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| Art, For Goodness Sake |
 The presence of media technology in the realm of fine art has increased exponentially during the last ten years. Art installations that rely on the same technologies used in entertainment and events show up with increasing frequency at major museum exhibitions, public art displays and art galleries of the high and low-brow variety. This month's newsletter reviews this phenomenon through the Scharff Weisberg perspective, based on our first-hand experience, and ponders what the future may bring.
Excluding early efforts that utilized technology no longer in current use such as slide projectors, the use of modern media technology began in the 60's with primitive uses of video technology. These early pieces were often brutal and ugly due to poor technical quality, but some of the more notable examples pushed the envelope hard in terms of personal exploration and verité.
Artists harnessing primitive media technology such as Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci and others kept things pretty simple from a technology point of view and most often utilized Laserdisk players as the medium of choice, although there are still hours of ˝" black and white video material sitting in collections. Standard TV sets were the display device of choice as projectors were rarely used due to expense and complexity.
By the early nineties, artists were able to create works of far better quality and the results, as exemplified by Bill Viola's opus, took on aspects of beauty and nuance as the artists combined exacting scene composition and lighting with early high-definition video technologies. With the ability to exhibit in museums and galleries using equipment that could be set up temporarily but still render excellent results, artists' productions took on full cinematic qualities and big-budget production values, although the meaning of the pieces were often delightfully difficult to penetrate. Of course, Matthew Barney's work comes to mind along these lines.
Currently, the artistic community has totally embraced the technological marketplace and has harnessed technology in many novel and interesting ways. Fortunately, we've been employed on a number of these projects and found them to be very stimulating and the artists open to collaboration to an extraordinary degree. Here are a few of the highlights:
Minetta Brook "riverrun" (see image A) - In association with the Whitney Museum, Minetta selected the massive Holland Tunnel Ventilation Building at Pier 34 on the Hudson River waterfront as the display surface for this exhibit. Projection of works by Richard Serra, Yoko Ono & John Lennon, Peter Hutton, and Colleen Mulrena were visible to an estimated 2.5 million people along the Manhattan side of the Hudson. Our ability to fill the 106' wide x 120' high display area with bright clear video was facilitated by the use of multiple converged high-powered projectors.
Raphael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Park (See image B) - Our first collaboration on a large-scale artwork using lighting technology, as opposed to video or sound; this piece used hundreds of standard theatrical fixtures in a most novel and captivating way. Next month a new piece will be opening at the Guggenheim and Rafa will continue to amaze with his ingenuity and wit.
Philip Haas "Butchers, Dragons, Gods & Skeletons" (see image C) - If you find yourself in Fort Worth in September or October, I strongly urge you to visit the Kimbell Art Museum to view this unique exhibition. Using five obscure pieces in the museum's collection as the jumping off point for a multi-media fantasy of great beauty and depth, Philip utilizes modern media technology to its fullest.
Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers and Migrations (See D & H) - Using state-of-the-art HD projectors, these works are large-scale outdoor pieces that utilize the outside of the museum, versus the interior, to display the work, thereby incorporating the museum architecture into the piece.
David Michalek's "Slow Dancing" (see image E) - David's project is on-going as this piece, which was originally mounted at Lincoln Center in New York, has now been featured as part of dance festivals at the University of Toronto; Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire; Jacob's Pillow in Becket, Massachusetts; the Augusta Common in Augusta, Georgia; Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, California; Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas; and is currently captivating audiences at the Zhongshan Hall Corridor in Taipei.
Pippilotti Rist "Pour your body out" (see image F) - A tough one, but an artist who is an absolute joy to work with and a super result. How to enclose 20k projectors in wall-mounted sculptures without melting projectors and how to project a 25 foot high by 200 foot wide, seamless image with a large column obstructing the image path, were just two of the challenges we circumvented while installing this immersive spectacle at the Museum of Modern Art.
Chris Doyle "Leap" (see image G) - In collaboration with Chris and our great friends at Creative Time, we attempted this bit of lunacy back in 2000 using early DLP projectors and locating them in a suite at the Trump International Hotel. How we got away with tapping into the suites breaker-panel for five nights with no questions asked I still can't figure out.
I expect over the coming years that artists such as the ones listed above will continue to find evolving media technologies a fertile ground for planting their concepts. I foresee artists accessing the 3-D technologies I've previously written about and I know of a number of large-scale pieces that are predicated on using current LED lighting technology to astounding effect.
In the mean time, we'll continue to explore ways to make the technology and systems affordable and reliable over the course of a multi-week artwork installation. We're also working with conservators who are responsible for making sure these pieces are exhibit-ready not just next year but one hundred years from now and that generates many interesting questions. For example, does anyone know how they'll play Quicktime™ files in 2109?
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