The Greeting is a film which pretends to be a painting
Bill "Viola's The Greeting is pretending to be a picture, hanging on the wall of the National Gallery, as part of 'The Passions' exhibition in 2003. The context of the gallery space and the badging of The Greeting as a picture give the work something different, making it more than just a film. The significance is in the context of where it is shown and the pretence occurring that this is a picture. Indeed, when walking downstairs in the National Gallery towards 'The Passions' exhibition, it is seeing it hanging on the wall that strikes immediately; I am being invited to believe that this animated film is pretending to be a picture. The analogy is of the picture becoming an actor, pretending to be something else. In terms of form, The Greeting is a film. Therefore, what is it that makes it now defined as an exhibition, a part of Viola's 'The Passions' in 2003? It is only the fact that it's part of a gallery that makes it an exhibition, although in reality it is also actors directed by a video artist into this film, slowed down and with no sound, which is pretending to be a painting. Therefore, it is conceptual art, in that what the artist is doing is not just making a painting, or having the idea for a painting, but having the idea of where it should be staged. The inscribed text of the space in which it is viewed makes a difference to what the viewer or spectator sees, and what is going on."
(Alison Oddey, 2007, p.70)
Fig.1 Bill Viola (1995). "The Greeting".
Fig.2 Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo "The Visitation".
3). Alison Oddey (2007). "Re-Framing". In: "Re-Framing the Theatrical", Palgrave Macmillan. 1-21.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
There was relatively little divide between spectator and performer in the archaic theatre
"In the archaic theatre there was relatively little divide between spectator and performer, seeing and doing; people danced and spoke, then retired to a stone seat to watch others dance and declaim. By the time of Aristotle, actors and dancers had become a caste with special skills of costuming, speaking, and moving. Audiences stayed offstage, and so developed their own skills of interpretation as spectators. As critics, the audience sought to speculate then about what the stage-characters did not understand about themselves (though the chorus on stage sometimes also took on this clarifying role)."
(Richard Sennett, 2008, p.125)
Fig.1 Lysistrata Summer 2006 University of Florida
2). Sennett, R. (2008). "The Craftsman". New Haven & London, Yale University Press.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Hyperland: 1990 fantasy documentary speculating about the future of interactive media
"In this one-hour documentary produced by the BBC in 1990, Douglas falls asleep in front of a television and dreams about future time when he may be allowed to play a more active role in the information he chooses to digest. A software agent, Tom (played by Tom Baker), guides Douglas around a multimedia information landscape, examining (then) cuttting-edge research by the SF Multimedia Lab and NASA Ames research center, and encountering hypermedia visionaries such as Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson. Looking back now, it's interesting to see how much he got right and how much he didn't: these days, no one's heard of the SF Multimedia Lab, and his super-high-tech portrayal of VR in 2005 could be outdone by a modern PC with a 3D card. However, these are just minor niggles when you consider how much more popular the technologies in question have become than anyone could have predicted - for while Douglas was creating Hyperland, a student at CERN in Switzerland was working on a little hypertext project he called the World Wide Web..."
(douglasadams.com)
Adams, D. N. (1990). Hyperland. UK, BBC Two: 50 minutes.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Webcam viewers taunt teenager as he commits suicide
"A teenager committed suicide in front of a live webcam as 1,500 people watching online egged him on. Abraham Biggs, 19, told users on a bodybuilding forum he would be committing suicide that night and invited them to watch the live video. Forum moderators allegedly ignored the post - assuming it was a prank - while other users posted insults and even encouraged him. The teen used the 'lifecasting' website Justin.tv - designed to let users share the minutiae of their everyday lives - to stream footage from his bedroom.
Biggs, from Florida, was seen taking pills before lying on the bed with his back to the camera. Users claim they only realised it was serious a few hours later when they saw he wasn't breathing. Moderators then traced Biggs's location and informed authorities. The webcam was still streaming live footage of the teen's body as police entered the room yesterday. ...
His death echoes that of British man Kevin Whitrick, from Shropshire, who also killed himself in front of a webcam while at least 100 other people watched. ... The deaths have sparked a wave of concern following 17 internet-related suicides within the UK since 2001."
(Debra Killalea, 21st November 2008)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Technical Possibilities Causing The Individualisation of Modes of Media Consumption
"In the current society of knowledge and communication, marked by the exponential increase of information, one might expect an even stronger hierarchy (of knowledge) within the audience than it was the case in industrial mass society - at least according to prevalent opinion (see 91). Brian Loader, for example, speaks of the 'information poor' (see 92), who, according to him, form a kind of new 'underclass' of computerized society, in which issues of access become crucial (see in addition 93). On the other hand, several empirical studies verify that differences in knowledge have remained rather constant (see 94). In compliance with a thesis of Ulrich Beck (see 44) one might, therefore, perhaps call it a 'elevator-effect': we all (perforce) are absorbing ever more information. At the same time the relative inequality remains stable (or is even enlarged) - but information use is 'lifted' to a higher general level. This shows a significant effect: on account of the generally higher level of information and the new technical possibilities for realizing individual preferences there comes about an individualization of information patterns and modes of media consumption, which finally results in a diffusion and fragmention [sic] of the public sphere."
(von Anil K. Jain, Heiner Keupp, Renate Höfer, Wolfgang Kraus)
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Mia ThorntonSHARE
