based o n thefar off event as opposed to the near event. We are now dealing with a new horizon, onethat is taking over the apparent horizon which is the backdrop of ll action and the

deep horizon of the imagination for the transparent horizon, one that is caused by amagnification through technology of ou r world view (Open Sky Virilio 22). In theworks of G za nne the lack of a fixed point of view is immediately discemable. Inartworks influenced by the uansparent or tele-horizon the lack of a fixed poin t of view isdiscernable from how the image is read and not necessarily how it appears. The spaceconstructed-image often gives the illusion of using s d a r pictorial codes as the chemicalphotograph. However in the space constructed-image, the images are without stablesi gd ie rs , context or reference to specific places or events (apparent horizon). Gza nn eengaged in an investigation of the relationship between the inner and the oute r world, asthe tele-horizon is a world out of view; it is a space tha t must be imagined and notpresented. That is to engage with the tele-horizon no singular site of prolongedcontemplation is available; it can only be felt from the far off distance.

If electro-perspective constructs a worldview that is outside the I can of sight, thenwhat type of observer does it presuppose? ary states in the opening of Techniques ofthe Observer that the changes in representational practices in painting at the turn of thetwentieth centu ry were an indication of a new observing subject and not the site in whichit d e s t e d . The broader question implied in this thesis, is what type of observer does

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machine but one which roves freely, getting into everything from the smallest crevices oflife to the expanse of the universe.

Garycontextualrzes G zann e s late work from the 1900 s onward as moving toward acomplete dissolution of the historical codes of vision. He says that these paintings arepart of an attempt by Gza nn e to see the world with an eye free from the bounds ofperspective. In b oth Suspensions of Perception and Open Sky a connec tion is madebetween a changing perceptual experience and the loss of a stable, fixed horizon. Inboth of these works loss of a clear horizon o r of figure/ground relationships in theimage corresponds to a new understanding of the observer s involvem ent in theconstruction of the immediate world.

In keeping with Chy w ll use G zanne s Pines and Rocks as a fm e w o r k to identifyoptical styles inHBC There are two aspects of this painting that erve as my basisfo r analysis. They are 1) the optical styles present in Pines and Rocks and (2) howG za nn e strove to find a new type of synthesis wit in the wor k In a critique of thiswork by Gz ann e, my intention is to draw out the relationship that a r ymakes betweenG za nne and his proposal of a new type of perceptual synthesis and not as a broaderinvestigation into the practices of G zan ne. Even though I do thtnk there is thepossibility of a rich relationship between the practices of G za nne and current shdts inperception , I see this thesis as a beginning and in future projects would e o explorethis idea across a greater breadth of sources and works. By drawing on thls relationshipbetween Gzanne and perception, I am not trying to make a historical connectionbetween my project and that of G zan ne s, in that I am not placing my work as acont inua tion of his; however I am using the past as a way of illuminating the present.


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(as in the image evolving over time in Cubism) but an investigation into the nature ofperceptual synthesis.

G zan ne produced a model of synthesis that was no longer based on the fixed monoculareye of perspective but one in which the eye constructed the world as a heterogeneoussurface. Synthesis in thls model was an active assemblage of dor m ati on , one in whichthe observer took a participatory role in a creation. G za nn e engaged with the nature ofperceptual experience that arose due t o a new consciousness of the functioning humanbody and its role in perception.

My own investigation into the nature of representation has arisen from an awareness ofthe mediating role of technology and its role in the construction of experience. IfG za nn e was looking for a new typ of spatial synthesis, then it can be said that I amlooking for a new type of tempora l synthesis. To imagine what fo rm this synthesis mighttake in a world where our sense of duration has been collapsed to the d s e c o n d .Gz ann e s view of the worldwas from that of a newly reconfigured surface of the eye: inmy world the eye has been supplemented by the surface of the screen (or windscreen ofthe car).

