Peter Welbel

Expanded Cinema,
Video and Virtual Environments

top
Hans Richter
Rhythm 23
1923
16mmfilm
b/ w, si lent
3 min
film strip

r
cou r tesy CeCi le Starr,
New Yor k

bottom
Kasimir Malevlch
Artis tic and SCientific Film -
Painting and Archit ectural
Concerns - Approaching
the New Plas tiC
Architectural System
1927
manuscript pag e from a
t hree- page fil m script
pr iva te collec t ion

Avant- garde Fil m

1 Kaslmir Malevich, Painterly
In most hi stories of cinema t he avant-garde f ilm oc-
Laws In the Problems of CIn- cup ies a minor and marginal position . In the interwar
ema: in Cinema and Culture
(Kino i Kultura), nos. 7- 9,
period of the twentieth century, avant - garde fil m was
1929. initia lly seen as a spin - off or by-product of visual art
2 This history is described and
movements li ke Cub ism, Futurism, Suprematism, Co n-
structivism, Dada ism or Surrealism. Linked to these ,............. C. l . -r ,..... . ~#"I'..~ ......
documented In the follOW ing
books: Sheldon Renan,
.1" '1>14~. 1",,_ j,/".",,- ""~
movements were abstract or pictorial animat ions as
An Introduction to t he
America n Under ground Film, well as mont age and kinet ic f il ms by ar t ists like Fer- ~ leJ
Dutton, Ne w York, 1967;
P. Adams Sitney (ed.). Film
nand Leger, Bruno Corra, Kasimir Malevich,l Viking
Culture Reader. Praeger, Eggeling, Hans Richter, Laszl6 Moho ly-Nagy, Oskar
New York,i970, Gene Young-
blood, Expe nded Cinema,
Fischinger, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Len Lye, Lotte
Dutton, New Yo rk,1970: Re ininge r, Berthold Bartosc h, Alexan der Alexeieff and
Parl<er Taylor, Underground
Film (1969), SeckerS War -
Cla ire Parker. These f ilms constituted a body of work
burg, London,1971; David that served as the source for the innovative and au-
Cur t is, Experimental Cinema,
A Fifty- Year Evolution,
t onomo us post - WWI I motio n picture t ha t was vari -
Universe Books, New York, ous ly termed "art " or "experimenta l" film. This new
1971; P Adams Sitney,
Visionary Films, Oxford
movement differed from its histori cal predecessor
University Press, New York, [few artists, small audiences, no media presence, no
1974: Han s Scheug l,
Er nst Schmidt Jr., Eine
theaters, no or gan ization , no dis t ributo r s) in t hat it
A",_ I" I -.. >'< r ~)'i:n~:..,: .:;. :. ~..,., ' : ~
Subgeschlchte des Films. wa s at a certa in moment in history a mass movement ~ -~7 "
.1
f ,. ...
" ,, ,
,.. , .. ~/ .. ~ ~ ..... "J '""t- J- ... ., ..~ j,. '4
Lel<lkon des Avantgaroe,
(with its own distributive organizatio ns, with large au- '""'L :-t.::r~ . ..... 4>-0 J- ...--- ~ . . . . . h'.::. .~.~. :.~: .: ....:.:..:.
Experlmental- un d Under4
groundfilms, vols. 1, 2, diences in cOrUunction with t he student and pop- h..... -.. ,..,-. Io ... L_.40 ..... ' ..... ._'"-
Suhrkamp. Frarlkfurt, 1974,
Amos Voge l, Film as Subver-
music revoluti ons, a lar ge num ber of fil mmakers, its 1~"- . ,. .
A. " ' ,; " .), !'I _,.. _ ..... ,.. , . .. - .. ,~~

sJVeArt, Random House, New

York. 1974. Steph en Qwoskin,
own theaters and magazines). The independent or ex- _
" .... ... t _
~,. .-.-. II c:.:::J
MI"7 -'" ,....... . , -.... ,.. .,.---
Film Is - Tile Int erna tional
perimental f il m of t he 19605 was very conscious of

.....+ ,
Fre e Cmema. Pete r Owen, being a new branch of ar t, a new med ium and f orm of " ')'1 . ~44. "" ....... ~~
l ondon, 1975. Structurel
J./ " "',
fHu .l...,.4
/J
"'7 .....1
, .". " ..... . " ...
"',f., ~ ,. .t:.. .......... ...O' -'.LL"':
J
Film Anthology; Peter Gidal
art as opposed to mere ly a byproduct of the visu al
(ed j, BFI Publi shing, London, arts, even if some major filmmakers like Andy Warhol,
1976; Film als Film 1910 bis
Guy Debord or Yoko Ono cou ld be li nked t o Pop Art,
heute, Bir git Hem, Wulf
Her zogenrath (e ds). the Situat ion ist Internation al or Fluxus. This aware-
,~ .... '....' . ......
d .. r
1.,.......
. . . . ..
,. ,, - .~
10- .... .... ,, ~,~< ...... l' .{~ ...... . .... ....

Kolnischer Kunst verein.

Co logne. 1977: Malcolm Le
ness of f ilm as new art med ium led to a complete de- J . 1 I
Grice. Abstract Film and construction of classica l ci nema. The apparatus of
 Gil J. Wo lman Sta n Brakhage Bir git an d Wilhelm Hein
L'Antl[~oncept Mothlight Rohfilm [Raw Film)
1951 1963 1968
f ilm stills 16mm f ilm 16mm f ilm
L'lnstitu t Scandinave de color, silent b/w, sound
Vandal isme Compar{) 4 min 20 min
f rom Joseph Wolman, L'Antl- fi lm strip C t he artists
concept , ~ dit i ons Allia, Par is, o Stan Brakhage
1994, p, 66

