Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.

au

Contact This paper introduces issues around the integration of media arts within core visual art education addressing a specific and key aspect of contemporary cultural production, the YOUTUBE video. This presentation directly links to contextual presentation of contemporary and historical materials within teaching programs from Certificate III Visual Art through to Diploma in Visual Art Electives in Photography, Video or web design. Australian art teaching institutions face significant challenges concerning the provision of teaching and learning reflective of actual conditions in professional art practice; the current situation beyond education is witnessing an explosion of photographic, video and media arts within global art markets and online communities. Academic curriculum research and development has historically been limited and poorly documented. Recent curriculum development has focused on individual or institutional accountabilities rather than academically driven changes. There is perceived need to re-evaluate content, delivery, distribution and professionalism for contemporary students, technology is repositioned and focused directly within core aspects of contextual, research, literacy and skill based teaching. Across the crowded disco room Through a maze of dancing people She sits so quiet and all alone Wanting to get the disco fever And then she raised her head Her eyes caught mine And that was all that I needed In her eyes I saw the need for love The warm, soft feeling 'Cause we made Eye to eye contact Eye to eye contact (Oh, oh, oh yeah) Eye to eye contact (We made) Eye to eye contact You and me Contact! Contact Edwin Starr 1979

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Contact between humans is, of course, crucial for our existence and continued expansion around the world. Edwin Starrs 1979 classic disco anthem celebrates a collective desire to not only be acknowledged (seen) but also to extend that acknowledgement within the accepted frame of mutual desire. The fact that the song was conceived for a discotheque situates the work within the specified area of focus where, it would be supposed, that if we join that dance we are complicit and willing participants to its stated aims Contact. We become players within the songs conceptual structure where we celebrate its aims through our engagement with it. Starrs music is not unique. Since Elizabethan times songs have celebrated foot fetishism beneath a table where song playfully explores implicit desire between couples, at table, where their tryst is yet to be consummated. An unseen conceit listeners reflect upon, or substitute themselves through imagining or desire. In the visual arts the notion of voyeurism, or being privy to some secret view or dimension paralleled musical suggestive innuendo. Rembrandts painting situates the viewer in an intimate position, as if they may be on the other side of the stream the woman is crossing. The angle is low, as if slightly looking upwards and across so the viewer may be reclining on the side of the streams edge. It is an intimate painting from a time where such an exposure of flesh would be inappropriate.

Left; Rembrandt Woman Bathing in a Stream (1654)

The painting on the left clearly indicates the style of costume from the period Rembrandt was working. Rembrandt Van Ryns work celebrates costume throughout his lifetime, where he painted several self-portraits in costume; playing with his own identity or status. Fulllength costume would have been expected for a woman to wear in public. Woman Crossing a Stream is an erotic image in comparison to the painting of Hendrickje Stoffels as Lucretia ten years after her depiction crossing a stream. Her lack of costume crossing the stream was calculated in its execution. Left; Rembrandt. Lucretia 1664,

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

While Rembrandt was playing with voyeuristic depictions of half clothed women in water in Holland the Spanish painter Valesquez was working in a similar yet more complex way playing with how an image is observed, understood or experienced. Velasquezs (1655-6) painting Las Meninas takes the voyeuristic experience of painting to another level. The viewers eye is led through the painting in complex ways, beyond the singular triangular focal plane established by Rembrandt. In Velasquezs work there are several key focal positions exposed. The painter is situated facing the canvas, almost bisecting the entire, viewed, left hand side of the painting. Velasquez Las Meninas (1656) In Las Meninas we witness an artist playing an immediate game where the game itself is exposed by the significant presence of the canvas as a bold and deliberate statement in terms of creating a framing edge and defining position for the images context. It is celebrated as a painting. The image of the male figure in the background at the doorway is as a voyeur looking across the scene. Behind the painter is what has been variously discussed as a mirror depicting the reflection of the king and queen where, if this supposition were correct, this would place them in the position of the viewer themselves, looking at the painting from the front. Velasquezs painting establishes a significant perspective in terms of contemporary art understanding as it playfully introduces multiple readings and visual games within a work, while casting questions about relationships within the image itself and those of the viewer with the work.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Helmut Newton, Self Portrait with Models & Wife Paris, Vogue Hommes. (1981)

