Liquid Sensations

M W Turner’s painting Snowstorm is an example of the tradition of evoking the aquatic environment. The group show of Sea Change and photographs by Trent Parke and Narelle Autio are examples of the contemporary artists exploring experiences related to the sea.

2) Artists who have applied new technologies to exploring sensations relating to water

The two examples discussed here are the building Water Pavilion and Char Davies’ virtual world Osmose.

3) Selected artists working with experiential video installations

In this section works by artists Bill Viola and Steina Vasulka are considered. The group show Space Odysseys: Sensation & Immersion curated by Victoria Lynn is discussed as an example of a group of works in which video installation, interactive technologies and evocation of sensual experiences meet.

4) Artists who use interactive video installation

David Rokeby’s and Toni Dove’s work with interactive video and motion sensing are discussed in this section.

1) The tradition of evoking aquatic environments in the visual arts and its contemporary manifestations

M W Turner – The tradition of evoking aquatic environments

1 . M W Turner, Snowstorm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead, 1842, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm.

M W Turner’s painting Snowstorm – Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth making Signals in Shallow Water, and going by the Lead is one of the best known examples in the history of visual arts of a painting representing an experience of the sea. The boat is nearly central in the painting, the steam from the boat merges into the sky and sea in atmospheric swirls of paint that have become known as ‘Turneresque’. The sky and sea merge together in a mass of grey-brown, thick paint. The boat is in a romantic pool of light from a gap in the storm clouds. The legend behind this painting is that, in the middle of the storm, Turner was on a fishing boat tied to the mast, half drowning but remaining at his post to continue his sketches. This is typical of Turner’s focus on his personal involvement in the drama he paints. [2]

The water Turner paints is ‘a sea of pure, unpent nature at its wildest and most magnificent’ [3] that is larger than human scale. Turner illustrates the notion that humans need technology to overcome the violent environment that the sea can create [4] , in Turners case this is steam. What Turner gives us is an impression of a boat in a storm and the atmosphere of that storm. He finds pleasure in the violence of the storm. Turner’s vision of the sea is a wide open space which during its violent moments surrounds him and dissolves the gaps between the sea and sky.

Sea Change – the contemporary seascape

5. Stuart Klipper, Southeastern Pacific Ocean, Southwest of Tierra del Feugo, 1987, from Bearing South, 1987, incorporated colour coupler print, 30 x 95 cm.

Sea Change is a group show of seascape photography organised by the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, USA. My first reaction to this show was disappointment in the lack of variety and absence of the new. The works in the show seemed primarily concerned with horizons and were versions of well-worked themes. There was a problem with the venue [5] ; the gallery was lined in dark wood panelling, in stark comparison to the minimalist, elegant nature of the show.

James Hamilton-Paterson in the show’s catalogue essay ‘The Cultural impact of Oceans’ [6] points out that the seascape has had many different meanings over time. In the early eighteenth century the seas were viewed in religious terms, representing primordial chaos. Then, as our scientific understanding of the world developed, our perception of the sea developed into a manifestation of the sublime. The view of the sea as a sensual element for him developed from medical theories that advocated sea bathing. Hamilton-Paterson states we have now mapped the depths of the sea, dive to its depths and freight travels across it without difficulty. He now sees our attitudes to the sea merging with other environmental concerns. He reads the images as humanity finally being able to see the sea simply and to understand its fragility. Although Hamilton-Paterson’s discussion is elegant in terms of our relationship to the sea, I have trouble perceiving this fragility of the sea within the actual works in the shows.

Trudy Wilner Stacks in her catalogue essay for the show points out that the ocean covers seven-tenths of the world and that the seascape has become a tired, almost forgotten genre. Stacks states that the artists in the show ‘do not have complex, theoretical underpinnings to their sea images’ and that few of the artists can ‘transform ocean waves and water substantially enough to markedly differentiate their sea imagery, from postcard to postmodern’ [7] .

6. Michael O'Brien, Untitled, 1995 , incorporated colour coupler print, 117.5 x 75 cm.

The imagery in the show that breaks the format of horizon, that starts to express the motion of the sea is the imagery relevant to my project. Works such as Michael O'Brien’s Untitled 1995 capture the dynamic moment before a wave breaks and crashes. The strong diagonal line conveys the immense power and strength that the surf can have. At the same time it anticipates the feeling of being ‘cleaned out’ by a collision with the force of a breaking wave.

The Seventh Wave – bodies in water

7. Trent Parke, Untitled, 1999, gelatin silver photograph, 24 x 36 cm.

The photographs of Trent Parke and Narelle Autio from their series, The Seventh Wave, are grainy black and white images, taken from underwater and just near the water’s surface. These images capture a moment of eerie calmness. The deathly yet serene facial expressions on the figures’ faces are striking. There are momentary traces of movement, bubbles and bodies swirling in the weightless environment. The people float and move as if the surrounding water has trapped them. At the same time there is pleasure in the faces showing balance or an absence of fear of the surf, just the delight in diving down under a wave and waiting.

