Posts Tagged ‘time’

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Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures by Cory Arcangel consists of a pair of “Dancing Stands.”

Dancing Stands are metallic commercial display-units whose  shelves remain flat and parallel despite the steady flexing in-and-out of its hinges (it looks like the machines are swaying back-and-forth as in a dance).

The tempo of one of the Dancing Stands is modified to gradually phase its flexing-action further-and-further out of harmonious unison with its companion Dancing Stand.

This results in:

1. An “echoing” effect occurring between the first and second Dancing Stands.

2. A “reverse-harmony” in which the flexing-actions of each Dancing Stand become—for an instant—perfectly  diametrically opposed.

3. A “reverse echoing” effect.

4. A re-linking-up-again in the original harmonious position from which one viewed the sculptures in the first place (before—again—falling out of unison and so on and so on and so on and so on).

This is “phasing,” a term Arcangel links to the avant-garde music of Steve Reich, in which the same phrase of music is played on different instruments in different tempos, resulting in a similar cycle of unison to echo to discord back to unison.

The effect is the gradual emergence of a new type of readymade—one having less to do with the objects in space and more to do with the phasing through time which they describe.

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Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The art collective Jodi’s J_O_D_I Delicious account contains – as of the publishing of this blog post – 3,512 bookmarks collected between February 20, 2008 to the current day – March 16, 2010.

This averages-out to between 4 and 5 bookmarks marked by the artists per day – everyday – for the past 2 years or so.

Today J_O_D_I has, thus far, bookmarked 16 sites.

Each site depicts images or conversations about images related to the archiving of imagery.

Whether it be in an online database, art collection, or photographic contact sheet, the thread running through the subject matter of each of these bookmarks is image archiving.

By making an archive of images that refer to image archives, they make a work of self-reflexive art.

As time goes on and one sees Jodi’s bookmarks refer to the same theme again and again, one sees not bookmarks, but the apparatus of the entire del.icio.us platform: an archive.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Between the work 10 Seconds to Each Point and the work Lateral Crossings Damon Zucconi leapt between one form and then another.

In 10 Seconds to Each Point he describes a unit of time – 10 seconds.

In the course of viewing the work, one begins to view less the motion through space of a small orb and more the time of the orb’s cycles between contact with one line intersection and then another – 10 seconds.

In Lateral Crossings, on the other hand, he describes a unit of time occurring within a broader spectrum of 16 concurrent units of time – each unit placed according to its location within the represented scale of chronologically-ordered time units in the spectrum.

In the course of viewing the work, one begins to view less the temporal rhythm of a single orb and more the simultaneity of multiple temporal rhythms framing the spatial motion of multiple orbs.

It’s a more structurally complicated picture of time.

Now that said, I don’t know if Lateral Crossing is “better” than 10 Seconds to Each Point because both works are limited in describing temporal objects – they’re just pictures.

Rather, if one was tasked to name the art of Zucconi’s work here, one might say that it occurs neither in Lateral Crossings nor in 10 Seconds to Each Point, but rather out (t)here on his personal website where one follows his leap from one form of life to another.

The leap – the artist’s performed mutation – is the only thing that I know I viewed.

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Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

10 Seconds to Each Point, a work of time-based Web browser art by Damon Zucconi, describes 10 seconds in the Web browser.

At first glance, though, one doesn’t view the time of these 10 seconds, but rather, the movement through space of a small red orb with a white center – perhaps the “eye” of the Hal 9000 computer? – as it linearly bounces through and glides along the edges and intersections of a rectangular black plane.

One quickly realizes that the speed of the ball as it bounces between the walls, though, is not premised on physics (as in, say, Pong), but rather a uniform amount of time: 10 seconds.

The title of the work nudges you to this.

10 Seconds to Each Point.

That’s what it says.

So one wonders:

Is it really ten seconds to each point?

Let’s count.

“1 second”

“2 seconds”

“3 seconds”

“4 seconds”

“5 seconds”

“6 seconds”

“7 seconds”

“8 seconds”

“9 seconds”

“10 seconds”

(pop)

“1 second”

“2 seconds”

“3 seconds”

“4 seconds”

“5 seconds”

“6 seconds”

“7 seconds”

“8 seconds”

“9 seconds”

“10 seconds”

(pop)

“1 second”

“2 seconds”

“3 seconds”

“4 seconds”

“5 seconds”

“6 seconds”

“7 seconds”

“8 seconds”

“9 seconds”

“10 seconds”

(pop)

“1 second”

“2 seconds”

“3 seconds”

“4 seconds”

“5 seconds”

“6 seconds”

“7 seconds”

“8 seconds”

“9 seconds”

“10 seconds”

(pop)

Every time the orb “pops” – dictated by the time unit of ten seconds – one feels a pleasurable violation.