2 2 2 Shotby Shot verviewIn its viewing entirety,HBC is 26 minutes and 53 seconds in length. There are only twoshots in the entire production. The first 26 minutes and 9 seconds comprise the driveto Hope and are a com posite image of a background and a fo reground in a single shot.The second shot is seconds in length and is of Eliot and I moving from the middleground to the background plane of the video space. I n the editing process h s sachieved b y 1) dnving in the car in front of the green screen in a composite shot (2)

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2 2 2 1 The ackground

The background image is shot by mounting a Sony DVR Pro o n the trunk of a car andshooting one continuous sho t (only stopping to change tapes) from my house in EastVancouver to the Swiss Chalet Motel located in Hope. I experimented with several differenttypes of car mounts and positions of the camera before coming to the final set-up. In theend the rigging fo r the camera consisted of a tripod head bolted to a piece of w ood, whichwas then strapped very tightly dow n to the trunk of the car. The camera was protec ted bytwo suitcases which were used to construc t a blind. The resultant image was reasonablysmooth unde r perfect conditions, but was prey to the bum ps in the road and movementswithin the car. While at first I had planned to blend out any jumps o r bumps in post-production, the actual in-camera quality of the video became an im portant reference to theartifice of the image.

The drive from V ancouver to Hope is approximately hree hours in length and has threemajor landscape changes. The first part is from Vancouver to Surrey, which is urban sprawl,punctuated by farms and development lots. The second is fr om Surrey to Chiliwack, whichis flat almost prairie-like farmland , and the last is from Sardis to H ope , which is amountainous region. I choose an approximately six and a half minute chunk of eachbackground type, urban sprawl, farmland and mountains, to be representative of that s tretchof the journey. In terms of film time, a twenty minute con tinuous shot still had the weightto give the sensation of a substantial amount of real time. At the time of the shooting I hadplanned fo r the driving shot to be in real time with only breaks where we naturally r n out of

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tape in the camera.On viewing of the material, this seemed overwhelmingly long, and evenas the author was at a loss as to how to view three hours of rolling landscape footage.How ever, each editing decision implied some type of space/tim e compression andcommunicated a potentially confusing reference to film language.

The decision that seemed to produce the most com fortable balance was the rough splicingof the background footage into the three landscape sections. While the jump cut is amainstay of m odem editing, in this instance its lack of concealment offered a reasonablelevel of transparency. The obvious slight camera bumps an d jerks and sometim es jarringshifts from one location to another created a stance from the d g m m d o r nside of thecar, because the film could not collapse into a single space and time within the video-image.


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2 2 2 2 The Middle Ground

igure 6 Middle Ground, H C 2004).

The middle ground was shot in a garage by placing a defunct car with front and backwindshield taken out) in front of a green screen. The drive is shot in one continuous take.Unlike the background in which a certain artifice was desirable, the space within the carneeded to transcend the obvious fact that we where not actually participating in the activitywhich was being presented. Slowly the disconnection between the background and themiddle ground dissolves the illusion of cohesion.


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Figure 7 Green screen set-up, HBC 2004).

2.2.2.3 Camera Position

The camera (for the middle ground shot) is positioned to compress the foreground into avery shallow amount of pictorial space. There is very little shown of the hood of the car; theshot is framed to begin at the dashboard with Eliot s driving hand sitting close to the viewer.The viewer is constructed as n outside, yet intimate observer. This is in opposition to theother possibility, which was to have the camera pointing out of the car, the viewer essentiallymyself. While t is option also has interesting possibilities, the distinction between fore,middle, nd background was integral to the conceptual development of t iswork.


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2 2 2 4 verlapThere are several instances in the video that seek to confuse the division between the middleand background. These are: 1)the use of fans to create the look of wind acting upon hairand cigarette smoke within the car 2) the use of a blind crossing in front of the hghts to givethe illusion of shadows from an outside source crossing into the car and 3) the use ofnarrative elements for example, pointing out the window etc. by Eliot and I). Thesebecome important references of connection between the two video spaces.

