Barna Kantor:
Unveiling Illusionism with Illusions
Lecture at Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, Chicago, 2005
Mark Hansen in his ground-breaking book “New Philosophy for New Media” pointed out that during the 90’s our perception has transformed substantially. Digital, real-time image-acquisition, manipulation and presentation profoundly changed our perception of reality itself. We no longer just receive images, but we receive images in a reactive fashion: we receive images in order to create images. Image in art now goes beyond the merely visual. Image literally embodies the whole process by which information is made perceivable and acted upon. This understanding of an “embodied” image turns the physical body into an indispensable and active agent that filters information in order to create information.
As a recovering filmmaker I drew three interrelated artistic conclusions in defining my relationship to cinema:
(1) I wanted to expose my audience to both a physical experience of real space and time as well as to an optical or illusionary experience of a mediated space and time. I wanted to offer the experience of a physical and a mediated environment at the same time. The artworks that I address in this lecture are proto pre-cinematic projectors that I created during 2004. They either create phasing light patterns out of a uniform soft background light or project a space-activating image. Either way the presence of these media devices alters the space they inhabit.
(2) In my definition illusion occurs when a visual phenomena causes optical and physiological overload. The idea behind my work was that the illusionistic images they create overload and excite the perception in a way that entices the viewer to explore the illusion and in the process the image-making apparatus itself. The idling experience of those few seconds between countering an illusion and breaking it (by understanding its source: the mechanism) is the experience of our own physiological limits. The stronger the illusion the harder it is to come to terms with it. The time it takes to reconcile illusion with reality equals a temporary liberation from the ossified perceptual and cognitive categories we maintain in order to navigate in our environment. The categorical uncertainty of illusions expands the present moment while “infinite” number of interpretative categories are available. After the illusion is broken a new perceptual frame is created that includes not only the image but also the image-maker. This new frame is a heightened experience that comprehends the true nature of illusion while rejoices in it.
(3) Cinema hammers our expanded perceptual capacities into a passive form of consumption. These days cinemas attended by teenage broadcast experts, video DJs, web designers of streaming content, media critic bloggers, flash animators and content producers of all walks of our media environment. Cinema no longer corresponds to the way image is created by the audience. After hundred plus years of continuous black box entertainment cinema has become anachronistic.
After showing a short video I would like follow the logic of these 3 artistic conclusions and expand on each of them. The videos are documentations of four object and performance based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic techniques and modes of expression. These installations are diverging from conventional cinematic presentation formats in various ways. Most importantly I want to explore installations that create physically activating environments and invite audience presence.
Illusion
These artworks produce images through the exploration of an optical phenomenon I coined: “visual phasing”. I define visual phasing as a temporal change between two, near-identical, superimposed, high-contrast pattern-sets relative to the viewer’s point of view. For the sake of clarity I will call to these “high contrast pattern sets”: shutters and the entire contraption that houses these shutters: projectors.
I use the term visual phasing as a formal reference to Steve Reich’s well-known compositions from the 70’s that used audio phasing 2. Aesthetically visual phasing is quite different from audio phasing to the extent that visual signals tend to be more localized and less immersive compared to sound. The localized nature of visual images makes it possible to calculate the spatial position of the viewer as a constitutive element of the artwork.
The visual elements change appearance as the viewer’s body makes the slightest motion. These works suggest preferred viewing positions or extend activated viewing positions over a larger area. The interference images of visual phasing appear like a constantly altering four-dimensional (spatial and temporal) Moiré pattern. Moiré, patterns are also interference patterns . The difference from visual phasing is that Moiré patterns are static, physical interference images, whereas visual phasing, by definition, does not have a strong physical quality and is both spatial and temporal in nature. Visual phasing equals the "ground-up" process of transforming or maintaining a distinct four-dimensional interference image.
Compared to Moiré patterns, visual phasing provides a more intense illusion because it requires an active physical presence (in other words it affects the corporality of our embodied vision). Since the image is dependent on the spatial position of the viewer it can only be accessed fully through spatial exploration. The image assumes and forces a moving, physical presence. If optical illusion can occur because a visual phenomenon exposes the limits of our sensory system, then the more limits a phenomena probes the more intense the illusion becomes. Our activated visual system contributes with its own inertia to the phasing image that appears seductive, illusory and at times psychedelic or even convulsive.
This body of work that consists of proto cinematic apparatuses is also a display of all the elements that produce the images. The operation of these “projectors” can be easily dissected; therefore the illusion they produce can be readily understood. This distinction is clearly noticeable because we perceive the phasing image on a delicate membrane of uncertain focal depth, while the actual projector is easily detectable as often bulky and clumsy. My aim is that after the initial encounter with the image the viewer also explores the image-making apparatus and combines these two components as part of the “larger picture”. At that point the viewer becomes aware of her own physical presence and the perception shifts from a physiological state to a more cognitive one. To achieve this new sensory-cognitive terrain is my overall goal. This terrain is a heightened reality that is distinct from both the affects of the illusionary image and the image-making contraption.