Pop.

Again, again, again, again.

(pop)

…

(pop)

…

(pop)

…

(pop)

…

It’s the rhythm one responds to.

And as one feels this pleasure, one begins to makes a picture of it.

10 seconds.

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Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Watching feature length movies shows one “the two hours,” “the hour-and-a-half,” and “the three hours” and if one views enough feature length movies one begins to develop a picture in their own mind(s) regarding these lengths of time. “This is what two hours feels like.”

Thus, when a feature length movie is successful it perfectly corresponds with the picture in one’s own mind of “the two hours,” “the hour and a half,” or the “the three hours.”

(That is to say, it finishes at the same you do.)

But what about other lengths of time?

Well, television figured out that we could be trained to picture “the hour,” “the half-hour,” and “the thirty seconds” and it began to regulate these particular time-units vigorously.

Thus, the joy of good television is the spasm of correspondence between the episode or commercial’s account of “the hour,” “the half-hour,” or “the thirty seconds” and one’s own trained picture of “the hour,” “the half-hour,” or “the thirty-seconds.”

When one downloads an entire season of Mad Men, for instance, one begins to get off less on the content of the individual episodes and more on the rhythm of the individual episodes in succession as each one fills in “the 48 minutes” again and again and again and again as versions on a theme.

What time, though, does the digital network picture?

On the one hand, everything’s gotten shorter:

Blog posts are short, videos are short, news articles are headlines.

However, on the other hand, everything’s gotten longer.

One blog post is merely a version on a theme developed in an ongoing performance inhabiting “the several months and years.”

Does the digital network, then, polarize one’s desires for time – make you crave for both the instantaneous and the epic?

Make it schizophrenic?

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Monday, March 1st, 2010

Showreel is a video by Harm van den Dorpel.

He uses an intensified Ken Burns slide show tool to collage found images and screen captures he collected along with a handful of artist friends – Charles Broskoski, Constant Dullaart, Martijn Hendriks, Pascual Sisto, and Ola Vasiljeva.

There are three automatic functions that he uses in the editing process:

1. A slow dissolve into and out of a palimpsest of three to four (or more) image layers composed entirely of imagery appropriated from digital image archives.

2. A slow lateral movement over the majority of these image layers in both varying directions as well as varying rates of speed.

3. A slow zoom both into as well as out of approximately half of these image layers.

There are a lot of recognizable images, but generally it is abstract.

These layered, abstracted images function as an allegory of the time in which the image sharing took place.

It was not one event causing another event like a cue ball hitting an 8 ball into a corner pocket.

It was an overlapping, networked series of events.

It is a picture of shared time.

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Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Parisian Love is a television commercial created by Google.

Visually, the entire ad takes place in either the Google search field or in a series of Google search result fields.

One views the protagonist, an anonymous computer user, manipulating a cursor and pointer, searching his way through time – from, for example, “study abroad paris france” to “impress a french girl” to “long distance relationship advice” to “churches in paris” to “how to assemble a crib.”

Underscoring this narrative is a driving piano anthem collaged with sound effects such as an airplane taking off, a “How to Learn French” tape, church bells, and, finally, a baby laughing.

In each search, a dramatic tension rises as the user types in her queries word by word, performing the act of searching.

It begins when the user types in the word “study.”

Before typing in another word, however, Google instantaneously supplies him with a plethora of likely options such as “study island,” “study abroad,” “study Spanish,” “study skills.”

So, study what?

“study abroad”

Again, Google spits out an instantaneous list of “study abroad” options.

We’ve got “study abroad scholarships,” “study abroad programs,” “study abroad italy,” “study abroad australia.”

So, study abroad where?

“study abroad paris france.”

Is this what you were searching for?

It is.

Search it.

Google does so and the user moves his pointer around the first two search results:

1. “Study Abroad in France, Search Study Abroad Programs in France”

Or

2. “Study abroad programs in Paris, France – Study French in France – CEA.”

We cut in close as the protagonist is forced to choose between the two options.

Which will it be?

He’s unconventional, so he goes with the second one instead of the first.

The sound of an airplane taking off appears as the piano changes key and we jump forward in time as the user searches for “cafes near the louve.”

A list of search results appears along with a question posed by Google:

“Did you mean: cafes near the louvre”

And so on and so on and so on and so on and so on until we are faced with a blinking cursor on a blank text field as the user spells out the query:

“how…”

“to…”

“assemble a crib”

Google it.

The next thing one views is the slogan – “Search on.” – (an updating of Nike’s “Just Do It”) as it cuts in over the sound of a baby laughing.

On the one hand, the ad shows us that our lives can be marked by Google searches.

But, on the other hand, on a perhaps deeper level, it shows one that life can be marked by endless searching, never doing it, but working towards it and changing it as one grows and learns.