Out of historical sequence but directly related to Velasquez is a photograph by the late fashion photographer Helmut Newton whose work dominated and redefined an edgy and perverted vision of fashion photography in the 1980s. Newtons photograph Self Portrait with Models & Wife shows the photographer reflected in a mirror as he takes the photograph directly behind a cropped body shot of a nude fashion model. To the left of shot is a pair of high-heeled legs, while Newtons wife, June Browne, looks from within the image towards the model being photographed. Behind June Browne is a corridor with its door open leading directly to the street outside where cars pass by. The image critically captures Newtons own perception of his role and life as a fashion photographer where he effectively isolates beauty yet leaves an opening for real life to exist within the realms of fashion photography. The fetishized aspects of control within this image have been the subject of much conjecture regarding control and the role of the model in the midst of the photograph that we are unable to fully see. June Brownes role within the image as Director, stylist, editor, valedictory presence or collaborator layers additional potential readings within the constructed image. Newtons presence as a stereotypically raincoat clad voyeur surrounded by women with a camera separating him from the very artifice he has engineered reduces the often levelled criticisms of his work as being stereotypically power orientated over women. The central figure of the model is a representation of a woman larger than the frame of the cameras lens where only her reflection is fully realised.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Manet & the viewer as voyeur. (Are you Man enough for a Manet)?

Edouard Manet, The Bar at the Folies-Bergere (Le Bar aux Folies-Bergre) (1882) One hundred years before Helmut Newton Edouard Manet painted a barmaid at work in the Folies-Bergere, Paris. The instantaneous appearance of the painting's composition immediately references photography or film where the focus of the image is pulled between foreground and the reflected background. The seeming ease of the image is testament to Manets skills in manipulating composition, colour, texture and light. Manets painting captures the reflection of the patrons of The Folies. While they are not clearly discernable we get an impression of how popular this event and theatre were. Instantaneously we are able to not only focus on the girl before us, enquiring what she can supply us with, but also and unusually see her back as a full reflection in the mirror and / or the reflected audience who we may also be scanning to see if we either know someone or would like to get to know one of those reflected before us. The reflection of the male figure in the top right hand corner of the painting is out of perspective when considered in his proximity to the barmaid. Her reflected posture seems slightly more bent towards the reflected figure than it does from the frontal view. Seen in this way Manet has cleared the image to focus on how he has experienced the compositional content. He has altered what may have been real to allow for a different reading or emphasis of that which he has selected to work from. In Manets world we become, are invited or challenged to complete the work with our presence. We complete the painting through our own gaze back towards the barmaid. The painting functions in many ways celebrating the rise of urban Parisian life where we as viewer are situated in the crucial position of socialising with the works conceptual core. This is a highly staged, self-conscious construct where elements of reality have been celebrated within a more personally considered reflection upon social human interaction within the context of commercial consumption. Manet would have been acutely aware of photographys presence and its increasing popularity as significant technical developments in the medium coincided with his own life experiences. Louis Igouts photographic work from 1880 provided artists with classic poses to work from, study or reference for the purposes of painting, without recourse to live models. Manet would have been aware if not a collector of such imagery as part of his studio library.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

