IN CLASS
Description of SECOND PROJECT: DISORIENTATION IN TWO TIMES
Viewing of SIGHT UNSEEN exercise.
Discussion of Spatial Disorientation videos.
EXERCISE: SIGHT UNSEEN
Video and sound, 2 minutes.
Three shots.
“We might think that the phone sees what we want, but actually we will see what the phone thinks it knows about us.” (Hito Steyerl)
Your phone camera is powered by algorithms that perform a variety of analyses of your images as they’re being composed, predictive algorithms that already anticipate what you’re going to take based on your camera roll history, even before the picture is taken.
Your assignment is to resist your own visual habits as a way of tricking the camera. You will do this by removing your eyes from the equation, by attaching the camera to your body in such a way that you cannot see what you are videoing.
The goal is to make the nature and components of a space difficult to make sense of.
Three shots: While performing an activity in a space, your camera will be attached to a body part. Each of the three shots will be made with the camera attached to a different body part. Your body will not be seen. Your viewer’s mission (should they choose to accept it) will be to determine the activity you’re performing.
VIEWING
Compare and contrast these four different methods of spatial disorientation. How were these works made? How does the spatial disorientation take place?
Ernie GEHR—Side/Walk/Shuttle (1991)
Michael SNOW—La Région Centrale (1971) (excerpt!)
Valie EXPORT—Seeing and Hearing Space (1974)
Charlemagne PALESTINE—Four Motion Studies (1974)
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MORE SPATIAL DISORIENTATION
Ernie KOVACS—Eugene (excerpt) (1962) – illusion within “television space” – the screen as frame
Department of Biological Flow—Kino-Gait No. 3
Bill VIOLA—Sweet Light (1977)
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