Bevond, Th e MIT Press, Cam -

brr dge, MA/London, 1977;
Deke Dusinb err e, A. L. Ree s,
Film as Film, Formal Experi-
men t in Film 1910- 75, Arts
Counci l of Gre at Br ita in/
classical cinema, from the camera to the projector, med ia avant- garde, and dominated maj or exhibit ions Hayward Gallery, Lon don,
1979; Pe ter Gidal, Material -
from the screen to the celluloid, was radically trans - li ke t he Kasse l documen t a and Venice Bienn ial. In the ist Film, Routledge, London,
formed, annih il ated and expanded, The histo r y of same decade, f ilm ente r ed t he f ie ld of digita lly ex- 1989; Da vid E, James (ed,),
To Free the Cinema, Jonas
avant-ga r de fil m is a history of interpellat ions in the pa nded c inema Mekas 6 The New York
sense of Althusser (see my pref ace) on t he basis of Underground, Princeton
Un iversit y Press, Pr inceton,
the apparatu s itself. 2 The deficit of the cinematic ap - Material Experi ments New Jersey, 1992;Kerry
par atus theory of the 1970s was that it showed us The subvers ive exp losion t hat shattered t he cine - Brougher, Art and Film Since
1945. Hall of Mirrors, Mona-
only the ideology inherent to Hollywood f il ms,just as mat og r ap hi c code in t he 19605 affect ed all of the ce lli Press, Ne w Yo r k,1 996,
in the 1960s Umberto Eco used sem iot ics to exp lain techn ical and mate r ial paramet ers of f ilm, The mater - Spellbound: Art and Film,
Ian Christie, Philip Dod d
James Bond f ilms and t oday Slavoj Zizek uses Lacan ial cha r acter of the f ilm itse lf was ana lyzed by art ists (eds), SFI Publishing, London,
t o exp lain Hit chcock, Neither t heo r ist used t he appa - who , in stead of expos ing t he ce lluloid, scratched it 1996; Jack Sar geant, Na ked
Lens: Beat Cinema, Creati on
ra t us theory r ad ica lly in order to demo nst rate that (George Landow, Film In Which There Appear Sprocket Books, Lon don, 1997; A. L.
the cinemat ic apparatus and the in scribed ideo logy Holes, Edge Lettering, Oirt Particles, etc., 1965/66; Rees, A His t ory of Experi -
mental Film and Video. From
can be transformed by making dif f er ent f ilms with Birgit and Wilhelm He in, RohFilm, 1968), perforat ed it the Canonical Avant- Garde
different technolog ies in the way done by avant - with a ho le pu nch [D iete r Rot h, 1965), pa int ed it [ Harry to Contemporarv British
Practice, SFI Publishing,
garde f ilmmakers. They the r efo r e missed a vital po int, Sm ith used 35mm mat eria l, process ing it with grease, Lon don,1999; Garrett
and f ell be hi nd t heir own t heoret ica l prem ises , Their pa int , tape and spray, 1947), covere d it wit h f inger - Stewart, Bet ween Film and
Screen. Moderr1lsm's Photo
theoretical work insofar paradoxica lly supported the prints (Peter We ibe l, Fingerprint,1967) or glued moths Svnth esis, Th e UniverSity of
hegemony of Hollywood and dism issed the avant - t o it (Stan Bra khage, Mothlight, 1963, in which moth Chicago Pres s, Chica go and
Lon don, 1999; Into the Light
ga r de movement from f il m to video, from video to dig- wings and leaves were f ixed between layers of per- The PrQjected Image in
it al, as rep r esenting a transformat ion of t he cine- f orat ed t ape and pr ojected). Empt y frames, blac k f ilm American Art 1964- 1977,
Chrissie lies (ed,), e ~ h i b, cat ,
matic appar at us, and overex posed material were also us ed (G il J, Wo l- Wh itney Museum of Ameri-
This tra nsformatio n took place in three phases. man , L'anti- concept, 1951; Guy Debord, Hurlements can Art, Ne w Yo rk/ Har ry N,
Abra ms, Ne w York, 2001;
In the 1960s, the cinematic code was exte nde d wit h en Faveur de Sade, 1952; Peter Kube lka, ArnulF Ra iner, Malco lm Le Grice, Experi -
ana logo us means, with t he means of cinema itse lf. 1960; Tony Conrad, The Flicker, 1965) mental Cinema In the Digital
Age, BFI Publishing, Lon don,
Sho r t ly afterwards, new elements and apparatuses At the same t ime, the apparatus offilm, from 2001; Hans Scheu91, ErwBlt -
like the video recorder were introduced, and the camera to projector, was t aken apart , reassemb led , er t es Kino . Die Wiener Film e
der 60er Jahre , Triton, Wien,
cinematic code was expanded electromagnet ica lly augmented and used in ent ir ely new ways. There we r e 2002, Mart in Ries er, Andrea
Artist s' video - from Bruce Nauman to Bill Viola, from camera less f ilms, for which unp r ocessed ce ll uloid, Zapp (e ds), New Sc r een
Media, Cmema/Art/ Narra -
Nam June Pa ik to Ste in a and Woody Vasu lka - was known as clear f il m, was in serted into the pr ojector t ive, BFI Publishing, Lon don,
init ially su cce ssfu l in the 1970s, but was ha lted in t he (Nam Ju ne Pa ik, Zen for Film , 1962). and films wit hout 2002, bo ok and DVD; Margot
Lovejoy, Oigital Currents: Art
1980s by retro-orient ed pa int erly neo -E xpr ess ion ism, fi lm, in whi ch Kosugi, t o name one examp le, focu sed in the Electronic Age, Rout -
In the 1990s vide o art became t he dom inant form of ligh t f rom a pr ojector wit hout film aga inst a paper ledge, Lon don, 2003

Ant hony McCa ll
Line Describing a Cone
1973
15mm fil m
b/w, silent
31 m in
installatiorl view: Artists Sp ace,
New Yo r k, 1974
Wh itney Museum of American
Art, New Yo rk
courtesy Ant hony McCal l
pho t o C Peter Moore;
VG Bild- Kurls t, Bonn 2003
3 See Gene Young bloo d, Ex -
panded Cinema, Dutto n, New
Yo r k, 1970, p. 371
screen, cuttin g out sections of the screen from the
midd le unti l the r e was nothing left of it (Film No.4 ,
1965). In zzz:hamburg special (19 68], Han s Scheugl
rep laced the filmst r ip with a th r ead act ually running
t hrough the pr ojecto r to c r eate a shadow li ne on t he
screen. In other works, the li ght beam was r ep laced
with a stretched length of rope (Pet er We ibe l, Licht -
seil, 1973], or became the pure and only matt er (An -
thony McCa ll, Line describing a cone, 1973], Films were
projected not on the convent iona l sc r een but on cur -
ta ins of steam wit h runn ing wate r (Robert Whitman,
Shower, 196 4] and on the surfaces of human bo dies
(in his Prune Flat, 1965, Robe r t Wh it man proj ecte d a
f il m onto t he body of a girl wea r ing whit e cloth ing; th e
f ilm showed her tak ing off the same clothes; in Andy
Wa r ho l's and Ju d Ya lkut's Exploding Plastic Inevitable,
1966, the fi lm wa s proj ected onto the f igu r es of
members of the aud ience da ncing to music by the Vel-
vet Unde r ground). The histo r y of t hese material ex -
pe r ime nts is described in Peter Gidal's boo k Material-
ist Film (Lon don, 1989).
Multiple Screen Exp erim ents
Many film art ists ca rr ied out ra dica l experiments wit h
the screen it se lf It was explod ed and mult iplied, ei-
ther t hrough divis ion into mu lt iple images us ing sp li t-
screen techniques or by placing screens on severa l
different wa ll s. Thus mu lt iple proj ectio ns occupied t he
foreground of a visua l culture that was inte nt upon
li berating itse lf f r om t he conventiona l concept of the
pa int ing, f rom the t ech nica l and mate r ial r estrictions
of imaging technology and f r om the rep r essive deter-
Robert Wh itman
Shower
1964
envir on ment
16mm fi lm loop transferred t o
video, showe r stall, water, wa t er
pump
installation view Newar k
Museum, New Jers eY,1999
co llection Rob ert Ra uschenberg
photo cou rtesy
Robert Rauschenbe rg and
Robert Whit man
Simorle Fort i and
Lucinda Childs in
Ro bert Wh itman's
Prune Flat
1965
perfor marlce view: Expa rl ded
Cinema Festival, Film-Maler's
Cinematheque, Ne w York, 1965
pho t o 0 Pe te r Moor e,
VG Bil d- Kunst, Bonrl 2003
min ant s of t he socia l codes. In much the same way
that some pa inte r s sli ced up t he canvas (Luci o
Fo ntana] or used the huma n body as a canvas (the
Viennese Actioni sts] in search of avenues of escape
f rom the picture, cinema ar tists were also engaged in
a quest for ways of break ing out of t he lim ited f ilm
sc r een during t he same period
The Vortex Concerts (visua ls by He nr y Jacobs,
Jo rdan Be lson, the Whitney Brothersl 19S7-S9, mixed
mu lt iple f ilm proj ections and slid e shows. Kennet h
Anger showed Inauguration of t he Pleasure Dome
[1954] on t hree sc r eens in Brussels in 1958 In or der
to "fr ee f ilm f r om it s f lat and frontal or ientation and
to present it within an ambience of total space," 3
Milt on Cohen, t he lea ding f igure in the ONC E Group
from Ann Arbor, M ichigan, had since 1958 been deve l-
oping an env ironment (Space Theatre] fo r mu lt iple
pr Oject ions with t he aid of rotat ing mirrors and
prisms us ing mob il e r ectangular and triangu lar
screens. In 1965, Stan VanDerBeek publi shed a ma ni-
festo in j ustif icat ion of real-time mu lt iple proj ectio n
env ir onment s, a kind of "image - flow" in wh ich image
pr ojection it se lf became the subject of t he perfor -
mance. In the same year he showed Feedback NO.1:
A Movie Mural. achievin g a f irst breakth r ough f or
mu lt i-projection cin ema. To realize his idea, he estab-
li shed a Movie Orome in Stony Point, New Yo rk ; a
va ulted cupola mode le d on t he geodet ic domes of
Buck minst er Fu ll er. Around 1960, t he USCG ("US"
company] Group assoc iat ed with Ge r d Stern began
workin g on the mult i-prOject ion shows on t he east
coast of the USA (We are all one, with four 16mm
 ONCE Group
Unmarked Interchange
1965
ph oto 0 Peter Moo re ; VG 8 ild-
Kunst, Bonn 2003
live perform ers interact With a
prqiecti on of Top Hat, starnng
Fred Astalre and Ginger Rogers