2.2.2.5 Parking, Empty Car

Figure 8. Transition scene,HBC 2004)

Just before the fin l scene of the video, when we pull into the motel in Hope, Eliot and Itemporarily park the car and off screen register for the motel room. During this time the


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viewer sees the empty car with the motel sign and highway behind. This scene takes place inapproximately real time and is a transition between the driving scene and the final scene ofthe video. Aesthetically it is very pleasing; the redness of the motel sign plays off theblueness of the sky drawing the eye to the background space of the video. The transition invideo-time from compressed edited) time to real time gives the scene a feeling of beingalmost uncomfortably long, pausing the flow of the video, building a sense of anticipation inthe viewer,

2 2 2 6 inal Scene

In the final scene of the video, Eliot and I exit the car and walk into the motel room,effectively moving from the middle ground to the background of the video space. In termsof editing, this is accomplished by: 1)getting out of the car in the green screen shot andstanding outside the frame and 2) the background footage entering the hotel room). hiscreates the illusion in video time of only a few seconds passing between getting out andwalking into the hotel room; however, in terms of shooting time, these two scenes wereseveral weeks apart. The desired effect of this moment is one of spatial collapse, theobvious distance throughout the video to this point of the two video-spaces as occupyingseparate space/time positions to one of sudden transcendence.


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2 2 2 7 The Sound

The so und in the video is entirely constructed in post-p rodu ction. While the initialimpression may be one of seeming naturalness, the entire soundscape is constructed from aset palette that is looped and reworked. The baseline sound is that of the car, a low rumbletha t shifts between the interio r sound of the car and the exterior soun d of the car. This isaccompanied by event sound s, which are used to push the viewer's attention around thescreen. The soun d of dialogue, changing radio stations, movement within the car, etc. risebriefly above th e din of the car and then are swallowed again. The unnaturalness of thesound is bo th relaxing, in that it is highly repetitious, and disquieting as it subverts the desireto clearly understand o r the dialogue o r othe r seemingly meaningful exchanges within thevideo. The focus of the sound will be edited to reflect the subjective states within the video.

2 2 2 8 Optical Styles of HBC

s mention ed abo ve, there are two optical styles present inm irst is the backgroundimage that is a reflection of the tele-horizon, o r to fu rthe r use Virilio's language, it is outsideof the space of I can (Machine Vision, V i o 7). his is the horizon/landscape that hasthe initial appearance of adherence to the laws of perspectival space but one in which thesubjects float, always ou t of sync, unable t o connec t with o r exhibit agency in. To return toG za nn e, the background in HBC is analogous to G zann e's study of the periphery of theeye. Like G za n ne , who included the areas of sight that had b een excluded by perspective,


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the background here addresses the experience of space/time that falls outside of the hereand now.

Next is the middle space of the video that adheres to the space of I can, how ever, it is asmall interior with lunited scope or m g e . The subjects move within an unfiltered,unrnediated presence within the boundaries o r construction of the car. The m iddle groundis compam ble to G za nn e's treatmen t of the diagonal swath of rocks cutting through themiddle left side to the low er right in tha t it uses an older convention of pictorial style, inthis case that of the film camera. La ter xplore the impo rtance of the moments ofintersection between these two video spaces, proposing a new type of tempom l synthesis.Thls synthesis will be the basis of mydefinition of the refeatured landscape.