Illusion and Illusionism
Taking cues from Richard Shiff’s very timely and useful distinction between illusion and illusionism, it is important to clearly separate these notions at this point . Shiff, in his essay on Donald Judd, clarifies and defends Judd’s position that optical illusion is inherent characteristic of an object. For Judd it was important that there were no external references within his minimalist artwork. The source and the reference of an artwork was itself; like a self-contained box.
“[A]mong all the subjective psychological experiences people have, optical illusions (such as chromatic after image) are ‘absolutely objective’ . “Everyone sees optical illusion in the same situations, under the same conditions. Such illusions are not only objective but real - real illusions.”
Illusionism, on the other hand, is “an effect of a certain cultural conditioning” . In painting for instance illusionism “[determines] that we see any rectangular surface through the space and perspective of a window view, and any two colors as situated on different representational planes.” Illusionism is “neither physiologically nor phenomenologically inherent in the direct apprehension of an object. Illusion is the way things are. Illusionism is the way things are not” – concludes Shiff. It is also important to note that by illusion Shiff means physiological illusion, whereas the category of higher level, psychological illusion (based on “acquired experience” or “cultural conditioning”) includes illusionism . In other words the distinction between illusion and illusionism is also the recognition of the difference between certain unprocessed or barely processed images (illusions) and overprocessed, culturally embedded and institutionalized delusions.
As I outlined earlier my intention is to present captivating, illusionistic, therefore corporeal images only to break them in the next instance. I manipulate the audience through optical illusions only to expose the mechanism of illusionism. I would like to reaffirm reality that incorporates illusions as inherent components of art so we can catch the illusionism of hidden image-making apparatuses that present images for an opposite purpose: to distort reality.
I also assume that confronting illusionism with reality can happen only in a larger cultural and social context. It is also my intention to create a media driven social space through a new breed of media content. These works become catalysts for the members of the audience to be engaged in an emergent, performative venue. The venue that affords this type of work is the result of the convergence between the black box of cinema and the white cube of exhibition spaces. I call this new, media-exhibiting venue, grey room. Grey rooms are light controlled exhibition venues, where the audience can focus attention on multiple targets: on the illusion, on the contraption that produces the illusion, on the physical environment and most importantly on the audience itself.
Grey Room, Expanding Cinema Toward Its Own Space
There are two characteristics that makes cinema a special exhibition venue: its sole focus on the projected image and sound and the almost complete neglect of its own physical environment and its ability in creating a temporary social space formulated through cinematic illusionism. Both of these characteristics are becoming increasingly anachronistic. It is not that the idea of creating temporary social spaces is antiquated. It is the nature of the presented illusion that can no longer provide the sole source of cohesion for shaping temporary group experiences. Cinemas and exhibition venues are frequented by a sophisticated and media-savvy audience that has hands-on experience in creating mediated illusions. Cinemas cannot fully adapt to the blooming media competency and activity of the new audience for structural reasons: In order to focus attention on the screen and maximize illusion the movie theater has to deny its own physical space the active, bodily presence of its audience along with their embodied visions. The technical essence of cinema is fine-tuning the projected illusion that by today’s expectations freezes the audience physical presence while the exact opposite is needed: a venue that caters to a far more active physical presence. As media making becoming democratized the venue itself preserves the elitist modes of presenting content. Paraphrasing Shiff’s definition: “cinema is the way things are not”.
In the larger cultural, social context the real image-makers are hidden behind the images (media products) they produce. The category of image-makers includes not only the media industries (film, broadcast, press, new media) but also those who routinely use these industries: advertisement firms, PR departments and advisors for political and religious organizations and corporations. There is an array of image professionals whose job is “present sound bites”, “brand products”, “sell public policies” and “frame and reframe political strategies”. There are always various degrees of separation between image and image-makers.
Traditional cinema, as a venue and as a cultural construction, outlines this separation in very clear spatial terms, therefore cinema itself becomes a strong conceptual metaphor and rich formal tool to address our illusions and our reality and the distance between them. The venue that allows cinema to become a metaphor has to be created. Fortunately this all coincides with the ongoing convergence between the black box and the white cube. My future professional plans are linked to the extensive research of the resulting “grey rooms”, where the tension between physical reality and mediated presence opens up contemporary ways to experience art.
Reference
- Hansen, Mark: New philosophy for new media. Cambridge, Mass. 2004
- Phasing was a compositional technique developed by Steve Reich in the mid 60’s. He used two identical sound sequences and looped them. One sequence was however time-delayed by a small and gradually changing amount. This created non-linear frequency phase responses that are not in the original linear harmonic series.
- Parola, Rene: Optical Art: Theory and Practice Reinhold Book Cooperation, USA, 1969. P. 55
- Shiff, Richard: Donald Judd, Safe from Birds. In Donald Judd. Edited by Nicholas Serota Distributed Art Publishers, 2004.
- Donald Judd: Sculpture, exh. cat. Pace Wildenstein, New York 1994 p. 77. Quoted in Shiff, Ibid. pp. 41-42.
- Shiff, Richard: Ibid. p. 42.
- Shiff, Richard: Ibid. p. 41.
- Shiff, Richard: Ibid. p. 41.
- Shiff, Richard: Ibid. p. 42.
- Shiff remarks that Judd was familiar with William James psychology who made a clear distinction between illusion and illusionism. Ibid. p.42, footnote 51.