The Single Wing Turquoise Bird group

in t heir studiO at Vemce,
center and bottom California, 1967/1966
Partially opened parachute phot o C Gene Youngblood
bec omes Isobe's Floa ting
Theatre for the presentation
of Jud Yalkut's Dream Reel
intermedla environment at
Oneonta, New York, March 1969
photos courtesy Yubhlsa Isobe,

projectors, two Bmm projectors, four carousel pro-
jectors, 1965).
John Cage, Lejaren Hiller and Ronald Nameth
staged HPSCHO, a five-hour "Intermedia Event" with
eight thousand slides and one hund r ed f ilms pro-
jec t ed onto forty-eight windows at t he University of
Illinois in 1969. Between 1960 and 1967, Robert Whit-
man experimented with multiple plastic and paper
screens onto which films wer e projected (The Ameri-
can Moon, 1960). In Tent Happening (1965), films, in-
clud ing a sequ ence filme d through a glass pane show-
ing a man def ecating, were projected onto a lar ge
tent. Beginning in 1965, Aida Tambellini's Electromedia
Theatre worked with multiple projections (Black Zero,
1965) in which, to cite one example, a gigantic black
balloon appeared from nowhere, blew itself up and
eventua lly exp loded. Hu ndre ds of hand- pa int ed films
and sli des were used. In 1968 Tam be lli ni org an ized
Black Gate in Dusseldorf along the banks of the Rhine,
an event featuring projections onto helium - filled,
airborne plastic hoses and figures by Otto Piene.
Jud Yalkut created Dream Reel for Yukihisa Iso be's
Floating Theatre, a giga ntic pa rachute he ld by nylon
t hreads - a portable hemispheric screen for mult iple
frontal and rear projections. The Single Win g Tur-
quoise Bird group (Peter Mays, Jeff Perkins, the later
video artist Michael Scroggins and others) from Los
Angeles put together light shows for rock concerts in
1967 and 196 8. Sponso red by th e pa inter Sam Francis,
they subsequently con ducted expe r iments in an aban-
doned Santa Monica hotel with constantly changing
images, from video project ions to laser beams. In
their Theatre of Light of the late 1960s, Jackie Cassen
and Rudi Stern used self-constructed "sculptural
projectors" to project multiple images onto pneu-
matic domes, transpare nt Plexiglas cubes, po lyhexag -
ona l structures, water surfaces. and so f orth, Par-
t ic ularly impressive was a founta in illuminat ed by a
strobe light, a technique that evoked the impression
of individual drops of water being suspended like
crystals in the air. This effect is today variously re-
peate d by Olafur Eliasson. Toshio Mats umoto showed
his Space ProjectionAKO in a dome in 1969. One note-
wort hy example is Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966).
a mixture of split-screen techniques and multiple
projection in which a number of performers discuss
their unusual lives from multiple perspectives and at
several different levels at the same time. There were
monumental mobile projectio ns f r om moving veh icles
onto building facade s (Imi Knoebel, Prqjektion X, 1972),
onto dancing people, onto forests and fields, onto
th e curved inside and outside surfaces of geodetic
domes, onto plastic balls, hoses, and so on.
Contemporary vis ual practices have returned to
these tec hn iques of mob ile projection or deployment
of the screen as a window in a movi ng ve hicle, as in
Lutz Mommartz' Eisenbahn [Railway] of 1967. The in-
teractive installation Crossings (1995) by Stacey
SpiegelS Rodney Hoinkes simulates a t rain journey
between Paris and Berlin, transforming physical
space into th e vir t ual interact ive space of t he World-
Wi de Web. Room with a view (2000), created by Michael
Bielicky and Bernd Lintermann for Volkswagen's "Au-
tostadt Wolfsburg," uses four projectors to achieve a
Mlchael8ieliclcy,
8ernd Lintermann,
Torsten 8elschner
Zimmer mit Aussicht
[Room with a View]
2000
Inte ractive installat ion
sti ll s
ZKM I Inst it ute for Visua l Media,
Kar lsruhe
C the ar tis t s and ZKM I Ce nter
fo r Art and Media Karlsruhe
 ";: ." ~~-- .-~p ~.
\ ' ' ...
;r~ _ ".~:

Michael Snow wi th t he machine

used fo r fi lming
La Region Centrale
[The Central Region]
photo C Joyce Wie land

Mich ael Snow

Two Sides to Every Story
1974
pr QJec t ion
t wo 16mm f ilms
bo t h co lor, sound
t wo pr qjector s, painted
aluminum scr een
9 min, dimensions va r iable
Installa t ion view: Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, 1974
Nat ional Gallery of Canada,
Otta wa
o Michael Snow
photo courtesy Michael Snow