The decade of the 1850s was a "golden age" in the art of photography. Artists of great vision and skill took up a fully mature medium, tackled ambitious subjects, and lavished care in producing large, richly toned, and colorful prints for a select group of fellow artists or wealthy patrons. By the 1860s, times were changing, and the medium became increasingly industrialized. Instead of mixing chemicals according to personal recipes and hand coating their papers, photographers could buy commercially prepared albumen papers and other supplies. Increasingly, the marketplace pressured photographers to produce a greater quantity of cheaper prints for a less discerning audience. In marketing to a middle class, aesthetic factors such as careful composition, optimal lighting conditions, and exquisite printing became less important than the recognizable rendering of a familiar sight or famous person. Malcolm Daniel, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/infp/hd_infp.htm (accessed 15.02.2013)

Left; Acadmies, ca. 1880 Louis Igout (French, 18371881) Albumen silver print from glass negative, The Metropolitan Museum of Art , USA. Right; Edouard Manet 1874, Nadar It is clear that Manet had a thorough understanding and awareness of contemporary photography and photographers in his lifetime.

Edouard Manets development of painting in the face of an increasingly sophisticated photographic technology was in line with Impressionist painters such as Edgar Degas in embracing or utilising photographic references in composition, focus or content extending and challenging accepted or conventional representational ideologies of their time. Degas Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, 1879, National Gallery, London, UK (left) exemplifies Manets and his contemporaries awareness of the necessity to evolve painting in line with the technological developments of their times in 1880s Paris. If photographers were presenting folios of classically posed models as serious minded artifacts, Painting moved to a more dynamic and fluid interpretation of reality than that of a mechanized eye and tripod even if the original concept for the painting included a photographic likeness to be copied from or altered in the studio.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Edouard Manet, The Luncheon on the Grass (Le djeuner sur l'herbe), 1863

Right; Concert Champetre, Titian or Giorgione 1509, Louvre Museum, Paris. Nineteen years before The Bar at the Folies-Bergere Manets work was not deemed fit to hang within the galleries of academic art. While Folies- Bergere was accepted and hung, with Manet established as a modern and accomplished artist in 1882; his 1863 painting The Luncheon on the Grass (Le djeuner sur l'herbe), caused a furore over its content. The presence of a nude woman seemingly relaxed in the company of two fully dressed male companions as another female washes herself in the water behind the scene was perceived as scandalous. The nude was perceived as being a prostitute, while her gaze and that of her immediate male companion is aimed outwardly towards the viewer. The position of the second male with bohemian head attire, his outstretched arm and linear alignment of limbs in the foreground creates and emphasizes a triangular shape, encouraging the viewers eye to move around the paintings central compositional area. The figure of the female washing creates a second triangular shape extending the movement from right to left by moving upwards. Such ideas in painting were classical in their provenance. Student artists throughout the history of western art were taught the Golden Section as well as being expected to be able to discuss how they had developed compositional initiatives or personal, symbolic ideas extended from Romantic or Classical traditions. The evidence of classical structure, balance and movement throughout Manets 1863 painting and his obvious awareness of classical composition has drawn attention to Titians 1509 painting Concert Champetre in the Louvre, Paris collection which Manet would almost certainly have been familiar with. For Manet to take a three hundred and fifty year old work, effectively updating the content and re-evaluating the way in which such an image may operate within the society of his own times is testament to Manets intelligence and visionary repositioning of painting within what would have been a rapidly changing industrialized society. Manet deftly situates the characters within his painting as Bohemians from their own time. In searching Manets work on the internet many reworkings of his own infamous transcription from Titian are evident. Manets Luncheon in the Grass alters Titians work so radically that it is important to reiterate that while Titians subjects may have played a central role for Manets painting the figures in Titians work are aloof and unaware of the viewers presence.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Manet emphasizes the need for a viewer to complete and engage with the work for it to project and effectively communicate its content or implied invitation to become a part of this compositional perversion of classical high-minded Arcadian lounging. Manets picnic is more raunch aesthetic than the easy privilege of Titians times when the patron or commissioner of a painting would not have been confronted with any moral questioning of their presence as a viewer or consumer of such imagery. Alain Jaquets 1964 reworking of Manets Dejeuner sur lherbe as a half tone image redolent of street billboard printing of its time remains faithful to Manets overall composition and in its own way pre-empts much current internet art where classical or classic imagery is appropriated or modified with ever increasingly strange additions as online artistic interventions or simply fan art. The use of a half tone technique emphasizes the emblematic or projected aspect of commercial imagery where the image effectively gels the further the viewer is distanced from the original.
Left; Alain Jacquet, 1939-2008 (France) Dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1964

