Surveillance // Julia Scher

Julia Scher, Recovery Agent (R.A.), 1987

Performance with security and surveillance equipment. One of the first installation presences animating the world of security sales with a mad-cap, jungle-like structure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_r-cA7vMU4

"I originally saw surveillance in terms of looking at landscape, because indeed there was the landscape through the lens or eye of a camera rather than my own eye. I don't, however, agree that space is the battleground. More insidious and less visible to the human eye is identity, created through multiple data bases and hierarchies imposed and created without laws or the knowledge of those being judged. These virtual spaces are far more interesting for me and far more dangerous. At least you can see actual space. Virtual space is another ruse, because our virtual identities have to be created before we can pass through a virtual space. What kinds of hierarchies are going to be employed to keep us in or out of those virtual spaces? I can penetrate those walls without being a physical presence. I'm interested in the extremity of this battleground.

I have always found my best work to be "encounter work" — looking at the phenomenological world one enters. An experiential aesthetic interest. It continues here, in digital, programmable, plastic, and sensory testing areas. I have always thrived in initiating an impossible project (an invisible one, a ridiculous one) here in real new worlds (still smooth, new, and dependent new worlds) where visitors can deal with their own flexible script. It's not museum walk-through alone. It's cramming methodological reiterative tour guides — alongside on-your-own, have-what-you-will poem gardens. . . .

Surveillance space has been a metaphor for controlled space, controlled life. Electronic control devices in their earlier applications were placed at the edge of lived space (you would see the guard at the edge of the building underground, or hidden away). Now as surveillance and security (and kid scrutiny) has become more foregrounded in architecture, television, transportation, etc., its unmasking or its display has been FUN FOR ARCHITECTS.

To unmask (and deconstruct) was a way to criticize, undo, reveal, and be revolutionary. Now, it's part of an aesthetic of exposed foundations, a deconstruction of architecture. No longer on the edge, or behind the camera's hidden-eye security, THE APPARATUS comes out of its shell and acts as a prism and white-hot calculator in space"

Excerpted from "Julia Scher interviewed by Paul D. Miller," Artbyte, October-November 1998, 42-47, and from an email interview with Julia Scher by Bruce Jenkins, Film/Video Curator at the Walker Art Center.


Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/details/espace_scher#ixzz2lhKQeKjw
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Cildo Meireles: Fontes (Fountains/Sources)

…When a work of art kidnaps you for a fraction of a second, it takes you to another time …I realized that, of all the movements that I had studied, conceptual art was the only one that didn’t use any of the things linked to art: inks, brushes, canvases. It could be made from anything. It gave complete freedom. It is the most democratic way to produce art that has come up. That is something that deserves credit.

First person perspective through the maze of rules:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0kxLG1chNU#t=49

Emerging design...update!

'Social Theatre' rig

This immersive, theatrical installation is designed to explore and expand upon the ways in which space can be used to resonate with the human experience. The installation begins to ask if it is possible to exist within a surveillance space. How do we react to such a situation and does it change our perception of space when directly confronted with the surveillance device.

The suspended strips provide for the transitional phase between external space and internal surveillance space; encouraging a polarised encounter between excitement and anxiety. The carefully placed set of strip components allow for a modest level of personal control, the potential for discovery and exploration as well as a sense of precariousness (i.e. danger)

The loop/ video projection creates a series of intersecting occasions between the participant and the set-up which ignites a range of reciprocal / sequential movements. The participant enters and constructs a personal experience; of power and control. The participant’s enters a constantly shifting dialogue; each interaction will in turn have a mutual reaction – video projector output is directly affected by the input and vice versa. Information provided by the video, the loop and the participant is not just passed but mutually constructed.

The use of scaffolding emphasises the designs temporality, providing a platform for social and political exchange / transformation.

Riot Iconography - "Layering the loop"

Coke? Riot icons - feeding visually stimulating imagery within the loop

Researching into how visual stimuli (namely moving textual and flashing imagery) respond the feedback loop, I set up a sample reel in order to test various scenarios, alongside adapted setup (i.e height / angle)

Resultant stills are below:

1/ No Camera rotation

2/ Camera rotation - 90 degrees

  

3/ Projector displacement - 45 degrees

4/ Image manipulation (through player)

Icon Layer stills (Photos: Tina Zacharia)

Hungry? EAT POPCORN

The birth of subliminal advertising as we know it dates to 1957 when a market researcher named James Vicary inserted the words "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" into a movie.

The words appeared for a single frame, allegedly long enough for the subconscious to pick up, but too short for the viewer to be aware of it. The subliminal ads supposedly created an 18.1% increase in Coke sales and a 57.8% increase in popcorn sales.

Vicary's results turned out to be a hoax. But more recent experiments have shown that subliminal messages actually can affect behavior in small ways.

A Harvard study from 1999 employed a similar method to Vicary's -- subjects played a computer game in which a series of words flashed before them for a few thousandths of a second. One set got positive words like "wise," "astute," and "accomplished." The other set got words like "senile," "dependent," and "diseased."

Despite the fact that these words flashed far too quickly to be consciously perceived, those who received positive words exited the room significantly faster than those who got negative words.

However, William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist, prominently spoke out against subliminals when the movie adaptation of his book came under fire for including allegedly subliminal messaging. He said, "There are no subliminal images. If you can see it, it's not subliminal."

So do advertisers consciously choose to include subliminal messages in their ads? Can they harness subliminal power to associate their products with sex and power? If so, does it actually affect a consumer's buying decisions?

http://www.businessinsider.com/subliminal-ads-2011-5

"Who are you?" Digital titles

 Feeding digital titles into the feedback loop; exploration into the beginnings of subliminal messaging (using digital cameras existing inbuilt title / information layer) with intention to overlay into a double loop set up.

To view video at full size, please visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvOsf8Z3K_s

Digital Information loop stills II

Title stills from video (All photos: Tina Zacharia)

Digital Information loop stills I

                                                                            
                                                                              Data layers (photos: Tina Zacharia)

Transformations in illusion

After reading “About Magic,” by Michael Benedikt, I came across the poetic works of Solano Benitez, WHOSE DESIGNS ENCAPSULATE THE VERY ESSENCE restorative magic THROUGH reconstituted materials. intrigued by his sensual use of materiality encouraging dialogue, Piribebuy grave installation (in memory of his father) plays upon the manipulation of space via mirrored screens; multiplication of images with every movement; bending, sitting and walking through. 

"...in the mirror i'm "there" in front, outside of myself, living in another dimension that equals me anything else, or that I may dwell in another world than inside, on a basis of equality and simultaneity in the mirror may have the machine that can afford to live in another way with our loved ... absent loved ones, because the obscenity of death tore them from our side ... love those who are impossible, because we never find neither the space nor the time to enable them to exist ..."

image references:
 http://rolu.terapad.com/index.cfm?fa=contentNews.newsDetails&newsID=981513&from=archive

Magical Realism

"Magic serves TO unsettle our certainties about how things work or should look, Replacing monotony with marvel, magic— even magic that we know has a rational explanation—lets a light shine from the deed or
thing that makes us feel oddly fortunate to witness it, to be there, in its presence"

“About Magic,” Preface to CENTER 16: Latitudes (2011) by Michael Benedikt    http://www.mbenedikt.com/lats-preface-about-magic.pdf