Edmund Kuppel
Das Planetarium
1990
installation
cent ral prqJector. 12 screens, perfect 360 - degree dome projection, with a touch-
steel grabe
800 em 0 screen at the cente r of the dome allowing multiple
inst allation view manipulat ion of the projected images. With twelve
courtesy the artist
bottom r ound sc reens in a dome construction and one cen-
Dss Planet arium
tral pr ojector, Edmun d Kuppel's Das Planetarium
deta il
(19 90) is an interesting paraphrase of Michael Snow's
outstanding La Region Centrale (1970]. In the 19605,
t he screen became in a numbe r of ways mult iple and
mo bil e, as well as f lat or curved, or was even r eplaced
by unusua l materia ls li ke wa t er, woods and build ings.
Import an t ex periment s with material film, multiple
projections and expanded cinema were made in t he
1970s by a group of British filmmakers associated
with Malcolm Le Grice (After Leonardo, 1974, a six-
projector fi lm) and made up by Dave Crosswaite, David
Dye (Unsigning for eight proj ectors, 1972), Gill Eather -
ley, Annabel Nicholson, William Raban and Lis Rhodes.
In 1972, Birgit and Wilhelm He in showed a two-scr een
film titled Ooppe/projektion I -IV A very early example
of double projection was delivered by the film L'Uomo
meccanico [The Mechan ical Man] of 1921 by Andre
Dee d, a French f ilm clown who had been making his
"Cret inetti" f ilms in Italy since 1909 and was admired
by the Fut urists. In t his film, a robot f ilmed with a
camer a a furious ly f ast police car and t he footage
was sh own on a se cond screen inside t he first
Th ese expe ri ment s wit h multiple sc r ee ns were
carried forwa r d in t he 1960s by env ir onments wit h
f ilm and by f ilm environments wh ich combined projec-
tion and live action. In Moviemovie (1967) by Theo
Botschu uver, Jeffrey Shaw and Sean Wellesley- Miller,
films and light were prqjected onto' a pneumatic
sculpture on wh ich people moved , Moviehouse (1965)
by Claes Oldenburg showed a f ilm theater without a
f ilm. The situation (real people sitting on chairs) was
t he cin emat ic spectacle, a cin ematic ap proach r e-
peated by Jan et Ca r dif f in t he 1990s (Playhouse,
1997), An innovative pr oject by Markus Huemer (1988)
placed the famous lette r s HOLLYWOOD on a hil l in
Li nz , Aust ria; the idea was later repeat ed by Maurizio
Cattelan in Palermo (2001), and partially (LYWO] by
Bertrand Lavier in Lyon (2000).
Narrative Experiments
Multiple projections of different films alongside one
another, one on top of the other, and in all spatial
directions represented more than merely an invasion
of space by the visual image. They were also an ex-
pression of multiple narrative perspectives. The film-
maker Gregory Markopoulos, an early master of quick
cuts and complex cross - fading techniques, published
a manifesto of new narrative forms based upon his
cuttin g technique
"I pr opose a new form of narrat ion as a com bina-
t ion of cla ssical mon tage tec hn ique wit h a more
ab st ra ct system. Th is syst em incorpor ates t he
us e of shor t f ilm phases t ha t evoke th ought im-
ag es_Ea ch f il m phase comp ri ses a select ion of

"'
~

Annabel Nicholson
Reel Time
1973
16mm f ilm
b/w, soun d
per for mance of
Indeterm inate leng t h
o Ann ab el Nicho lson
specific im ages similar t o t he harmonious unity of
a musical com position. The film phases det ermine
other interrelationships among themselves; in
classical montage t echnique, there is a constant
relationship to the continuous shot; in my ab-
stract system t here is a complex of different im-
ages that are rep eate d." 4
Fro m t he out set , t he extension of t he sing le screen
to many screens, from the sing le project ion to multi -
ple projections r epresented not only an expansion of
visual horizo ns and an overwhelming intensif ication of
visual experience. It was always engaged in the service
of a new approach to narration. For the first time,
the suQjective r esponse to the world was not pressed
into a constru cted, falsely objective styl e of nar rat ion
but was in st ead f ormally presented in t he same dif -
fuse and f ragmen t ar y way in which it was exp erienced.
In the age of social r evolts, mind-expandin g drugs
and cosmic visions, multiple projection environments
became an impo r tant factor in the quest for a new
imaging technology capable of articulating a new
perception of the world .
Charles and Ray Eames made very early use of
slide and film pr oj ections ont o multiple sc reens
Glimpses of the USA was shown on seve n screens at
t he Moscow World's Fa ir (1959]. and on fourte en
screens in t he IBM Pavilion at the New York World's
Fair (1964-65). For the Montreal Expo in 1967, several
Rodney HOlnkes,
stacey Spiegel
Crossmgs
1995
Interactive installation,
Internet project
mixed media
dimenSions va r iable
inst allation view
o Rodney Homkes.
Stacey Spiegel
Charles and Ray Eames
Glimpses of the USA
1959
Moscow World's
Fair auditorium
art ists also creat ed huge mu lti-vision environments
(for instance, Roman Kroitor's Labyrinthe) with the
intention of developing new forms of storytelling .
"People," as Roman Kroitor asserted, 1were] tired of
the standard plot structure." Francis Thompson, a
pioneer in large-scale, multi-image cinematography,
presen t ed his piece We are Young on an arrangement
of six scree ns in Montrea l. The Czech pavilio n fea-
t ure d Josef Svo boda's Creation of the World of Man,
a huge (Oiapolyekran) screen on which 15,000 slides
could be shown simultaneously on 112 movable cubes.
In these experiments with multiple screens we see
the beginning of immersive environments, virtual
worlds and interactive relations between spectator
and image. The spectator slowly becomes part of the
system that he observes. Closed - circuit video insta l-
lat ions in t he 1970s really all owed t he spectato r to
see hi mself in t he video monitor, in t he ima ge cap-
tured by the video camera . At the sa me t ime, mult iple
screens broke up the linearity of traditional narra-
tion. Multiform plots, a non-linear narrative matrix,
became possible. Narrative elements could be re-
peated, recombined, or replaced by other elements . In
Zoms Lemma (1970) by Hollis Frampton, letters were
replaced by images, and these ima ges t urned into
eve nts . A new form of narration was ac hieve d on a
single scree n. The narrat ive matrix was base d on a
theorem of set t heory (Zorn's Lemma). The narration 4 In Filmculture. no. 31. winter
became a multiform matrix, a multi-story machine. 1963/64
 :. :/\
\: :'. '. :

v". ...:.:~.::..., \ j

~do5 left above Douglas Gordon

[;..::.::. . .:::::'.< John Whitney
Matrix
Ed Emshwiller
Skin Matrix
24 Hour Psycho
1993
1971 1984 video installation
co mput er- gra phics animation video installation view
co lor, sound co lor, sound C Douglas Gordon
5 m in 1657 min photo C Doug las Gord on
C John Wh itney video still
co urtesy Ed Emshwiller
Figures f r om John Whitney 's
article "A Computer Art fo r the
Video Picture Wal l: in Robert
Russet t and Cecile Starr (eds),
Experimenta /Animat ion Origins
of New Art , Da Capo Press, New
Yor k,1976, pp.187- 191

In the fi lm Nowa Ksiazka [New Book] of 1975 Zbigniew pe riments (Wavelength, 1967, a forty-five minute zoom
Rybczynsk i used a matrix of nine dif f erent images on through a room ; One second in Montreal, 1969; La