One of the pronounced aspects of Parke and Autio’s [8] photographs is the populated nature of them. Never in my personal experience of a beach had I been in the water with so many people. In the synthetic environments of pools I have experienced crowds of people, but not in the surf. This is the opposite to Robert Drewe’s first observation of the familiarity of the images in the catalogue essay. [9] The beach for Drewe is a place of people, a social place to parade, to see and to be seen.

Drewe sees in the people in the imagery ‘the physical struggle against the elements, and the ambivalence to pleasure and pain. They also delight in dramatic moments’. Drewe states with some relish how in the surf ‘each wave hurts, each one cuts like a whip’. [10] In Parke and Autio's photographs these dramatic moments of struggle in the water are encapsulated.

2) Artists who have applied new technologies to exploring sensations relating to water

Water Pavilion – liquid building

Water Pavilion is a building installation designed jointly by architectural design firms NOX and Oosterhuis Associates which seeks to educate the visitors to the building about advances in interactive media and to celebrate the sensuous properties of water [11] . The Dutch Department of Roads and Waterways and the Ministry of Transport and Public Works commissioned the building. The building is a manifestation of Marcos Novak's theories of ‘liquid architecture’ that he coined while discussing cyberspace [12] . ‘Liquid architecture’ is ‘the building conceived as a dynamic system within which there is a constant, computer-mediated interaction between users, environment and building.’ [13] At the stage Water Pavilion was built, this mutability was achieved using media technology. Oosterhuis Associates’ ‘trans‑ports’ for the 7^th Venice Biennale International Exhibition of Architecture in 2001 takes these concepts a step further in a work where the walls of the building are moved by pneumatic technology. [14]

The term ‘liquid’ to describe the capabilities of digital media is a term that encompasses many aspects of the digital environment. Liquid substances are changeable and exhibit complex behaviour. The applications of fluidity to the fixed built environment might seem practically impossible. Computers and digital methods have been adopted into the design process of the built environment. Liquid architecture goes a step further to the integration of the fluidity of computer processes to actual building structure. In Water Pavilion this creates a hybrid medium and built environment that is intelligent. In trans‑ports this goes a step further where the actual physical structure of the building’s walls becomes malleable.

These descriptions of Water Pavilion are derived from other artists and designer’s writings, as I have not had first-hand experience of the pavilion. The building is divided into two halves. The freshwater pavilion was designed by Lars Spuybroek of NOX and the salt water pavilion by Kas Oosterhuis of Oosterhuis Associates. The building is about one hundred metres long and sits at the edge of a dam.

8. Lars Spuybroek, Freshwater section of the Water Pavilion, 1997.

A visitor enters the building through Spuybroek’s freshwater sections. None of the floors and walls in this section of the building are straight; they bend and melt around each other. Mist sprays, streams of water fill the room and an electronic sound track plays in the background. The building reacts to the movement of people through it and this triggers changes in the media.

9. Kas Oosterhuis, Saltwater section of the Water Pavilion, 1997.

Oosterhuis’ saltwater pavilion is smaller, the building is less deformed and more media-based. While Spuybroek’s section of the building incorporates physical elements of water, Oosterhuis’ section merges media and the building together. Visitors are able to navigate a 3D simulated environment designed by Oosterhuis. This virtual world is integrated into the environment around it by a weather station that measures aspects such as the tide movement and wind gust speeds. Oosterhuis’ section eventually leads out to the only window in the building, through which a vista of the dam can be seen.

This building is one of the first permanent large-scale interactive media environments where the built environment and media merge. The Water Pavilion has added to our understanding of how the sensory properties of water can be evoked. It is a major contribution to the field of architecture. The introduction of mutability into buildings is a fundamentally new development. While Novak maps this as a theoretical possibility, Spuybroek and Oosterhuis have developed this as part of their practice. Their investigation has arisen out of the possibilities of digital media. Spuybroek and Oosterhuis have both gone on to develop more ‘liquid architectures’ but not buildings that evoke aquatic environments. The focus of their works is on the possibilities that new technology creates.

Osmose – floating as interface

10. Char Davies, Osmose immersant wearing interface vest, 1995, virtual reality.

Osmose is an ambitious immersive virtual reality work developed by Char Davies between 1994 and 1995 [15] . The installation consists of two spaces: one is a waiting area that includes a display showing what the current user is seeing; in the other space the user, or immersant [16] as the artist prefers to call them, engages with the work. The immersant wears a head-mounted display and two sensors: one to measure the angle of the back and the other to measure the breath of the immersant. The virtual world the immersant enters has twelve different areas that are chiefly based on metaphorical aspects of nature. At the time this work was developed, most virtual reality worlds were dominated by a strong horizon line and hard edges; Osmose by contrast has few hard edges and no horizon line. The objects are highly textured and semi-translucent. The immersants move around the world by breath; as they breath in they rise or float, as they breathe out they sink down. After fifteen minutes the virtual world slowly recedes and the immersant’s session with the work comes to an end.

12. Char Davies, Tree Pond Red, 1995, real-time frame capture from Osmose.

Davies’ works create a soft, subtle, textured world, within which semi-transparent yet richly coloured objects exist, seemingly merging with their surrounds. The immersant is able to float through these objects. Prior to working with 3D graphics, Davies’ background was as a painter. Her visual aesthetic is full of ambiguities and tends to be evocative. The sounds are highly manipulated samples of both female and male voices. Different melodies are attached to different parts of the virtual environments and are dependant on the immersant’s past actions.