As the user enters search queries, one views less the drama of action (just do it), and more the drama of evolution (search on).

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Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Charles Broskoski paints on a computer.

However, he understands that by employing digitally automated “painterly” tools on a computer, he re-orients the launching-off point for a consideration of these works.

In the current design of Broskoski’s personal website, the artist displays his most recent painting – in this case, a layering of long, wide, generally vertical “brushstrokes” in the airy style of the late de Kooning into the form of a primordial “ball” – a locus of energy, both budding and dying, aggressive and nervous, which calls to mind Philip Guston’s early abstractions (as well as a muddied take on the reds, greens, blues and blacks from Guston’s palette in these abstractions).

The bottom edges of this “ball” seem to “put the brakes on” in an act of inertia, curling in against a threat of pure formlessness.

And, at the top, the brushstrokes seem to be shooting upward (as in transcendence), but – in a reversal of the physics occurring at the bottom – suffer a smooshing down (as in gravity).

The result is a stormy mass of energy simultaneously expanding away from its self and contracting into its self.

It has a kick.

But – as a painting – it also lacks a kick.

The painting is created on a computer with a mouse and a suite of digital “effects” rather than paint and canvas.

Also, it looks really nice, but it’s just one of the thousands of images that hit my eye through the light of a computer screen while I’m online.

So, where does this leave one?

A clue may be found in the caption to the work (the title to the work?) – a sort of clock reading “7 days ago…”

“7 days ago…” refers to the amount of time past since Broskoski uploaded the painting to his site.

Yesterday it read “6 days ago…”

The day before “5 days ago…”

Tomorrow it will read “8 days ago…” or perhaps “1 week ago…”

And so on until Broskoski uploads another work, thus resetting the clock.

What this counter adds to the work is a whole new type of meaning.

Like Josh Smith, Broskoski and artists such as Harm van den Dorpel are re-examining the possibility of a certain sincerity in painterly expression, but doing so not in the individual painting (well, not primarily in the individual painting), but as a performance – in time.

Broskoski is struggling with how to reconcile the tradition of painting with the computer.

As one returns to the site again and again and again and again, watching him upload new work, trying things out, performing his creation, one begins to see it.

It turns out that what the computer shows me is not space, but time; not the digital painting, but digital painting.

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Saturday, February 6th, 2010

In September 2009, as part of the AND Festival in Liverpool, Guthrie Lonergan presented an alternative version of the film Groundhog Day (1993).

Groundhog Day is a film about a man who re-lives the same day over and over and over again. Lonergan’s version is a series of eighteen short videos, each composed of still-frame slideshows that represent scenes from the film’s narrative.

These still frames are underscored by Lonergan’s own first-person summarization of the narrative from the point of view of the protagonist, played by Bill Murray.

The number of videos corresponds (approximately – it’s difficult to judge) to the number of days that Bill Murray re-lived the same day over and over and over again.

Lonergan also released these videos not all at once, but one by one, so that it became performative. By breaking the story up into the number of days that Murray re-lived the day and presenting the videos over the course of a couple of days, the viewer gets more of a sense of this endless repetition.

The story’s eternal return theme, then, takes on a new air of uncanniness. The idea of endlessly cycling through the same day shocks you a bit more and allows you to see what this time would mean in a deeper way.

In one of Lonergan’s poetic/philosophical asides, he captures this.

We view a still image of Bill Murray in bed at the end of his first full day of return.

As the image very slowly fades to black, Lonergan (as the protagonist) muses:

I’m pretty lost at this point.

And I’m thinking about why this, why this is happening.

And… about how I’m a, a weatherman.

And this connection between you know weather and time and predicting things using patterns.

And can weather have patterns… and maybe time, as well.

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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Kevin Bewersdorf intentionally reduced his presence on the Web to a single image – a flickering flame sourced from a .gif of fireworks set off in front of a suburban garage. Over the course of three years, this flickering flame will grow smaller and smaller into a field of Yves Klein Blue.

It’s called PUREKev.

As one returns to the work again and again and again – not daily (although, perhaps daily) – one views a mutation in time as the flicker goes deeper and deeper and deeper into the void.

The website goes in the exact opposite direction of most Internet production, focusing on slow, imperceptible change over the course of years. By doing so, it allows one to see (as if for the first time) what it opposes. The extremity of Bewersdorf’s slowing-down nudges the viewer to project their own image of what “normal” time on the Internet feels like. It’s the creation of the image in the viewer’s mind that allows her to see what this time looks like.

There’s something unsettling about viewing PUREKev and returning to it every now and again. It’s always there – always going a little bit deeper, but never quite finishing. As the rest of the Internet is in a race to produce more and more, Bewersdorf’s resolute focus on one thing – watching a flame die out in a blue void over several years – is sublime.

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