ID;'~,;~I one sc r een, showing differen t pa r ts of one narrative

and thereby anticipating the four-part screen of Mike
Figgis' Time Code (200 0). Before t he t erm "mat rix"
was made famous by Wi lli am Gibson's nove l New-
romancer (1984) and the Wachowski br ot hers' f il m
Region Centrale, 1970). In his See you later/Au revoir
(1990), a th irty-secon d movement (a man leaving his
office) was extended to seventeen minut es and thi r ty
seconds. In Joe Jones' Smoke (1966), the cigarette
smo ke stream in g from a mo uth is ext ended to six

GLj] Matrix (1999), it was already se r ving as a method

fo r visual narrat ives (see John Whitney's computer
animat ion Matrix I, 1971, and Skin Matrix, a vide o
\.t{ "~~~:: f antasy by Ed Emshwil ler, 1984),
v ... :::"'::.... \~
Time and Space Experiments
In addition to the expansion of t he technica l reper-
toire t hrough experimentat ion with proje cto rs and
.....; ',' '-' mu lt iple pr oject ions, another mat eria l-oriented ap -
Ji"::"!:_.~:.:.::' proach to t he visua l expres sion of a new concept of
reality, the renunciation of soc ial convent ions and a
new drug-induced, consciousness-expand in g experi-
ence emerged, It invo lved the shift ing and distortion
of t he conventiona l parameters of space and time
.."/ )' ':'
v ....:~ ..,::.... ".,j us ing techn ique s des igned to extend, slow, delay and
abbreviate t ime Fil m duration was extended to as
much as twent y-four hours (Andy Warho l, Empire
State Building, 1963), just as later Doug las Gordon ex-
tended Hitchcock's Ps ycho to twenty-four hou r s, or
~'/. >:.Q reduced to an extreme of on ly a few seconds (Pau l
" ... ::~.:. " \j
Sharits, Wrist Trick, ten seconds,1966). Temp oral di la-
tio ns in fil m and music (La Monte Yo ung) were favo r ed
as primary means of exp r ess ion not on ly due to their
consc iou sness - rai sin g effects, but also f or composi-
tiona l and formal reasons, The same was t r ue of t ime -
S Ray mon d Durgnat, SexlJal
Alienation in the Cinema,
short en ing and aggress ive cutting techniques , The
St lJdio Vista, London, 1972 f ilms of Michae l Snow were pure t ime and space ex -
ro
min utes, The composer Ta ke hisa Kosugi ta kes th irty
minutes to ta ke off his jacket in Anima 7 (1966). Pete r
Weibe l's fi lm actions The Kiss and To pour (both 1968),
which dep loy extreme slow motion, must also be
counted among th is "slow antho logy" (T. Kosugi).
Social and Sexual Experiments
In t he social sense t oo, th e contents of these inde-
pendent avant - garde and unde r ground fi lms strayed
f rom the fami liar terrain of the ind ustry f il m. Images
from t he intimate sphe r e, psycho-dramat ic docu-
ments of an excess ive ind ividualism were shown pub-
li cly in uncensored form. Ta boo sex scenes we r e acted
out in f ront of the camera (Jac k Sm ith, Flaming Crea -
tures, 1962/63, a t r ansvest ite orgy that triggered a
scandal even in art ist ic circles yet became a major
sou r ce of inspi ration f or Warho l's un iverse; Kenneth
Anger's Scorpio Rising, 1963, whic h marked t he bir t h
of Biker Movies and homo - erot ic se lf -fashio nin g, and
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, 1966). The widen-
in g of material and technical pa ramet ers went hand-
in-han d wit h t he dissolut ion of soc ial consensus ,S

So un d Exp eriments
Both for mal and thematic extensions of the cine-
matog raphi c code were welcomed enth usiastica lly in
the revolutionary aesthetic and social atmosphere of
the 1960s and was, like progressive rock music, sup-
ported by a new, youthful audi ence. Indeed, a large
number of such underground films were accompanied
by r oc k (from the Grateful Dead to Cr eam) and avant-
garde (f rom John Cage to Terry Riley) music In these
films, the role played by music was much more eman-
cipated than in industry movies. Rega r dless of
whether mainstream productions use classical or
popular scores, music serves more or less as back-
ground sound and a device for controlli ng mood an d
atmosphere, for heightening or resolving dramatic
tensio n. By cont rast, in many avant -ga r de f il ms mus ic
and sound exercise a determining effect upon the
structure of imagery, and images are cut and com-
posed in accordance with musica l principles. The ten-
dency to industrially exploit and market film images
through linkage with mus ic is clearly illustrated by the
function of the soundtrack, the serial arrangement of
existing popular songs and the commissioned piece
th at is known as a theme so ng and used to assoc iate
a certain fjjm with a certain musical hit. This usage of
semi-prefabricated components in movies and videos
is reminiscent of the accelerated prefab bui lding
techniques employed in mass industrial high - rise con-
struction . Instead of compo und concret e-an d-stee l
construction, the rapidly mass-produced industrial
film made use of a compound sound - and-music con-
struction . In contrast, t he avant-ga rde f ilms of the
1960s employed a highly differentiated approach to
the development of new relationsh ips between soun d
8arry Spinello
SoundtrBCk
1970
16mmfilm
b/w, parts handcolored, sound
11 min
f ilm strips
courtesy Barry Spinello
80th sound and image are
produced With handmade gra-
phic effects
and visua l imagery. 6 Barry Sp inell o's Soundtrack
(1970), in which both sound and image are produced
with handmade graphic effects, explored audio-visual
compOSit ional techniques. In Feature Film (1999), Doug-
las Gordon reorchestrated Bernard Herrmann's
score for Hitchcock's Vertigo and presented on ly
James Conlon conducting and hearing the film music
played by an orchestra.
The Evolution of the Language of New Media:
Expanded Cinema, Video and Virtual Environments
In the course of the 1970s, several avant-garde gal-
leries promoted analytical refinements and develop-
ments, rang ing f rom the Structura li st f ilms to spatia l
film installations. This decade also witnessed the
emergence of video art , with vi ewer -oriented closed-
circuit installations that anticipated the observer-
relative interactive computer installations of the
1990s and ti me -d elaye d instal lations, which pursued
further the experiments of Expanded Cinema. The
market - induced revival of f igurative paintin g in the
1980s put an abrupt en d to the development of ex-
panded cinematic forms and video art. Broad seg-
ments of visual culture were affected by an amnesia
as scandalous as it was total, and for which the mar-
ket alone was not to blame but also institutional art
historiography, which ha d buckled under to the power
of the market. Viewed from this perspective, the tri - 6 See Michel Chlon, Les
umphant return and revival of t he t end encies of mus'ques electro-Bcous-
tiques. INA-GRM, Aix-en
1960s Expanded Cinema in the work of the 1990s Provence. 1976; Michel
video generation is all the more astounding and grati- Chlon. Le son au cinema,
Cahiers du CIn~ma, Paris.
fying . However, we still fa ce the problem t hat most 1985; Michel Chion, L'audiovi-
art historians and writers, being oblivious to the his- sion, Nathan, Pans, 1990;
Michel Chion.la musiqua au
to r y of avant-ga r de f ilm and vi deo art, cannot make a cinemB. Fayard, Parls,1995
--'"