With the interface and interaction Davies and her team [17] had three concerns:

· ‘To facilitate an experience of “being in the world” rather than “doing.” That is, we wanted to encourage immersants to calm their minds and contemplate the virtual world – rather than rushing around grabbing or destroying things.’

· ‘We wanted to create a strong sense of full body immersion in a fully enveloping space. We wanted participants to feel centred in their physical bodies during immersion, in a way that is similar to the effect of practicing tai-chi or meditation.’

· ‘As well, we wanted to enable a sensation of floating - with emphasis on vertical movements rather than horizontal or frontal movements.’

As a result they developed an interface that focused on balance and breath. ‘This technique was inspired by Davies’ scuba diving experiences, by how members of the team moved in their dreams and by writings on the phenomenology of the body and various meditation traditions.’

This interface is radical: rather than a virtual experience where the user moves directly through a virtual world, the user enters a virtual world that has an extremely physical and direct connection to the body’s state. It creates an artwork where the viewer is led to concentrate on subtle bodily responses.

Davies when talking of Osmose quotes Gaston Bachelard from The Poetics of Space ‘by changing space, by leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating. For we do not change place, we change our nature.’ In Osmose Davies attempts to create mystical transcendental experience. She hopes that by the focus that Osmose has on the body, it will lead the immersant to new experiences of being in the world. Often when Davies writes about the work she includes information about viewer numbers and viewer responses. These responses have been profound emotional experiences, where the immersants feel part of the world and understand their position in the world in a new way.

While many artists working with technology open up new possibilities for ways of making art, few works go as far as Osmose at realising the potential of a medium. This may be because of Davies’ past as a painter. Her masterly level of expertise with technology came from being Director of Visual Research at Softimage and having access to technologies that artists are rarely able to access, especially for developing large works. Davies sets high aims for her works. She does not go as far as to call them mystical, although she is clearly in search of the transcendental. Many viewers do experience these states, however this could be to do with the shrine-like setting for the work and also the considerable amount of time spent concentrating on one artwork and focusing on breathing. To try and evoke the same type of response from each immersant can be seen as an almost impossible aim, as perhaps not all immersants will be interested in having these types of experience and will share Davies’ own intense contact with nature.

3) Other artists working with experiential video installations

Bill Viola – transitory experiences

Bill Viola, along with Gary Hill, is one of few artists who the contemporary art world equates with video art. His work is seen as part of the second wave of video art after Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman. A facet of the integration of new technology into art practice is the terminology that develops from this. Often works involving any form of technology are termed ‘new media’, while other organisations and critics make a distinction between terms such as screen media and video art [18] . Technology is one way in which new possibilities for art making can be discovered. Artists’ use of technology can spark new applications and sometimes support the further development of that technology. Video art is one art form that was initially classified as ‘new media’ but has now been superseded by newer digital technologies, therefore it is no longer ‘new media’ in the classic sense of that term. Peter Lunenfeld in Snap to grid: a user's guide to digital arts, media and cultures sees this as a ‘shift from the technology of production (video as art) to the overall concerns of reception (art as art).’ [19] Viola’s installations are exemplars of this change.

Viola’s work has had a strong influence on my project. Discussed below are two of his works I viewed in the early stages of my research.

The Stopping Mind – paused time

All I wanted to do was to go home, I was suffering from a chronic lack of sleep after four hectic weeks in Lapland in the midnight sun, at Polar Circuit 2 [20] . I had six hours in Frankfurt before the plane left so I headed to the Contemporary Art Museum. It was here that I experienced Bill Viola’s The Stopping Mind.

13. Bill Viola, The Stopping Mind, 1991, multiple channel video installation, dimensions variable.

The Stopping Mind is installed in a large darkened room, with four large video screens. The room is quiet, the imagery is still. Then it hits, the crash, the explosion of movement and sound. The sound is one of the loudest that I have ever heard. The sounds rupture and the imagery plays again. The imagery is hard to define, blurred images of what could be a table set for dinner, everyday images. One thing I did not hear in the middle of the room was the voice chanting about ‘the progressive loss of bodily sensation in an unknown black space.’ [21]

After the crashing sounds the silent imagery returned. I prepared for the next time the roar would occur, knowing that would it come, thinking this time I would not jump, I would not let it throw me like that. Again the work erupted; I could not find a comfortable safe balance with the work. I became lost in its violence to time; I was lost in my own desire to know it and understand it. Afterwards I found out the abrupt changes in installation are triggered at random.

Viola’s summary of the intent of the work is:

Viola is in search of an experience of time that is transitory and ephemeral and that can only be manifested as video. Viola, as part of an interview for his retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1999, says that it is not just about time but also the process of ‘waking’ [23] . I interpret this as being the act of becoming aware. Time in The Stopping Mind is the fleeting moment, paused and controlled and at the same time chaotic and violent. In the history of video art, time is the one significant aspect of the medium that differentiates video from other media. Often the only way artists deal with time in video is through the use of slow motion, as a way of revealing the subtleties of its flow. [24] Viola has used slow motion in other works such as The Greeting and Passage. The Stopping Mind is not about the continuous flow of time. It is concerned with the interruption of time, which is closer to an experience of consciousness.