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The Refeatured andscapeScott Watson categorizes his essay, D ef in in ~he Defeatured Landscape , as a preliminarysketch into conceptual and minimal practices in Vancouver in the late 1960's and 1970's(Watson 247). Albeit brief, Watson constructs a beginning, middle, end, and reoccurrence inthese events. Watson states that:

In the featureless, Wall found a way of contrasting the evidence of a builtenvironment of seemingly endless interchangeability and instability with the'natural environment.' Abstraction in a monochrome o n the wall became ananalogue of the abstraction of entrepreneuria l capitalism as it chew ed upwilderness, farms and city blocks to create a new 'ddemess' in whichnothing cold be located for very long before it was replaced. I t sought in the'facts' of the camera. The construction was conflated with the despoiled;wilderness and order collapsed into each other so that the narrative ofentrepreneurial capitalism would reveal itself in the way the urban space w sbuilt. The medium that revealed the dialectical potential of this s ituation wasthe simple 'artless' photograph. (Watson 256)

I w ll use this statem ent to draw a relationship between the defeatured landscape and theartless photog raph, to explore the space-constructed image and the post-industrial urban

landscape in E C I propose HBC as a new model of landscape image, one tha t isrefeatured through synthesis. While Watson gives a more detailed accounted of the artistsand practices tha t constitute what he has termed a defea tured landscape , I w ll only befocusing on the relationship between the camera and the landscape image. This,however,


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should no t be taken as representing the breadth of p ractice which historically constitutes thedefeatured landscape.)

In the introduc tion to this thesis, I made the poin t tha t landscape images can reveal as wellas hide. That in order to reveal, landscape images must collapse the d istances theypresuppose between individuals, places and times. In the defeatured landscape, the distancebetween the dom inant ideologies surrounding entrepreneu rial capitalism (order) wascollapsed through their association with nature/wildemess (disorder). The myths ofstability, progress and individual freedom s that were disseminated through popu lar mediawere contested b y the bleak o r featureless nature of the industriavcapitalist landscape. Manyof the photographs by Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, and later Roy Arden focused o n scenes wherethe landscape is in the process of u haniz atio n but there is still evidence of a past wilderness,such as a lone old growth tree. According to Watson, there are traces of D an G raham's useof innuendo in Wall's work, in that all microcosms can be seen as refracting images ofone another, that rather than being locally specific, it was possible to view a largerunperceivable social ord er (Watson 252). The image of the landscape o n the edge ofbecoming and destroying, captured in the defeatured landscape, presented capitalism asreliant on a constant state of renewal to survive.

I n earlier works that constituted the defeatured landscape, it is the artless o r documentarynature of th e photographs that is able to co mm unicate the relationship between capitalismand dest ructio dren ewal. In later works (those talung place after 1980), the photognp hs are


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more intentional, using the camera as a high art medium rather than a recording device;however, they maintain the same essential abilityto expose the relationship betweenconsumerism and chaotic systems (Watson 263). The mechanical or unmediated eye of thedocumentary image presumes a lack of interference on the part of the author. The audienceengages with the photographs as a moment of truth or as unfettered documentation.narrative is formed through the dialogue between the appearance of chaos (nature) and order(urban).

Watson makes the point that, in the defeatured landscape, the narrative of consumercapitalism revealed itself in the way the space was built (Watson 256). Earlier I quotedBakhtin's reference to the cht-onotope as the assimilation of real historical time inliterature (and subsequently other rt forms). In the defeatured landscape it was the camerathat revealed thisnew relationship; however it preexisted in the physical space. Modemism,as previously mentioned, can be viewed as the continuous upheaval of our social sense ofspace and time. his can be understood in terms of the larger shifts, such as newer, fastertransport technologies, and smaller shifts such as the commuter's distance from home towork. It s the social reorganization of space through Modernism (and therefore ourexperience of space through time) that was captured in the defeatured landscape.

In the tuuedladutpe, I have tried to find a way of contrasting the natural environmentwith the endless interchangeabilityand instability of our technologically mediatedenvironment. In myworkthe natural s not equatedwith nature but with unrnediated


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hum an in teraction (dialogue within the car). The dlgital com pos ite image in a videoprojec tion becomes analogous with post-industrial ca pi ta hm as it evaporates the connectionbetween signifier and s ig di ed . It created a new horizon; one where nothing can be pinneddown o r be conn ected to an event. The refeatured Landscape seeks in the subjectivity of thedigital image to sh ow the u rban space as an assemblage through the technology of thecomputer. The space-constructed is conflated with the global village; the background imageo r the h orizon-line is separated fro m the subject so that the nam tive of post-industrialismcan reveal itself in the way that time and space are structured. The m edium that reveals thedialectical poten tial of th is situation is the digital image.