DenniS Oppenheim
Echo
1973
film installation
f our 16mm fi lm loops
transferred t o video
b/w, sound
inst allati on view Whit ney
Museum of Ame r ica n Art,
New Yo r k. 2001
collection of th e artist
C Denr'lls Oppenheim
pho t o C David Allison
connection between the generations and th er efore
exaggerate contemporary achievements.
The new gener ation took its cue less from the
achievements of 1980s video artists, whose art was
subordinated to the scu lpture and painting of their
t ime. In pu r suing t he deve lopment of a specif ic video-
"
E
<
based language, video artists in the 1990s deliberately
.,
~
<
focused on the expansion of image technologies and
social consciousness that took place in the 1960s. We
w f ind surpr ising evidence of parallels, sometimes ex-
;;;
tending even to the finest detail, not on ly in style and
"
L
;; technique, but in conte nt and motif as well. For the
u
< most part, 1990s video art is also shaped by an in-
o tense interest in multiple projection and the con~
u comitant new approaches to multi-perspective nar-
;;
ration and multiform plots. Numerous representa -
tives of t he 1990s video generation, including artists
like Jord an Crandall, Ju li a Scher, St eve McQu ee n, Jane
and Louise Wilson, Douglas Gordon, Stan Douglas,
Johan Grimonprez, Pierre Huyghe, MarUke van
Warmerdam, Ann - Sofi Sid en, Grazi a Toderi and Aero -
naut Mike, now work within the context of a decon -
struction of the technical "apparatus" outli ned here.
Many com puter artists of the sam e deca de, amon g
them Blast Theory, Jeffrey Shaw, Perry Hoberman and
Peter Weibel, have also returned to the tendencies
David Lamelas
Filmscnpt
1972
inst allatIOn vie w
Wit te de With, Rott er dam
photo C S, Goed ewaa gen
Jane and Louise Wilson
S t8si City
1997
four-ch annel Video Installat ion
color, sound
29 min
installat ion view
co llec t ion Pamela and Richa rd
Kram lich
courtesy Thea Wes t reich Art
Advisory Services
and technologies of 1960s Expanded Cinema. In a se-
ries of interactive computer installations, including
On Justifying the Hypothetical Nature of Art and the
Non-Identicality within the Object World (1992) or Cur-
tain of Lascaux (1995-96), Peter Weibel realized vari-
ous virtua l worlds in wh ich t he obse rver played a piv -
otal role derived from his closed circ uit video installa-
t ions of the late 1960s/early 1970s. The observer
became part of the system he observed, articulating
th e immersive image system, and changed the behav-
ior and content of the image by his actions. The
Br it ish group Blast Th eo r y's Desert Rain (1999) sent
six visitors on a mission in a virtual environment made
up of six rooms. The virtual worlds were projected
onto a curtain of streaming water. Each visitor had
thirty minutes to complete his mission by communi-
catin g with the other five virtual environments and
t heir inhabit ant s. However, 1990s video ar t ist s pur-
sue d the deconst ructi on of the cinem atog raphic
code in a much more controlled, less subjective man-
ner, applying strategies more methodical and more
closely oriented to social issues than those of the
1960s. In the video art of t he 1990s. experiments with
multiple projections were employed primarily in the
service of a new approach to narrat ion. Video and
slide projections onto unusual objects were used by
 Sta n Dou glas
Win, Place or Show
1998
two -ch annel
video pr oject ion
co lor,
f our channe l soun dtrac k
6 min
video stills
courtesy Ga lerie David
ZWlrrler, New Yo r k
pho to 0 T. Mills

St an Douglas
Evening
1994
three - chan nel video installation
co lor, soun d
20 min
Installation view: Rerlai ssance
Society, Chicago, 1995
court esy Galerie Oavid Zwimer,
New Yo rk
phot o 0 TMilis
art ists ranging f rom Tony Ours ler to Honore d' O Pro-
jections onto two or more screens are f oun d in t he
wo r k of artists li ke Pipil ott i Rist, Sam Taylor- Wood
(Third Party, 1999, seven prOjections], Burt Barr, Mar -
cel Odenbach, Eua - Liisa Ahti la, Shirin Ne shat , Sam ir,
Doug Ait ken, Dryden Goodwin , Heike 8a r anowsky and
Monika Oechsler, Split -sc r ee n techniques are charac-
te r istic featu re s of t he ar t of Karin Westerlu nd and
Sam ir, Multip le- mon ito r environmen ts are emp loyed
by Ut e Friederike Jurss, Mary Lucier and Cha nta l Ak -
er man (O'Est , 2002, twenty-five monitors).
Multiple Monitors and Screens, Multiple Projections
and Perspectives, Multi -perspect ive Narrations
and Plots
These mu lt iple pr oject ions ta ke advantage of t he op-
port un it ies mu ltip le perspective offers for a depa r -
ture from f ami li ar ways of lookin g at social be hav ior
On t hree screens projected in alte rn at ion, Moni ka
Oechsler's High Anxieties of 1998 sh ows the co n-
struct ion of f em inine identit y as it beg in s in childhood,
illustrat ing how even girlf rien ds of t he same age con-
trol t he formation of the in dividual as agents of soc i-
ety. The chang in g cin emati c perspect ive ca ll s to mind
the f am iliar cinematic codes of courtroom dramas in-
volving prosecutors, defen se atto rneys, victims and
to p
Blast Theory
Desert Rain
1999
VR envirOrl ment
f or per for mance
installation views. ZKM I
Center f or Art and Media
Karlsruhe , 1999
o Blast The ory
photo C Fr anz Wa mhof
bottom
Sam Taylor - Wood
Third Party
1999
installation
seven 16mm
fi lm pr Q)ec t ion s,
defendants. Enhance d by t he poss ibilit ies off er ed by t r ansferr ed t o OVO
installatiorl view
t riple pr oject ion and mult iple viewpo int ach ieved photo C Jay Jopling,
t hrough t his formal montage technique, t his new pe r- London
spective inte nsifies t he hidden violence inherent in
t he socia lizatio n of t he in dividua l. In a similar way, t he
t r iple prOjection in EUa-Lii sa Ahti la's TODAY/Tanaan
[1996/ 97) eno r mously enhances the poss ibil it ie s for
comp lex li nkin g of image and text element s indepen -
dent of the narrat or's pe r spective. Only rarely do the
texts match the face s an d genders. Texts and images
do not ident ify each othe r; instead t hey distin gu ish
each othe r, f loat ing alongs ide one another and f orm-
ing moving nodes in a network of mult iple relat ion-
shi ps wh ich t he viewer must creat e himse lf. Free -
f loating cha ins of signs, be t hey images or texts, ar e
int erwoven to f orm a un iverse without a cent er. Yet
it s core harbors t he cat ast r ophe of a fa t al acc ident
t ha t has obvi ous ly erad icated all possib ility of a co -
herent, li near narrat ive . Only dispa r ate f ragments of
memory are presented in strange ly obj ective f ashion
by t he passive, knotted subjects [the title of a boo k by
Eli sabeth Bron fen, 1998). The story of t he catast ro -
phe no longer fol lows t he linear track of rat io nal
t hought; in stead, the ir rationa l essence of the cata-
st r ophe is r eleased (fro m censo r sh ip) by disorde r ly,
cent rif ugal, mul ti-perspect ive na rrative trajecto r ies,