The power of the installation did not arise from the imagery but the sounds: the way in which the loudness penetrates the viewers’ bodies, reaches out, touches us and shudders violently through the body. This is in contrast to the silence of the paused imagery. The installation of the imagery and sound affects the presence of the work, the imagery surrounds the viewer. In the space I felt small compared to the almost architectural scale of the images. For Viola:

Installation for Viola is another way to expand the work, to involve the viewer in the work at another level. The viewing of Viola’s work becomes sensual and of the body. The works have an experiential effect and often explore mental states of mind that are triggered by bodily sensations or processes of life and the body. [26]

The Passing – Circular time

Recurring themes in Voila’s works are of birth and death. The Passing explores the death of Viola’s mother and the birth of his son, a circular temporal period of grief and joy. There are two moments that are still resonant for me: the desert images and the underwater imagery. Viola has often used imagery of figures floating in the water. As a child he nearly drowned and this traumatic experience is one he often refers to in his work. [27]

14. Bill Viola, The Passing, 1991, video-tape.

The Passing is a slow constantly moving contemplation of change. Objects floating weightlessly in pools and the stillness of a desert night give the video a feeling of slow change or flux, an attempt to find a balance in time. The central figure is of a body in the water, which seems at the same time to be a state of being born and of dying. In searching for a balance, Viola attempts to find meaning in the death of his mother and the birth of his son, using primal elements in his work, and the traditional symbolism that relates to these elements. The Passing manages to go well beyond being a solely intellectual manipulation of these symbols. The work has a strong emotive impact. The Passing signifies a change in Viola’s works. After this work he moved away from single channel video work to focus on installation.

Viola’s work stands out amongst media arts and art that incorporates even basic technology, for its tangible and emotive impact. The linkages between his medium and content are multi-layered, as is the use of themes such as birth and death. These are all experiences that are primarily transitory and physical.

Viola is a master of the manipulation of video and its ability to evoke sensations. In his works the viewer often watches someone go through a highly personal and sometimes traumatic period. The viewer has an empathic reaction to the person in the middle of these activities. The power of the works arises from this empathy.

Viola has a long history of working with video. His control over the medium comes from a deep understanding of the technology involved. He is able to work without technical assistance most of the time; one of his first jobs was as a technical assistant in Florence [28] . This command of detail allows for all aspects of a medium to be explored and exploited, it gives him the ability to transcend his medium.

Steina Vasulka – spaces of light

15. Steina Vasulka, Borealis, 1993, multiple channel video installation, dimensions variable.

Borealis is a three-channel video installation. In a darkened, black-painted room hang three translucent rear projection screens. The screens are slightly less than human scale [29] . The imagery on the screens is of streams, water and mist from Steina Vasulka’s birthplace, Iceland. Over time the images are largely the same. The screens and multiple projections are arranged in a way to encourage the viewer to walk around the room and walk through the projections, becoming part of the projection surface. This creates the feeling of a cascading torrent of water, flowing in all directions, enveloping the viewer’s body and filling the whole field of vision.

Steina Vasulka is one of the pioneers of video and she has often worked with her husband Woody Vasulka. Borealis was the first of her solo works that I had encountered.

Borealis surrounds the viewer in gray pools of light. The movement in the imagery flows in such a way as to dislocate the viewer, creating a liquid environment that does not wash away and heal. It suggests the harshness and contrasts of extreme places such as Iceland with a powerful immersive effect on the viewer. This was in contrast to many of the works I viewed while at ZKM which were immersive by using the technologies of virtual reality and simulation. With Borealis the technology is simple but still succeeds in immersing the viewer in a spatial mode. It shifts from watching an image, to being in and part of an environment. Video is not used to construct narrative, it is a way of activating a space. Borealis is not unique in this aspect.

Space Odysseys – journeys into space

Space Odysseys: Sensation & Immersion was curated by Victoria Lynn for the Art Gallery of New South Wales [30] and will form part of The Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s future program. The artists in the show are László Moholy‑Nagy, Joyce Hinterding and David Haines, James Turrell, Lynette Wallworth, Bruce Nauman, Moriko Mori, Luc Corchesne and Gary Hill. To enter the show the viewer descended stairs past the quote ‘don’t try to understand – just believe’ from Jean Cocteau’s film Orpheé. Nearly all of the works were contained in separate rooms. Lynn says ‘These are environments, chambers if you like, for the visitor to participate in an all encompassing aesthetic experience.’ [31]

The first work the viewer encountered was Moholy‑Nagy’s Lightplay Black White Grey. This is an abstract film of the light and movement generated by Moholy‑Nagy’s kinetic work Light Source Modulator. The image was a pulsing field of flickering light. The next work was Joyce Hinterding and David Haines’ The Blinds and the Shutters. This was in a stark, bright room. Each of the four walls were filled with large video projections and accompanied by a multi-channel sound track. The imagery was a weird fictional world where gravity was deformed. On one of the screens a modernist house floated in a landscape, with domestic objects flying through the spaces under the control of the distorted system of gravity.