In H C I have sough t to collapse or confuse the distance between wh at is seen as naturaland what is und erstood to be a con structed o r a synthetic order. Rebecca Solnit, in her essayThe E lements of a New Landscape, identifies the w ord landscape s problematic, because itdescribes the natural world as an aesthetic phenomenon, a department of visual

representation (Solnit 45). Solnit sees this con ception of landscape as co nstructing natureas an ob ject, which can be acted upon, as a site for consump tion, rather than s having aninhere nt agency of its own. New landscape practices in fields as diverse as contemporary art,urban planning and ecology are now breaking down these older conceptions of landscape sa backdrop fo r hum an activity. Solnit encapsulates this shift in the move fr om the ter mlandscape to the term environm ent (which she defines s now synonymous with landscape).The t e r n environm ent implies a landscape that is constructed as part of a network, one


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tha t includes microcosrnic as well as the m acrocosm ic, econom ies as well as ecologies, thecultural as an extens ion of the natural (Solnit 45). In HB C the distance between natural andsynthetic is collapsed through the confusion of the separation and d i c a t i o n of the videospaces.

In the refeatured landscape it is the subjective or constructed nature of the image that is ableto expose the relationship between post-industrialism and optical-disenfranchiseme nt. Theaudience engages with the images as a false o r constructed event; the d isjunction betweenthe spaces of the video inhibits the single unified reading of the w ork It is this state ofunease that draws the viewer in, making her o r him question the difference between what isbeing viewed and what is taking place.

HB C looks to construct a potential re co nc ht io n between artifice and nature but offers nopossibility of returning to a n ideal garden. It looks to find an expressive fo rm that w ouldarticulate the cu rrent shift in the percep tual experience of space and time. At the end of thevideo , Elio t an d I walk into our motel room , which resembles a miniature Swiss village,seeming to transce nd the construction of the video only to move to anoth er construction,that of architecture. H C oesn't offe r a simple escape. How ever it does propose tha tthere is a possibility fo r conceiving of new c onnections, that cross the ever-widening dividebetween the here nd x


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The defeatwed landscape is a landscape in which its banality becomes a source of interest.The u rban sprawl s v ery featureless (defeatwed) nature was able articulated through thegeneric quaiity of consum er capitalism and the mass produc tion it is predicated o n. Ipropose HBC as an initial gesture towards a landscape refeatured, refeatured throu gh thenew forms of tem poral and spatial synthesis. s I articulated earlier, through differentediting treatments, there is a separation between the subjects and the background within thevideo. How ever there is also present throughou t the video the possibility of co nnectionbetween the middle ground (subjects) and background (landscape) through events that crossbetween the tw o spaces, such as wind, shadows etc. Throug hout the video the subjects arepresented s within a n tur l o r unedited space. This is reflected both in the editing, singlelong shot and through na tural dialogue. How ever in the last scene of the video the sub jectstransfe r from the natural space of the m iddle groun d to the edited or distant space of thebackground. To return to Virilio, the landscape (horizon) becomes an area not without thepotential of hum an agency, not without reach, consequence or action.


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onclusionIn the introduc tion, I referred to how a critical distance is formed in the landscape imagewhen it reveals a hidden social order o r agenda through its fram ing or physical construction.This w ork explores the possibilities of wha t I have termed a space-constructed image toarticulate the narrative of post-indu strial (information bases) society. I have drawn on thesensation of living amongst these events to reveal a ntz izl t am between ourselves, and thepervasive use of new consum er technologies. To find a lens through which the subject canbe recognized as in a state of tran sformation.