Only in this way can the catastrophe be experienced
as such - through the refusal of image and text ele-
ments to merge and fit together. Narrative struc-
tures of this kind, which employ the irrational charac-
ter of dream and the human psyche as plot elements,
clearly reveal associations with the early films of Ing-
mar Bergmann (for example, Wild Strawberries, 1957).
The interactive CD-ROM Troubles with Sex, Theory
6 History (1997) by Marina Gr~inic and Aina Smid ana-
lyzes aleatoric, combinatoric and recombinatoric re-
lations between images and text, based on a selection
of works by Grzinic and Smid between 1992 and 1997.
Shirin Neshat presents in Turbulent (1998) t he
binary opposition of man and woman in a patriarcha l
c society on two sc r eens positioned opposite one an-
E ot her. The woma n has a voice but neither words nor
c
.,
~
listeners. She has on ly sound and her ability to
scr eam. The man possesses the words, the culture of
..
c
w language and an audience which rewards him with fre-
o netic applause at the end. The exclusion of woman
.,
~
u
from the building of civili zation and society can hardly
c be illustrated more vividly than in this binary juxtapo-
o sition of projectors and positions. The device of the
u synecdoche (used here in the representation of the
5
violence inh erent in gender issues and the politics of
identity) is typical of many of the best works of video
art, which deal in a methodological-analytical manner
with the erad icated power mechanisms of the social
code, as opposed to t he predominantly subjective ap-
proaches of t he New American Cinema of the 1960s.
Modern society offers the real subject a number
7 See Kej a Silverman, Tile
of dif f erent role mode ls and possibilities for role be-
Acoustic Mirror. The Female havior. On a scale of mult ip le po ssibilit ies defined by
Voice in PsvchoaneJvsis and
Cinema , Indiana Univ. Press,
the cu lt ure industry in media r anging f r om popu lar
8 1oomlngton, 1988 mov ies to highbrow opera, from slick magazines t o
'"'"
Manna Gr2:lnlc. Alna Smld
Troubles with Sex,
Theory and History
1997
interactive CD-ROM
screenshot
C Marina Grlinic.
Aina Smld
low- ratings TV, the subject can make its choice and
posit ion itself, as long as it can take the pressure of
the respective social code. This relationship between
the subject as a real possibility and the imaginary
subject option is expressed as a synecdoche in Sam
Taylor-Woad's Killing Time (1994). Like several other
artists, Taylor-Wood works with "found sound." Inter-
estingly enough, her work confirms the theory of the
dominance of musical structure as the determining
narrative structure. It is not the visual image but
sound that dictates the behavior of the actors. The
f our pe r sons shown in t he quadruple projections lis-
ten to Electra by Richard Strauss, waiting for cues for
th eir assigned voice parts. Like Shirin Neshat's wor k,
t he f ilm sequence is a synec doche for the range of
ava ilab le (soc ial) r oles and the r ole of the voice in so-
ciety.? The theater of sound opens a view to t he the -
ater of subject positions. In comparison, Pipilott i Rist
tends rather toward the structure of semi-prefabri-
cated components in her work. She uses pre-
recorded music, which she illustrates with her pic-
tures, or the music illustrates her pictures according
to coded schemes of the kind we see on MTV. She re-
mains within the codes of the subject option and the
industrial narrative prescribed and accepted by soci-
ety. We find a differently interesting adaptation of
the relationship between sound and image at the nar-
r ative level, since remembering is one of the functions
of narrat ive, in A Capella Portraits by Ute Friederike
Jurss. The videos of Sylv ie Blocher, Gillian Wea ring,
Sam Tay lor-Wood comb ine in a very complex way
mise-en-scene, documentary, sound s, ima ge s, masks
and scree ns t o serve the deconstruction of t he world
as a mult iform script
 Geor ge Legrady
Slippery Traces
1996
interactive CD - ROM
screenshot
courtesy
George legrady
Found Image and Sound, Found Film Experiments
Just as artists of the 1960s made use of "found im-
ages" and "found footage" (George Landow and oth-
ers). contemporary video and film artists like Douglas
Gordon, Marcel Ddenbach and Martin Arnold employ
found material as well. Perry Hoberman uses in his in-
teractive CD-ROM piece The Sub-Oivision of the Elec-
tric Light (1996) found slides and 8mm film and old
projection instruments. Erkki Huhtamo uses a selec-
tion of found vaudeville rides, mostly computer-gen-
erated to imitate on a simulation platform a journey
on virtua l vehicles through the highl ights of historic
cinematographic rides in his piece The Ride of Your
Ufe (1998). George LeGrady in his int eractive CD-ROM
piece Slippery Traces (1996) uses about two hundred
post-cards for a non-linear narration bu ilt on an al-
gorithm, navigating through a data ban k. Mart in
Arnold de constructs his found footage to the ex-
treme in order to make hidden semantic structures
visible through gradual repetition (Piece toucMe,
1989; passage a /'acte, 1993). Found footage is re-
assembled, looped, partially re-filmed and visually es-
tranged in its entirety. The use of found film is part of
a general strategy of media reflection and appropria-
tion . When Marcel Odenbach, Gabriele Leidloff, Samir,
Isabell Heimerdinger, Andrea Bowers, Burt Barr,
Pierre Huyghe and Douglas Gordon allude to familiar
films, including such classics as From here to Eternity
(Fred Zinnemann, 1953) and The Godfather (Francis
Ford Coppola, 1972) or to popular te levision images
r anging from cheerleaders [Andrea Bowers, Touch of
Class, 1998) to scenes from the f uneral of Diana,
Princess of Wales (Gabriele Le idloff, Moving Visual Ob-
ject, 1997). then what we have are media-oriented ob-
servations of a second order, in which visual culture
Perry Hoberman
The Sub- DiVIsIOn
of the Electric Light
1996
CO -R OM
scr eenshot
o Perry Hober man
as a whole is exposed as a ready- made object for
analysis. Consequently, observation of the world gives
way to the observation of communication. The uncon-
scious character of the visual code becomes evident
in a kind of symptomatic reading .
In Doug Aitken's installations employing multiple
screens, the narrative universe is broken down into
individual, autonomous film frames and series of ef-
fects of the kind familiar to viewers schooled in video-
clip techniques : detailed shots, blurred motion, tech-
nical modifications achieved with the camera, digital
image processing, short cuts and dilations of time
Narration is not on ly broken apart spatially th r ough
projection onto multiple sc r eens but in chronologica l
t erms as well.
Shifts and distortions of convent ional pa rameters
of space and time playa significant role in the new
narration. As in the 1960s, these experiments with
time emphasize the technological time of the cine-
matic order as opposed to the biological time of life.
The focus is on artificial time rather than "red iscov-
ered time," on time constructions as visual symptoms
of a completely artif icial, constructed reality. In his
triple projection L'Ellipse of 1998, with Bruno Ganz,
Pierre Huyghe illustrates the difference between in -
dustrial time (the use of time in the industry film) and
personal time (the use of time in Pierre Huyghe's own
film). He uses found footage or found f ilm, fi lm as a
ready-made work of art, which he deconstructs by
subject ing it to chronologica l manipulation: When
Bruno Ganz is of f screen in t he indust r y film (The
American Friend by Wim Wenders, 1977), t he projec-
tion of his personal film begins an d int errupts t he
pr ojection of the industry film. Huyghe plays with the
cinematographic technique of cutting from one scene
 David Blair
WAXWE8
(WAX or the Discovery
of Te/evisionAmong the
Bees,
e hypermedIa versIOn)
1994 -2000
video, r ealtime, 30/html
scr eenshot
courtesy the ar t ist

