Monday, November 03, 2008
Notes on Expanded Cinema
Stan Vanderbeek (January 6, 1927 - September 19, 1984)
"Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theater where people would lie down and experience movies all around them. Floating multi-images would replace straight one-dimensional film projection. From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and even extraterrestrial intelligence."
Wipe Cycle - Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider (1969)
"Unlike Levine's work, the effect of Wipe Cycle, by the young New York artists Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, was to integrate the viewer and his local environment into the larger macrosystem of information transmission. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969. It consisted of nine monitors whose displays were controlled by synchronized cycle patterns of live and delayed feedback, broadcast television, and taped programming shot by Gillette and Schneider with portable equipment. These were displayed through alternations of four programmed pulse signals every two, four, eight, and sixteen seconds. Separately, each of the cycles acted as a layer of video information, while all four levels in concert determined the overall composition of the work at any given moment.
"The most important function of Wipe Cycle," Schneider explained, "was to integrate the audience into the information. It was a live feedback system which enabled the viewer standing within its environment to see himself not only now in time and space, but also eight seconds ago and sixteen seconds ago. In addition he saw standard broadcast images alternating with his own delayed/live image. And also two collage-type programmed tapes, ranging from a shot of the earth, to outer space, to cows grazing, and a 'skin flick' bathtub scene."
"It was an attempt," Gillette added, "to demonstrate that you're as much a piece of information as tomorrow morning's headlines— as a viewer you take a satellite relationship to the information. And the satellite which is you is incorporated into the thing which is being sent back to the satellite. In other words, rearranging one's experience of information reception."8 Thus in Wipe Cycle several levels of time and space were synthesized into one audio-visual
experience on many simultaneous frequencies of perception. What is, what has been, and what could be, were merged into one engrossing teledynamic continuum and the process of
communication was brought into focus." (from: Closed-Circuit Television and Teledynamic Environments, Expanded Cinema; Gene Youngblood; p. 341 - 343)
"EVE is a research and development project initiated at the ZKM Karlsruhe in cooperation with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. It encompasses the conceptual and technical development of a new form of interactive immersive visualisation environment and virtual-reality apparatus.
In the centre of a large inflatable dome, two video projectors are mounted on a motorised pan/tilt device (e.g. robot arm) which can move the projected image anywhere over the inside surface of the dome. The two video projectors present a stereo pair of images - the viewers wearing polarising spectacles can see the projected imagery in three dimensions.
One of the visitors to EVE wears a helmet (or a 'miner's lamp') with an attached spatial tracking device that identifies the position and angle of his head. This controls the positioning of video projectors so that the projected image always follows the direction of the viewer's gaze. In this way the viewer can move the picture frame over the entire dome surface and interactively explore the computer-generated virtual scenographies which are presented there. A joystick also allows the viewer to control his forwards and backwards movement in the surrounding virtual space."
(from: Jeffrey Shaw's website)
Expanded Cinema - Gene Youngblood (1970)
Stan Vanderbeek (January 6, 1927 - September 19, 1984)
Movie-Drome - Stan VanDerBeek (1963)
"Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theater where people would lie down and experience movies all around them. Floating multi-images would replace straight one-dimensional film projection. From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and even extraterrestrial intelligence."
(from: Jürgen Claus in Leonardo, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2003, p. 229.)
Wipe Cycle - Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider (1969)"Unlike Levine's work, the effect of Wipe Cycle, by the young New York artists Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, was to integrate the viewer and his local environment into the larger macrosystem of information transmission. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969. It consisted of nine monitors whose displays were controlled by synchronized cycle patterns of live and delayed feedback, broadcast television, and taped programming shot by Gillette and Schneider with portable equipment. These were displayed through alternations of four programmed pulse signals every two, four, eight, and sixteen seconds. Separately, each of the cycles acted as a layer of video information, while all four levels in concert determined the overall composition of the work at any given moment.
"The most important function of Wipe Cycle," Schneider explained, "was to integrate the audience into the information. It was a live feedback system which enabled the viewer standing within its environment to see himself not only now in time and space, but also eight seconds ago and sixteen seconds ago. In addition he saw standard broadcast images alternating with his own delayed/live image. And also two collage-type programmed tapes, ranging from a shot of the earth, to outer space, to cows grazing, and a 'skin flick' bathtub scene."
"It was an attempt," Gillette added, "to demonstrate that you're as much a piece of information as tomorrow morning's headlines— as a viewer you take a satellite relationship to the information. And the satellite which is you is incorporated into the thing which is being sent back to the satellite. In other words, rearranging one's experience of information reception."8 Thus in Wipe Cycle several levels of time and space were synthesized into one audio-visual
experience on many simultaneous frequencies of perception. What is, what has been, and what could be, were merged into one engrossing teledynamic continuum and the process of
communication was brought into focus." (from: Closed-Circuit Television and Teledynamic Environments, Expanded Cinema; Gene Youngblood; p. 341 - 343)
EVE - Jeffery Shaw (1993)
"EVE is a research and development project initiated at the ZKM Karlsruhe in cooperation with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. It encompasses the conceptual and technical development of a new form of interactive immersive visualisation environment and virtual-reality apparatus.
In the centre of a large inflatable dome, two video projectors are mounted on a motorised pan/tilt device (e.g. robot arm) which can move the projected image anywhere over the inside surface of the dome. The two video projectors present a stereo pair of images - the viewers wearing polarising spectacles can see the projected imagery in three dimensions.
One of the visitors to EVE wears a helmet (or a 'miner's lamp') with an attached spatial tracking device that identifies the position and angle of his head. This controls the positioning of video projectors so that the projected image always follows the direction of the viewer's gaze. In this way the viewer can move the picture frame over the entire dome surface and interactively explore the computer-generated virtual scenographies which are presented there. A joystick also allows the viewer to control his forwards and backwards movement in the surrounding virtual space."
(from: Jeffrey Shaw's website)
Labels: art, edu, FVNM, Media Practices, SAIC, video, video art
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