16. James Turrell, Between that seen, 1991, light, wood, paint, room, 3 x 8 x 12 m.

Entering Turrell’s work Between that seen is an odd experience. The viewer perceives a blue-green square on the wall in a perfectly silent room. Moving around the space immerses the viewer in a field of blue-green light. Slowly it becomes evident that the field is not an image or a light on the wall, there is a opening in the wall to another space. Looking into this space it’s impossible to see the edges of it. The viewer falls into a perplexing void of blue-green light that is a sensory experience that is not easy to understand.

Wallworth’s installation Hold Vessel #1 is an intimate work of distorted scale. It consists of three projections from the ceiling. The viewer holds a cup-like vessel in the beam of light from one of the projectors. This picks up the imagery of microscopic underwater creatures and imagery of outer space, places that cannot be seen by the naked eye. The effect of this is a feeling of almost being able to hold and contain these unseen places.

Bruce Nauman’s Triangle Room sits in the middle of a space that branches off to two of the other works. The outside of the Triangle Room is raw plywood. The space is entered through one of two low doors. The inside walls are painted in an unsettling red glossy paint and yellow lights sit above the doors. Peter Schjeldaja says that this ‘room proves conclusively that it is impossible to stand anywhere in a triangular space without feeling cornered.’ [32]

To enter Moriko Mori’s work Link, viewers wait in a room: every ten minutes a group of people is ushered into a room defined by a wrap-around curved rear projection screen. The video played on the screen is documentation of Mori performances where she is encased in a bubble-like object, in public places around the world. The distance and differences between these places collapse as Mori’s performance travels to different locations.

To experience Luc Corchesne’s installation The Visitor: Living by Number viewers again have to wait. The viewer stands in the middle of an apparatus where a panoramic image is projected down onto a curved mirror that surrounds the viewer’s field of vision. Numbers appear on the imagery and when a viewer says one of the numbers the video ‘navigates’ in the corresponding direction. The imagery is mostly of landscapes that Corchesne collected in Japan.

17. Gary Hill, Tall Ships, 1992, interactive video installation, 350 x 2073 x 610 cm.

Gary Hill’s work Tall Ships was installed in a darkened corridor that has fifteen projections on the walls. The images of people are soft and indistinct so that the figures seem to float in front of the viewer. The figures stare out into the corridor. As the viewer walks past, these figures walk towards the viewer. Encountering one of the figures is unsettling, their subtle movements seem to reflect movement and gestures of the viewers in the corridor. The sensors used are motion sensors that sense movement in the gallery as a binary event. The apparent reflexiveness of gestures is because the footage played is of people engaged in a similar act of looking. These simple methods result in an indirect non-verbal dialogue between the viewer and the figures in the work.

Lynn says in the catalogue ‘This exhibition offers the visitor a memorable and transformative experience, a “space odyssey” of being immersed in the kinaesthetic, visual, aural and informational totality of the artworks.’ [33] Lynn bases the title for the show on Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Steve Meacham likens the experience to a series of ‘Dr Who’s Tardis – a means of travelling through time and/or space’ [34] . Lynn, when selecting the works, has not just curated a show about technologies and spaces, it is a show of works that are tactile and hard to comprehend intellectually. The resulting works are often beyond words and the felt experience is hard to articulate simply.

To move through the exhibition is to be challenged by the works. Lynn states ‘To move in and through space, whether physically or virtually, is to take a journey. Even if that journey is revolving, dynamic, non-directional, it is composed of a set of experiences that will in some form affect the sensations of the person taking it’ [35] . Shiralee Saul observes in her review, ‘the viewer is forced to adjust themselves to the demands of the media’ [36] . Most of the works do not adjust to the viewers, they demand the active participation of the viewer. Hill’s work Tall Ships is different, the simple interaction is an element of viewing and engaging with the work.

4) Artists who use interactive video installation

David Rokeby – Reflecting Mirrors

David Rokeby is an artist, writer and technologist. This discussion focuses on his Transforming Mirrors essay and his recent reworking of Silicon Remembers Carbon for the Lowry Centre in Manchester. In the early 1980s Rokeby developed a machine vision [37] system called VNS. He has used this system widely and it has been utilised by other artists. As a result, he is one of the pioneers of spatial interaction and his writing reflects an understanding of interactivity that is based upon practice.

In his essay Transforming Mirrors Rokeby starts by pointing out that all art to some extent is interactive. He quotes Itsuo Sakane: ‘all arts can be called interactive in a deep sense if we consider viewing and interpreting a work of art as a kind of participation.’ [38] and connects this to Marcel Duchamp's famous declaration, ‘The spectator makes the picture’ [39] . What an artist does, in Rokeby’s words, is organise ‘elements into the work so that their significance is transformed by the shifting perceptions of the viewer.’ [40] Interactive work responds to a viewer, from within a system of limited possibilities that the artist has chosen. This system includes the images, sounds, the viewer’s actions and the system’s reactions.

Rokeby goes on later to observe that interactive works are often viewed with some scepticism and that the audience requires some proof that they are interacting and the viewer of the work has some direct control over events. He states that ‘interaction is about encounter rather than control’ within the context of artworks. Most of our interactions with computers are direct and give us control over the manipulation of elements. If we come with the expectation that we should have a similar level of control over interactive installations, this requires learning new methods of experiencing artworks. Rather than requiring viewers to modify their behaviour another approach is to create works that react using the behaviour people commonly exhibit when viewing artworks.

