The Legart Archive
ARTS IN FOCUS Forum
Mike Leggett, Forum Moderator
These documents outline:
• aspects of the design adopted for this initial step by the Australia Council to explore the democratic potential of cyberspace;
• operational aspects of the On-Line Forum;
• the strategy employed, and other possible strategies that could be adopted in the future.
"Desktop CD-ROM burners capable of making individual ('gold') discs has attracted the attention of visual artists and, since the early-90s, has created the opportunity for multimedia artists to make their work more widely available. 'Microwave' is an exhibition that sets out to give visitors a glimpse of the work that has been published in editions since that time, and also includes 'gold discs' not previously exhibited anywhere else in the world." Catalogue Introduction 1997.
EXHIBITION: Chris Welsby, at Artspace, Sydney, April 2004:
‘Changing Light’ (2004) DVD, video projector, sound, mirrors, camera, horizontal screen (240cm x 320cm approx ) mounted 30cm above floor.
‘Waterfall’ (2004) DVD, video projector, sound.
Screenings: (at Artspace 8.4.04; and at Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 29.4.04) Park Film (1973), Tree (1974), Anemometer (1974), Windmill III (1974), Stream Line (1976), Seven Days (1976).
Catalogue essay ‘Ripples in Time – new work from Chris Welsby’ see PDF or Link to SCAN journal.
(Video – above – is a 60sec loop of the Changing Light installation, shot by Welsby at the Artspace gallery 1 on 15th April 2004.)
'VIDEO + VIDEO/FILM some possibilities suggested by some experience' (offset lithographic Print, 100cm x 60cm) June 1973, Experimental and Avant-Garde Film Festival, National Film Theatre, London. Reconstructed facsimile, with an Introduction, in June 2005.
The print, ‘Video + Video/Film – Some Possibilities Suggested by Some Experience,’ emerged from several converging circumstances. It followed a period between 1971 and 1972 of working quite intensively with the first generation of ‘industrial’ video cameras, monitors and spool-to-spool recorders. My background working with photography and 16mm film, both as a film-maker artist and as a film editor and cameraman in the television and film industries, softened my entry to working with this technology. I was a part-time lecturer at various colleges of art so had access to these low bandwidth video facilities. Teaching institutions, if not individuals, could well afford to purchase low-band video at this point as it had low running costs as well as good pedagogical prospects.
(See Introduction PDF for more; for full text see menu, Words: Authored.) The print was issued in a signed edition of 5 (1973).
‘VIDEO + VIDEO/FILM some possibilities suggested by some experience’ (offset lithographic Print, 100cm x 60cm) June 1973, Experimental and Avant-Garde Film Festival, National Film Theatre, London. Reconstructed facsimile, with an Introduction, in June 2005.
The print, ‘Video + Video/Film – Some Possibilities Suggested by Some Experience,’ emerged from several converging circumstances. It followed a period between 1971 and 1972 of working quite intensively with the first generation of ‘industrial’ video cameras, monitors and spool-to-spool recorders. My background working with photography and 16mm film, both as a film-maker artist and as a film editor and cameraman in the television and film industries, softened my entry to working with this technology. I was a part-time lecturer at various colleges of art so had access to these low bandwidth video facilities. Teaching institutions, if not individuals, could well afford to purchase low-band video at this point as it had low running costs as well as good pedagogical prospects.
(See Introduction PDF for more; for full text see menu, Words: Authored.) The print was issued in a signed edition of 5 (1973).
‘VIDEO + VIDEO/FILM some possibilities suggested by some experience’ (offset lithographic Print, 100cm x 60cm) June 1973, Experimental and Avant-Garde Film Festival, National Film Theatre, London. Reconstructed facsimile, with an Introduction, in June 2005.
The print, ‘Video + Video/Film – Some Possibilities Suggested by Some Experience,’ emerged from several converging circumstances. It followed a period between 1971 and 1972 of working quite intensively with the first generation of ‘industrial’ video cameras, monitors and spool-to-spool recorders. My background working with photography and 16mm film, both as a film-maker artist and as a film editor and cameraman in the television and film industries, softened my entry to working with this technology. I was a part-time lecturer at various colleges of art so had access to these low bandwidth video facilities. Teaching institutions, if not individuals, could well afford to purchase low-band video at this point as it had low running costs as well as good pedagogical prospects.
(See Introduction PDF for more; for full text see Text: Authored.)
The print was issued in a signed edition of 5 (1973).
Like Plank Points and Tales Gates, developing the materiality of the print and its relation to the process of gathering photo images. (MORE IMAGES TO BE ADDED HERE)
“What is examined in this film is through the use of paradox, the convincing illusion produced by the two great illusionists, Television and Cinema. The extent to which these two can be and do manipulate, using only the process, producing sequences complete in their synthetic state.
The film takes as a starting point the face of the television monitor. Through a series of carefully controlled processes, the abstract nature of the image (which is concerned with pattern, colour and time), is juxtapositioned with the formal images of room interiors and exteriors still using a rigid time base as a common factor between the two.” (1972).
This version is as seen in Image Con Text: Two with the voiceover at the beginning.
An interdisciplinary, company devised promenade performance, led by John Downie (writer, performer, project coordinator), with Mike Leggett (video), Richard Storer (computer systems), Startled Insects (sound), Keith Tippett (piano, and musicians), The Playwrights Company & performers including: Pauline Battson, Kit Edwards, Liz Dbecchi, Canoe, Liz Fjelle (design), Kate McNab (actor), Tony Robinson (writer, actor), A.C.H. Smith (writer), Pat van Twest (writer, performer). Funding: The Playwrights Company & Gulbenkian Foundation. Developed and produced at Watershed Media Arts Centre, Bristol, UK.
The materials that construct an image on the screen – light, dark, colour – move in relation to each other, here with sound, to construct a cinematic spectre. The shapes take on form which may have a bearing upon our memory of, encounters with, past perceptions. A hand, a handle, movement, transporting us across the dimensions of the screen, from the space of an image to a place of reminiscence. The banality of everyday activities, operations, procedures interact with memories of intimacy, distance, presence.
The title refers to Brenda Laurel’s work in the 1980s with Apple on HCI: “A doorknob is the interface between a person and a door”. The person who appears briefly at the end of the video is Darren Tofts who also commented on the matter: “An interface… is any act of conjunction which results in a new or unexpected event.” Of course, neither of these people have anything to do with the experience of the movie. But maybe Proust does:
“These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my brief spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope.”
Marcel Proust ‘Swanns Way – In Search of Lost Time’.
The materials that construct an image on the screen – light, dark, colour – move in relation to each other, here with sound, to construct a cinematic spectre. The shapes take on form which may have a bearing upon our memory of, encounters with, past perceptions. A hand, a handle, movement, transporting us across the dimensions of the screen, from the space of an image to a place of reminiscence. The banality of everyday activities, operations, procedures interact with memories of intimacy, distance, presence.
The title refers to Brenda Laurel's work in the 1980s with Apple on HCI: "A doorknob is the interface between a person and a door". The person who appears briefly at the end of the video is Darren Tofts who also commented on the matter: "An interface… is any act of conjunction which results in a new or unexpected event." Of course, neither of these people have anything to do with the experience of the movie. But maybe Proust does:
“These shifting and confused gusts of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my brief spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope.”
Marcel Proust ‘Swanns Way – In Search of Lost Time’.