to another by deleting the time and space in between
which technique is called "elliptical." Douglas Gordon
suQjects industry films to sim ilar time manipulations.
He also works with found fi lms (from Hitchcock's Psy-
cho to Ford's The Searchers), expanding them to re-
spectively twenty-four hours or five years.
Computer Film
Made with the help of an IBM 1620-21, Marc Adrian's
film random (1963) was probably the first computer-
aided f ilm made by an ar t ist in Europe. The Whitney
Brothers opened the field of the digital film (John
Whitney, Permutations, 1968). In 1971, John Whitney jr.
made his first digital fi lm Terminal SelF, a title that
was later recalled in that of Scott Bukatman's book
Termina/ldentity (1993), which simultaneously echoed
a line from Willi am Burroughs: "The entire planet is
being devel oped into t ermina l identity and complete
surrender."s Michael Whitney made the digital film
Binary Bit Patterns (1969). John Stehura (Cybernetic
5-3,1965), Lillian Schwartz and Ken Knowlton, Charles
sical parameters of narration, fall victim to a multiple
perspective projected onto multiple screens. Asyn-
chronous, non - linear, non - chronological, seemingly
illogica l, parallel, mu ltiple narrative approaches from
multiple perspectives projected onto multiple
screens are the goal. These narrative procedures
comprising a "multiform plot" have been developed
with reference to and oriented toward such rhi-
zomatic communication structures as hypertext, "as-
sociational indexing" (Vannevar Bush, As We May Think ,
1945J, text based "mu lti-user dunge ons" (MUDs) and
other digital techniques of literary narration. 9 Gilles
Deleuze's definition of the rhizome as a network in
which every point can be connected with any other
point is a precise description of commun ication in the
multi~user environment of the World-Wide Web and
the allusive, open-ended image and text systems de-
rived from it . These narrative systems and scripts
have a certain algorithmic character. Narration be-
comes a machine, a plot-machine, an engine. As early
as 1928, Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his famous

c
E
Csuri and James Shafter (Humming Bird) belong to
the early avant-garde of digital film . David Blair's
study Morphology of the Fairy Tale t hat t he 45 0 fa iry
tales he analyzed could be reduced to 25 basic func-
o WAXWEB (1994 - 2000) laid a foundation stone for web tions and narrative events, or narrative morphemes.
E
>
o
cinema. These twenty- five morphemes form a kind of algo-
w rithm, which generates an endless string of new

"c,
;;
Navigable Ah izomatic Narr atio n
The narrative universe becomes revers ible in the field
plots through new combinations. With its audio-visua l
narrative techniques, contemporary video art breaks
~
o of digita lly expande d cinema and no longer reflects down holi stic f orms into t hei r basic morphol og ical
o the psychology of cause and effect. Repetitions, components. These are then reassembled using the

~
:;;
8 William Surroughs, Nova Ex-
press, Grove Press. New
Yor k,19 64
9 See Walt er Grand. Oer
Erziihler und der
Cyberspace. Haymon. Inns-
bru ck. 1999
the suspension of linear t ime, temporal and spatial
asynchrony blast apart classica l chronol ogy. Multiple
screens function as fields in which scenes are de-
picted from a multiple perspective, their narrative
thread broken . The accusation once leveled at new
mus ic - t hat it had cut the link t o t he listener, since
the listener could no longer reconstruct or recognize
the principles of composition - can now be addressed
without reservation to the advanced narrative tech-
niques of contemporary video art . They have seve r ed
the link to the viewer, who can no longer make out the
narrative structure. Linearity and chronology, as clas-
multiple methods described above. These new narra-
tive techniques render t he complexity of social
systems lucid The crisis of representation, which
painting averted during the 1980s by resorting to a
restorative repetition of historical figurative and
ex press ive conditions, is be ing ove r come in contem-
porary video art through the revival of narrative
conditions anticipated by the historical avant-gardes
of literature, theater and music: from the French
OULlPQ (Ouvo ir de Litterat ure Potentiel le] gr oup to
the Vienna Group. The interactive installation Pas-
sage Sets/ One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue
 Bill Seaman
Passage Sets/ One Pulls
Pivots at t he Tip of tile Tongue
1994-1995
Interactive IIlstaliatlon
mixed media
C Bill Seaman

(1994-95J by Bill Seaman refers to t he automatic

writ ing techniques of the Surrealists, but is act ed out
by a computationa l r andom access algorit hm. Texts
and images are networked in this way of aleato r ic
comb inations. In Frank Fietzek's inter active inst alla -
tion Tafel [Black Board] (1993). a moving monitor in
front of a big blackboard reveals hidden words like a
palimpsest.
The banishment of narration by abstraction led to
the reject ion of narrative as an obsolete historical
phenomenon. This Modernist dictate of recognizing
only the purely visual and banishing the verbal was
overturned by postmodernism in fa vor of a more in -
tense discur sive orientation. Thus even the postmod- Frank Fietzek
ern visual language of contemporary media art be- Tafel [Black Board]
1993
comes increas ingly di scursive, the more it makes use IIlteractlve IIlstaliatlon
of avant - garde narrative techniques. Unlike techni -
dimenSions varl8ble
cally ponderous film art, the digital technology of Installation view ZKM I Center
today permits more complete control of cinematic for Art and Media Karlsruhe
C Fr ank Fietzek
resou r ces and thus promotes a more stable develop-
me nt of the cinematic code. The adva ntage of to day's
video and digital technology ove r yesterday's film
technology li es in the improved logistics of it s techni -
cal r epertoire. What was once virtua lly imposs ible and
susceptible to problems as wel l is now much easier to
reali ze and entirely reliable. Thanks to this technical
stabil ity, the possibilities for new narrative tech-
niques based upon multiple large - screen projections,
perhaps the most striking feature of contemporary
video art, can now be explored extensively for the
first t ime. And so the video and digital art of today
has taken up the lance left behind by th~ cinematic
avant-garde of the 1960s and developed one step
further the universe of the cinematic code.

A shor t verS ion of this essay fi rs t appeared under th e ti tle "Narrated

Theory: Multiple Projecti on and Multiple Narrat ion" in New Screen Media.
Cinema/ Art/Narrative, Andrea Zapp and Martin Rieser (eds). SF I Pub -
lishing. London, 2002

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