In his essay Transforming Mirrors Rokeby discusses interactive art in terms of four categories:

· Navigable Structures – hypertext systems or virtual worlds within which the user can move;

· The Invention of Media – systems that allow the viewer to create;

· Transforming Mirror – systems that reflect back the actions of the viewer;

· Automata – systems that grow and have behaviours of their own. [41]

Rokeby’s work over the last twenty years has explored many aspects of interaction and the use of machine vision. This exploration has been in depth and is evolving; his most recent use of machine vision is the application of surveillance systems that can track and recognise individuals. One of his latest works, Guardian Angel deals with the use of this technology. Works such as Silicon Remembers Carbon can been seen within the context of ‘transforming mirrors’. Rokeby points out that the works reflect the viewers back to themselves; in many works the idea of the mirror is explicitly invoked. Silicon Remembers Carbon (2000) is one of these works.

18. David Rokeby, Silicon Remembers Carbon, 2000, interactive video installation, dimensions variable.

Silicon Remembers Carbon [42] is a video projection from above onto a bed of sand. There is a half-metre-wide walkway around the work for the viewer. The viewer’s movements subtly affect the mixing and dissolving of the imagery and sounds. Each viewer’s movement leaves traces and affects the experience for later viewers. When the viewer first enters the most likely image is of water (beach waves, water under a bridge in Toronto, passers-by reflected in the canals of Hamburg, shadows and reflections in street puddles) when the viewer moves. In the first version of this work in 1993, when the viewer moved a new image was displayed which ‘usually contains shadows or reflections of people along the edge of the clip that is visible’. People interpreted these shadows as their own. In the 2000 version, instead of the shadow imagery being pre-recorded video from laser discs, the images that fade up into the image on the floor are taken by cameras positioned around the gallery. The silhouettes that appear in the sand are the actual images of people in the gallery.

The differences between the two installations represent the opportunities that have developed for interactive video because of the growth of faster computer systems and software to manipulate and control video in real-time. In the first version in 1993 computers were not capable of storing and manipulating video easily. The video had to be pre-recorded and played back as linear segments from laser discs. There now exists software [43] that allows artists to manipulate video through a flexible, malleable method in real-time. One of the problems with past interactive video work was that it broke one of the rules for interactive design that Chris Crawford set in the Art of Computer Game Design, which was that good interactive design should ‘store less and process more.’ [44] Using methods that involve storing media reduces interactive possibilities while systems that can process and create media in real-time increase the options for interactivity. Real-time digital video is now a medium that is both stored and processed.

Toni Dove - Cinema in space

19. Toni Dove, Artificial Changelings, 1998, interactive video installation, dimensions variable.

My curiosity about interactive video installation evolved from a description of Dove’s Artificial Changelings [45] installation which was first exhibited in 1998. I have not personally interacted with any of Dove’s works. Dove’s overview of the work is:

The narrative for the work is a romance thriller about shopping. The floor zones are delineated by circles of light. When the viewer is closer to the screen the images are of the inside of the character’s head; when the viewer moves away from the screen different sequences are triggered until the viewer enters a time tunnel and travels to another century. Body movements within each one of these zones trigger behavioural changes in the imagery and sound.

Dove’s work is firmly fixed in storytelling, she terms them ‘interactive movies’ [47] . The narratives that operate in Dove’s work are not those of linear story telling. Dove sees these as a narrative ‘building on the environment details’ [48] that surround the story-lines. An example she cites of ‘environment details’ as narrative is the movie Blade Runner. These narrative environments and the interactivity allow Dove to engage the viewer in a tactile unstable mode. The viewer develops a bodily connection to the narrative. While being interviewed by Brian Massumi, Dove stated:

Massumi, in the same interview, talks of the way in which:

Cinema addresses other senses through vision, but privileges the visual identification. The effect you achieve depends on a certain distancing or uncanniness. The in-between space takes on a thickness of experience

Dove’s work, by the combination of elements of video, sound and interactivity, collapses the separation between the viewer and screen and affects more than just a visual sense. Dove’s work stands out in the area of interactive movies because of this expansion into the physical space and the closure of the gap between the viewer and the narrative.

Locating the project relative to these art practices

The works that have resulted from the Liquid Sensations investigation relate to the above works and practices in a multi-layered fashion and these relationships are discussed below.

Sea Change is a contemporary representation of the seascape through photography. My project explores an experience that is close to our bodies, when they are submerged in and surrounded by water. This is a transitory multi-sensory experience that is dynamic and intimate compared to the experiences of the sea suggested by the imagery in Sea Change. The perception of the sea as expansive and static that the photographs in Sea Change depict is a different perception to that which my project seeks to evoke.

Parke and Autio’s haunting photographs depict people involved in dramatic moments in the water. These are times when water becomes an intense, brutal environment. Liquid Sensations likewise is inquiring into the pleasures of these unsettling aspects of water. Parke and Autio’s approach is to document people involved in these activities; Liquid Sensations aims to suggest the bodily experiences of these moments to the viewer.