Above, I referred to Da n Graham's use of innuendo through which the specific instancecan be understood in relationship to a larger unperceivable social order (Watson 252).While H C is construc ted arou nd a personal narrative, it displays the individual as shaped b ysociety. While this work deals with the connection to landscape, it is a reflection of themoments of d iscord, which populate the everyday experience.

Last time I was at Metrotown (o ur largest local shopping center) I suffered a momentaryinability to process the huge nu mb er of free-floating signifiers. Disassociated bits of th eworld, brought tog ether to m ke everyone feel at home bu t nowhere in particular. I foun dmyself emerging fro m und er a sheet of plastic into the newly constructed foo d court. Ea chwall, each area, signified a different use, a different part of the world. Com mod ified, bright


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and shiny, I saw rem nants of airports I have been in, playgrounds, amu seme nt parks, quietlounges. huge fireplace encased in plastic cut through a roo m that didn t appear to beround but had no visible com ers. I went up and pressed the palms of my hands against thePlexiglas to see if I could feel warm th. Every thing was familiar and meaningless. Un -rooted,contextless. I wondered if t is is what it is like to b e o ld, to be awash in the familiarunfamiliar.

It has been at the h eart of this work to explore this sense of the familiar-unfamiliar, therootless subjective against an undifferentiated background. Ho wever it has also been a t theheart of this work to explore the m oments of connection. To propose that perhaps in theseupheavals there is the possibility to fo rm a new connection to the environment, a landscapeof human integm ion rather than action. That in the mom ents when wind and shadowscross ou r paths, we man y find a connection between a now unfamiliar past and an un know nfuture.


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Works itedAcconci, Vito. T en Packed Minutes. 1977. sound file. Available:http://www ubu com/sound~acconci htrnl ov 10 2004.Bakhtin, Mikhail. Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. The Di al o~ icImagina tion. Ed . Michael Holquis t. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 84- 258.k r ~ ,onathan. Suspensions of Perception: Attention. Spectacle. and M ode m Culture.Massachusetts: M IT Press, 1999.G-ary, Jonathan. Techniau es of the Observer: On Vision an d Modernity in the NineteenthCentury. 1992. Massachusetts: M T Press, 1999.Douglas, Anne Scopa, Karen, and Gray, Carole. Research throug h Practice: Positioningthe P ractitioner as Researcher. Research into Practice. Gray's School of Art, 2000.Vol. 1 . 2 vols. Available: http://www.herts.ac.uk/

artdesl/researcWpapers/wpades/voll/douglasl htrnl Oc t 01 2004.Friedland, Roger, and Deirdre Bode n. Introduction. Now here: Svace, Time andModernity. Eds. Roger Friedland and D eirdre Boden. Berkeley University ofCalifornia Press, 1994.Klee, Paul. Creative Credo. Theories of Mo dem Ed . Herschel B.Chlpp. BerkeleyUniversity of California Press, 1968. 182-86.Linsley, Robe rt. Painting and the Social History of British Columbia. Vancou veran tho lo^ The Institutional Politics o f Art. Ed . Stan Douglas. Vancouver.Talonboo ks, 1991.225-45.Solnit, Rebecca. Elem ents of the Landscape. s Eve Said to the Se ve nt. Athens:University of Georgia Press, 2001.45-62.Virilio, Paul. The Politics of the Very Worst. Ne w Y or k Serniotext(e), 1999.Virilio, Paul. O pe n Sky. Trans. Julie Rose. London: V erso, 1997.Watson, Scott. Discovering he Defeatured Landscape. Vancouver Antholow : TheInstitutional Politics of Art. Ed. Stan Douglas. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1991.247-64.


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Appendix: Hope BC Chainsaw Capital of the WorldThe video referred to in this work Hope C Chainsaw Carvinc Capital of the World maybe found in a DVD appendix in the inside back cover of this work

the refeatured landscape: notes on the aesthetics of digital video

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