Above are some screen grabs showing moments from 77 Million paintings by Brian Eno. What this is, is a computer program which uses algorithm to compile images and a soundtrack based on overlaying and manipulating a finalized database of media curated by Eno.
The images which Eno describes as ‘Paintings of Light’ are never static they are constantly morphing and changing form. The slow tempo of the work denies any potential for the work to become entertaining or captivating. The intention of Eno was to create an ambient, decorative piece that creates a sense of synergy with the environment in which it is situated, in opposition to the convention of screen based art that is designed to dominate and distract from the world around it.
The piece is sold as a DVD rom art work, like an art installation designed for domestic environments. There is a documentary film about the work which accompanies the disk. (Available in Camberwell Library for any UAL people who might be interested “77 million paintings [videorecording DVD] / by Brian Eno. / Eno, Brian, 1948- / [U.K.] : All Saints Records, c2007.
Shelfmark: 709.4271 ENO”).
Here are a couple of quotation from the documentary that I find interesting.
“this piece really arose out of an idea of trying to make the work that normally you could only see in an instillation context available in other places”
“People generally have larger screens and better quality screens, so that you can start to think of the screen as paining, as a picture that you would want to look at as I said people usually have larger screens now and I am sure this trend will continue and that means that they have got these big objects sitting in there rooms which a lot of the time are dormant, if you are not actually watching television what you have is a big black hole in the wall. This is intended to occupy that down time, so that instead of having a dead hole in the wall you have a living picture and I hope that in future as screens get cheaper and computers get cheaper people might start to think that they have a few of these around their home. “
“I think of these things really as visual music”
Have a tutorial this afternoon about my essay, I was told to bring a 300 word abstract and a bibliography.
Might as well publish these here also, as evidence of work in progress.
Looking at screens
Abstract.
In this essay I want to consider art work and media content which draws attention to the physicality of the screens that they occupy.
It is an understanding of screens as conceptual phenomena, as much as technical and social that I am attempting to ascertain through this enquiry.
One of the things that interests me about the word screen is its ability to mean both something which unifies and something which divides and separates. Thus there is an ambiguity in the essential meaning of screen, in a non-specific sense – a screen could be something that reveals, it could be something that conceals.
The vast majority of work which utilizes the screen, is designed to disengage awareness of the immediate and distract from it’s own physical placement in the world by illuminating an interactive or immersive environment that is remote and abstract from the time/place which it inhabits.
By looking at artwork and media content that establishes a situation where the object-hood of the screen is addressed and the screen becomes an object that references it’s self, rather than references beyond it’s self, I propose to generate an alternative understanding of how the screen functions, and why screens have become such a prominent feature of contemporary society.
Throughout this essay I will consider the physical presence of the screen in works by artists as diverse as; Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, Michael Snow, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Brian Eno, Derek Jarmen, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, Brain De Palma, Mike Figgis, Rafael Lozano Hemmer, Tony Oursler and John Maeda.
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Davis, E. 2004. TechGnosis : myth, magic & mysticism in the age of information. Serpent’s Tail.
Deleuze, G 1992. Cinema 1 : the movement-image. Athlone Press.
Deleuze, G 1989. Cinema 2 : the time-image. Athlone Press.
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