The Water Pavilion represented an opportunity for Spuybroek and Oosterhuis to design and construct a form of building that had never been built before. They focused on the sensual aspects of water and the exploration of these aspects using media technologies is similar to my research. The success of the Water Pavilion is hard to assess without having visited the building. They have worked within the context of the built environment, which has different possibilities, and vast budgets compared to this studio-based investigation.

Davies takes the physical experience of floating in the water and integrates it into her interface. Her works relate to this research project by drawing on the act of floating in water to create art that is experiential and evocative. My project uses simpler technologies, in developing an approach to interaction that is naturally part of engaging with and viewing art in a gallery setting. Liquid Sensations explores alternatives to virtual reality technologies for developing immersive artwork. Davies was able to work with expensive technologies in ways that are inaccessible for most artists. The technologies and methodologies used in Liquid Sensation are readily available and easier to apply as part of extended experimentation.

Video projection is the medium chosen to surround the viewer in Vasulka’s work Borealis. The use of video projection has the capacity to enlarge the image; Vasulka employs it to fill the space, so that the imagery encompasses the viewer. Projection becomes a medium in its own right in installations such as Borealis. My research has worked with video projection in a similar way to Borealis, where projection is used as a means to surround the viewer.

Viola’s works explore aspects of the human condition that are often physical and involve the passage of time. Engaging with his works is a powerful emotional encounter. This research project relates to his practice by being an investigation of transitory, lived bodily experiences that are not easily expressed or described. Imagery of people submerged in water is common in his installations. Like Viola my choice has been to be involved in the technical details of my practice. The effect of Viola’s works often arises from the empathic relationship the viewer develops with the figures he depicts. My installations instead evoke bodily feelings by the use of ambiguous manipulated recordings and spatial interactivity. Viola’s, Vasulka’s and the works in my project use installation as a method to enhance the viewers’ engagement with the subject. My research has also used interactivity as an additional method of engaging the viewer.

The group of works most closely related to Liquid Sensations was the show Space Odysseys: Sensation & Immersion. As a collection of works, it represents a paradigm of art practice where the use of light, image, sound, space, objects and interactive technologies merged together resulting in powerful experiential art. Unlike many of the pieces in Space Odysseys, my research has resulted in works that respond to viewers in a seamless manner. Viewers do not need to change the way in which they commonly view art in order to engage with my works.

Rokeby’s declares that the viewing of interactive art installations is an act of encountering, not controlling the work. He sees the viewers as having always been involved in art, both static and interactive. These observations start to explain and articulate the nature of interaction in art. They acknowledge an approach to interactive installations where interactivity is only one part of the whole. My research has been informed by this approach. The use of simple actions and indirect interaction has meant the viewer’s engagement with the works is part of their holistic encounter with the installation. The interaction in Liquid Sensations is what Rokeby outlines as ‘Transforming Mirror-systems that reflect back the actions of the viewer’. Liquid Sensations in the early stages explored use of real-time processing of video as part of the control system in a similar manner to the second version of Silicon Remembers Carbon. The final works use refined pre-computed high quality imagery and sound, instead of using real-time effects with lower quality media.

Dove’s work similarly focuses on interaction as part of the encounter with artworks. The interactivity in her installations revolves around simple, subtle movements that might happen by accident as part of viewing the work. Interactivity is not the primary focus of the work; it is a combination of the interactivity, the layout of the gallery and sound and, in the case of Dove, the narrative. This relates to the approach I have taken in concentrating on subtle interactions. The way in which the viewer develops a physical connection to the imagery also connects our practices. Unlike Dove’s work my project centres around sensory experiences, she focuses on narrative and cinema.

[1] Over the period of this research project I have attempted to see first-hand as many interactive installation works as possible, with time spent at ZKM Center and Art and Media in Germany in 1998 and Siggraph in Los Angeles in 1999.

[2] Gage, John, Turner: rain, steam and speed, Penguin, London, 1972, p16.

[3] Raban, Johnathon, ed., The Oxford Book of the Sea, Oxford UP, Oxford,1992, p15.

[5] During 1999 I saw Sea Change installed at the Museum of Photography in New York.

[6] Stack, Trudy Wilner, ed., Sea Change: The Seascape in Contemporary Photography, Center Creative Photography, n.p., 1999, p 9.

[8] Autio, Narelle and Trent Parke, The Seventh Wave, Hot Chilli Press, Kirribilli, 2000.

[11] Van Cleef, Connie, ‘Water Worlds: Design and Construction of an Exhibition Pavilion in Neeltje Jans, the Netherlands,’ The Architectural Review, 204 (Dec 1998), 463.

[12] Novak, Marcos, 'Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace', Cyberspace:First Steps, Michael Benedikt, ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991, 225-54.

[13] Schwartz, Ineke, Testing Ground for Interactivity, http://synworld.t0.or.at/level3/text_archive/testing_ground.htm, accessed on 2/8/2001.

[14] Oosterhuis Associates, trans-ports website, http://www.trans-ports.com/trans-ports.html, accessed on 22/6/2001.