Jaquaits image alters the emphasis subtlely where the characters within the image are frozen as if they are looking towards a camera especially for the moment to be recorded.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Vito Acconci Undertone 1972 (video)

A 1971 Sony; Tokyo: Video Monitor CVM-920U

Vito Acconcis video Undertone is a direct precursor of the uploaded confessional video to YOUTUBE, pre-empting this phenomena by thirty-three years. I can sit in front of the monitor, stay concentrated on myself, dwell on myself, see myself in the round Video became an improved mirror-a hyper-mirror- that allowed self to be examined from all angles and from every side (Kaizen 269). The perspectival triangulation of Acconcis video work Undertone situates the viewer at the opposite end of a table, facing the artist. Acconcis pose is reminiscent of a prisoner receiving a visitor. Everything in frame is pared back to a minimum. The brightly coloured giantism of Pop art is replaced by mono- chrome miniaturisation. The studio is a domestic space rather than a factory or laboratory. The recondite philosophy of Conceptual art is replaced by everyday life and autobiography.
McAuliffe, C. (2007) After the Age of Aquarius: American art in the early seventies. University of Melbourne.

Acconcis clothing is basic, the empty space has nothing to distract the viewers eyes from the subject. The device of a perspectival view down a table to the artist narrator situates the viewer as the recipient or confidante in this intimate video work. Dialogue is softly spoken, the viewer has to be attentive to fully appreciate the almost whispered confessional of the artist as he states that there is a woman under the table rubbing his thighs. As viewers we complete the work. Without an audience the artist is merely talking (ranting) to themselves. As the work is transmitted to an Other, we become voyeurs in this act. Acconci delivers a secondary text stating that there is no girl under the table but that he needs the viewer to be there to listen to this narrative. Undertone is part of a series of videos realized in the 1970s where Acconci examined how television / video is read, situated or viewed. He moved the television monitor or set from the domestically dominant position of presentational privilege into unusual physical situations, where the viewer was effectively forced to position themselves in the way Acconci considered most psychologically favourable for the image, televisual object and setting to communicate his ideas. In 1972 TV was generally felt to convey truth through news & documentary material, with entertainment thrown in. Acconcis work linked to American concerns in the wake of Richard Nixons infamous Watergate Tapes that the trust of a viewer can be simply manipulated by fantasies.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Natalie Bookchin, Mass Ornament (2009)

Bookchins YOUTUBE videos harvest materials uploaded to the video sharing network from a series of themes. Medications, being laid off work, travel / road videos and bedroom dancing. The intimacy of the confessional YOUTUBE video is presented en masse, as a collection or collage of contemporary phenomena. The work evolves from the setting up of a camera, checking the framing and rehearsals prior to the collective dancers exhibition of their passionate physical expressions of celebration. The multiple screens employed include the data of how many views each respective dance has had on the website, effectively rating each dancers video. The presentation links styles, gender and image to an aesthetic structure seemingly unifying these disparate dancers. As viewers we are voyeurs, spying on this most private act undertaken by many people through time and before the globally connected cameras lens; where previously it would have been performed in front of a mirror. Bookchins video montage throughs up several key aspects for consideration. The self-interest of monitoring a performance and being able to use the camera technology to self edit or check personal ability or limitations. That these private shows have become public emphasizes a need for validation through how many people are prepared to sit and watch each singular dance, where their effective rankings are displayed at the bottom of each frame. A private show or expression is uploaded to a public domain and freely available for anyone to consume in any way they may desire. The viewers role is passive yet powerful where the selection of such material to consume relates to body type, choice of music or styling. The expressions range from naive celebration and fandom through to erotic sexually charged or physical presence. A global movement of rhythm confronts us where we are effectively challenged to judge or join in while being entertained in the same vein as reality TV.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

