Gary Hill documentary

One of my favorite pieces from the Gary Hill documentary was Meditation, the one in which there is narration, a stereo, a hand, and sand. The materials he used in the video were quite simple. An aerial view is used throughout the entire video and their was probably no editing done to the video portion of the piece. The language Hill uses is also very simple. I liked how the piece had different stages of comprehension, in the beginning and then again at the end. The narration seemed to correlate with the actions of the hands. As more sand was added, the more the sound was altered and was taken to a new "place." As well as the sound, the sand itself physically moved by the action of the voice, and there was an interaction between how one action changed the other action. By the end, the voice is seems like it is buried because of the amount of sand that has been added to the speaker.

I found most of Gary Hill's pieces to be engaging, all having to do with his combination of language and image - however the one piece most people probably won't like (Incidence of Catastrophe) - is definitely the least accessible piece. Because the language is nonsensical is it harder to draw meaning, as well as the very strange (in my opinion) images in the video.

Time as Medium response

I thought it was interesting to see how artists have different approaches to using time as a medium in video art. The article opens up by discussing Clement Greenberg's evaluation of Modernism requires "each discipline must search for and determine what is unique and irreducible to that art." In this way, video art using time as medium practices this Modernist viewpoint through the inherent qualities of video as a recorded representation of space and time - one that can be experienced both through the present and past.

I found Dan Graham's Present Continuous Past(s) reflective of this. Because of the placement of the monitor in the mirrored room, the piece forces the viewer to focus upon the actual space as opposed to their own image reflected. In the work, time is repeated again and again through the mirrors constant reflection and the viewer retains a heightened awareness of the space they are in.

Bill Viola's Decay Time was also interesting to me because of its reliance upon the viewers interaction and memory. By isolating a specific event and quick, Viola forces the viewer to rely upon or create their own perception of time and space.

Jack Goldstein Film response

In both of Jack Goldstein's The Knife and The Chair, the objects being filmed are mostly defined by the light, both blending into the background (the chair more so than the knife) constructing a contained space.

The Knife was interesting to me because it reminded me of those horrible loading bars on flash websites that lack immediacy. For me the light slowly being reflected on the knife created tension and a slow passage of time in space with no sense of depth. The instance when the "bluish" light started to reflect I had actually thought that there was no light being reflected because it blended in with the background really well. The knife remains static, light is the only thing that creates a passage of time.

The Chair functioned in a similar way, except for in this film The Chair was not given movement through light, but the light defined form. The chair appears really shiny, almost like its coated in tar or wet paint. Movement is seen through the accumulation of paper/feather like material falling upon it, demonstrating a passage of time in a seemingly boundless space lacking depth.

The Art of Noise Response

In the beginning of the article Russolo begins by discussing how "Ancient life was all silence." And with the industrial revolution and integration of machines in society, noise was then born. He then talks about how nature is mostly silent (minus major catastrophes in which the world is destroyed). I don't know why, but I have a huge problem with that statement. I guess it depends upon how you define "noise," and I suppose Russolo is referring to a type of manufactured sound, man made ones. But often, I tend to think that no sound in itself is a noise of its own.

Later in the article Russolo talks about how there is no point to to noise that is only pleasant to the ear, and it is not productive to reject exclusively loud noises. Looking at it from an artist point of view, I can kind of see how images that are pleasing to the eye have just as much power as those that aren't. The same goes here with sound/music/noise. Just because a noise is not thought of as conventional, it is not useful to only write it off as annoying or loud. These noises have just as much meaning (maybe more?) than those that are simply agreeable to the ear. This relates to my conclusion from before, of no sound being sound itself. No sound/noise has just as much meaning as one that is traditional music or more futurist compositions.