[15] Davies' practice first came to my attention when I was working with low end 3D systems. The simple, soft interface was the attraction. Later at Invenção (Invenção in Sau Paulo, Brazil was a conference that sought to examine the convergence of art, science and technology) during Niranjan Rajah’s talk he showed video footage of an immersant’s journey through the virtual world. I was struck by the images. During Alessio Cavallaro’s Immersive Condition art forum at the School of Art (Hobart) in 2000 he presented a video documentation of the work. I heard of the linkage between the breath interface and Davies’ experiences of scuba diving. This led to revisiting and reviewing details of her achievements.

[16] Davies, Char, and John Harrison, Osmose: Towards Broadening the Aesthetics of Virtual Reality, http://www.immersence.com/os_notes02.htm, accessed on 2/7/2001.

[17] Georges Mauro created the models and animations in collaboration with Davies. The sounds were developed by Rick Bidlack and Dorota Blaszczak and John Harrison developed the custom software for the work.

[18] Jennings, Pamela, New Media Arts: New Funding Models, 2000, The Rockefeller Foundation, http://www.digital‑bauhaus.com/html/mediaArtReport/New_Media_Arts_New_Funding_Models.pdf, accessed on 5/1/2001.

[19] Lunenfeld, Peter, Snap to Grid: A User's Guide to Digital Arts, Media and Cultures, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000, p 146.

[20] Polar Circuit is an event where a group of international new media artists and writers gather over a period of one month to work together.

[22] Viola, Bill, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House: Writings 1973-1994, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1995, p 213.

[24] Cappellazzo, Amy, Adriano Pedrosa and Peter Wollen, eds., Making Time: Considering Time as a Material, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Lake Worth, 2002.

[25] Bill Viola, The Relationship between Video and Installation, Available: http://www.sfmoma.org/espace/viola/noqthtml/content/inter02.html, accessed on 13/5/2001.

[26] Duncan, Michael, ‘Bill Viola: Altered Perceptions.’ Art in America, 3.3 (1998), 63–9.

[27] In Viola’s installation Five Angels for the Millennium 2001, this experience is the central concern of the work. I have not seen this work so I have not chosen to discuss it. More information about it can be found online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/news_comment/artistsinprofile/viola2.shtml

[28] London, Barbara, Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p12.

[29] This description is based on the layout of the installation I saw at ZKM in Karlsruhe in 1998.

[30] I attended this show and the accompanying conference at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in August 2001. The speakers at the conference were Erik Davis, Victoria Lynn, Ann Finegan, Scott McQuire and Ross Gibson.

[31] Lynn, Victoria, ed., Space Odysseys: Sensation & Immersion, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2001, p17.

[32] Quoted by Rhys Graham in Lynn, ed., Space Odysseys: Sensation & Immersion, p 49.

[34] Meacham, Steve, ‘Imagination blasts off as artists find their personal space’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 18/8/2001.

[36] Saul, Shiralee, Round Trip Ticket, http://www.abc.net.au/arts/digital/stories/s368114.htm, accessed on 1/10/2001.

[37] Machine vision is a technology which uses video cameras and computer algorithms to allow a computer to able to see and recognise. Another pioneer of machine vision systems for artistic use is Myron Krueger.

[38] Rokeby, David, Transforming Mirrors:Subjectivity and Control in Interactive Media, http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/mirrors.html, accessed on 5/6/2000.

[42] Rokeby, David, Silicon Remembers Carbon 1993-2000, http://www.interlog.com/~drokeby/src.html, accessed on 5/6/2000.

[43] Many of the artists using these types of real-time video processing applications congregate online on the Live Experimental Video mailing list (http://shoko.calarts.edu/~cchaplin/lev/lev.html) which currently has around five hundred subscribers. At this stage, one of the most common usages of these applications is in performances where imagery is synced with the audio. Some of the artists active in this area are John DeKam (http://www.node.net/), René Beekman (http://www.xs4all.nl/~rbeekman/) and Jeremy Bernstein (http://www.bootsquad.com/).

[44] Crawford, Chris, Art of Computer Game Design, 1982, http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html, accessed on 28/4/1999.

[45] Zvonar, Richard, ‘Case Study, Artificial Changelings by Toni Dove with Alex Noyles’ Interactivity, 2.14 (1996), 62.

[46] Dove, Toni, Artificial Changelings — Overview, http://www.funnygarbage.com/dove/overview.html, accessed on 13/7/2001.

[47] ‘Interactive movies’ are an area of active research for artists, as they cross over areas that relate to hypertext research, narrative and interface. One of the most active research programs is Glorianna Davenport Interactive Cinema’s research program at the MIT media lab. (http://ic.www.media.mit.edu/groups/ic/).

[48] Dove, Toni, ‘Theater without Actors - Immersion and Response in Installation’ Leonardo, 27. 4 (1994), 281–7,p 283.

[49] Jones, Bill, and Brian Massumi, ‘The Interface and I: A Conversation Between Toni Dove and Brian Massumi’, Artbyte,1.6 (1999), 30–7, p 33.

This page is part of the web version of 'Liquid Sensations: Evoking sensory experiences with interactive video installation art' written by Robin Petterd as part of a PhD by studio practice at the Tasmanian School of Art, The University of Tasmania.

robin@otherdge.com.au