Andy Warhol & Paul Morrisey, Chelsea Girls (twin screen projection; film) 1966 Andy Warhols films from the 1960s developed art film in simple yet complex ways. While the subject matter and content were barely orchestrated in terms of elaborate sets, outstanding dialogue or acting they are direct precursors of much video and photographic work since their realization. Conceptually and visually they work as compositional explorations of the human presence and our own often dislocated sense of perception as our minds and eyes wander across or zoom in on a particular aspect momentarily before returning to some generalized middle point of focus and then moving off again as we pan, zoom, track or focus within any given situation we encounter. Warhols army of wannabe stars who surrounded him at his New York studio The Factory offered him fresh young cinematically interesting subject matter who looked aesthetically pleasing on film. They are now immortally forever young in their frozen celluloid time slice of art history, yet continue to signal a youthful presence, central to much commercial film practice, where the cult of youth is perpetuated across all contemporary media to this day. While Warhols stars maybe glamorous trans-sexuals, drug addicts, minor actors, fashion models or artists they directly reference the demimonde of Toulouse Lautrec and Manets cosmopolitan Parisian world of the nineteenth century. They are self-obsessed, vacuous and bored, yet celebrate their ultimate achievement of timeless fame through their presence within a film; something we are all encouraged to achieve within contemporary societies as being a significant symbol of success. In this sense while Warhols models follow the tradition of the English Pre-Raphaelites and French Impressionists who employed young women from the streets as their models; updating the image by extending the singular frame of perfection to include their preening, empty conversation and fickleness.

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Jeremy Blank, Curtin University blankvision@westnet.com.au

The banality of content and absence of overt storytelling situates Warhols work more readily within realism and non-narrative than the Pop Art culture he is more closely associated with. Warhols intimate celebrations, interviews, interrogations in film may have set the scene for Vito Acconcis 1970s video confessionals however Warhols films have an expanded vision, beyond a singular view of critically examined narcissism. The double screen work Chelsea Girls juxtaposes differing scenes from within the Chelsea Hotel where the residents go about their lives. The camera is statically mounted yet roams each setting at seemingly random times until it rests upon a close up of a partial piece of clothing, flesh, facial features, furniture or light. As viewers intimate scenes confront us, where we would expect something to happen. Yet as in real life we encounter many unresolved meetings, experiences, parties where we may simply accept randomness or banality as a defining aspect; where we may seek meaning or some narrative structure. The grand narratives are dismissed or have passed. The death of the author heralded and facilitated the possibility to celebrate nothing other than the moment. In Warhols films that moment is extended from beyond the single frame. Warhols use of the Polaroid in his artworks and portraits became an accelerated supercharged ephemeral presence as he developed a body of films of almost clinical objectivity. The frozen Polaroids become moving images across an intimate smaller silver screen suited to the 16mm film projections many well to do 1960s families indulged in making their own home movies. Warhol accessed new technologies revolutionising how we both present and seek to be represented. The Polaroid camera offered the privilege for photographs to be made, printed instantaneously and consumed privately without the need to submit a roll of film to a third and potentially judgemental or moralistic party for development and printing and included a model called the Swinger. Super 8 and 16mm film cameras offered significant opportunities for wealthy people to create their own personal cinematic archives. Warhol subverts this privileged desire for immortality, or fifteen minutes of stardom as he was quoted as stating everyone has in their lifetime, by promoting characters who would not necessarily have achieved celluloid immortality had it not been for his presence.

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Nan Goldin.

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Chris Crocker, Leave Britney Alone (2007)

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Steve Kardynal, Peacock- Katy Perry (2011)

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