Mike Leggett – Page 18

Burning the Interface: Artists’ Interactive Multimedia

1999

Mike Leggett

"A statement could use the narrative form and the first person singular and begin on the first day of life, or first day of school, or college, as a student, as a teacher, as an artist. Hacking into the substance of what seems important about the topic of interactive multimedia could also use the narrative form and construct that comforting umbilical tube that moves its nourishment – “starting at A, through K, to Z”.
But such a monocular viewpoint is not how the world is encountered and is certainly not adequate to describe my research into interactive multimedia and the way in which it has been used by artists as a medium of expression. There are too many complex relationships. The narrative descriptive form, the thesis, with an introduction, a middle and a conclusion for instance, has a tendency towards over simplifying the research process as well as the reception of an understanding of outcomes from the project. The very act of ordering these words is unrelated to the temporal sequence in which phases and details occurred. The choice of words and the whole technology of language as a reductive process is not the most appropriate for conveying the complexity of another iterative technology, especially one that in these early days of its definition and development, finding both material and poetic form." Extract from Introduction.

Physical Cinema: Memory, Schema and Interactive Video

In the computer-based digital domain, interaction with video is becoming an everyday occurrence. Breaking away from our traditional regard for moving images organised along the linear principles of the filmic tradition we can now use motion pictures relationally, linking across and along shots and sequences. In so doing, the creative experience is shared as physical cinema.

My experience as an artist working with film, video and performance was based on levels of audience engagement ranging from the reflexive to the physically active. The experience of a durational artwork relies on both short and long-term memory and the anticipation of its process of change. Aesthetic issues of this kind helped form the conceptual foundations discussed in this paper, an overview of PhD research completed in 2008.

2011

Mike Leggett

Physical Cinema: some history, and recent practice

2011

Mike Leggett

In The Man with the Movie Camera released in 1929, Dziga Vertov set out to establish an approach to cinema based on a complete separation from the language of literature and theater. His film, like that of Walter Ruttman’s film Berlin (1927), was set in the streets and environments of the modern industrial and cosmopolitan city. "..today, the media artist can craft physical cinema that takes place on the streets of the city." (Shapins 2011)
Physical theatre, Live Art and Cinema have through performer and filmmaker established a vigorous practice in recent years, challenging the confines of traditional artforms, including the documents pioneered by Vertov. Contemporary practitioners have come together with audiences to create between them a physical cinema converging as a series of spatial modes.

Mnemovie : visual mnemonics for creative interactive video (research)

Mnemovie is the title of a project commenced in 2004 to investigate the precept of interactive video installation, developing ideas demonstrated in Pathscape (2000) and Strangers on the Land (1999). The experimental interactive system Mnemovie, uses simple gestures to interact with memory images and events recorded as moving images and sounds as a basis for hyperlinking between digital video files. A short movie was made in 2006 to explain some theory, by way of demonstration, go to: http://vimeo.com/36948956 . The system has been developed using practice-based research methods, rather than user-centred problem-solving design approaches. The difference is that the former is similar to an art making process, where the concept is developed directly through the practitioner’s practice, applying knowledge, experience, skills and sense of creative enquiry (Schön 1983). The approach was extended with knowledge gathered from related research found in publications, together with an observation and evaluation process conducted toward completion of the PhD research in 2008. For more details see Text; for a brief demonstration of the principles, go to: https://vimeo.com/36808922

2008

Shepherd’s Bush

1971

15 min

The film is available from Lux, London, and is also part of the Shoot Shoot Shoot DVD collection curated by Mark Webber. Taking re-found image of a patchwork of black and white confusion and working on it using the Debrie Printer neutral densities and aperture band, the resultant image is re-related into the environment of the cinema.
” …concerned with post-camera structuring. Again the range is wide, including systematic procedure in printing as in Shepherd’s Bush… the system is not ‘content’ to be ‘discovered’…a loop of film shot from a fast moving camera, presumably close to the ground, is repeatedly printed, each time with a change in the exposure, so that its visual quality alters in imperceptible stages from totally black to totally white, while the soundtrack, also a continuously repeated pattern, gets lower and lower in pitch. The systematic or structural aspect of this film is again partly directed towards the appreciation of duration through attention of minimal developments in the image.” – From Abstract Film and Beyond by Malcolm Le Grice, Studio Vista 1977.
” Shepherd’s Bush was a revelation. It was both true film notion and demonstrated an ingenious association with the film-process. It is the procedure and conclusion of a piece of film logic using a brilliantly simple device; the manipulation of the light source in the Film Co-op printer such that a series of transformations are effected on a loop of film material. From the start Mike Leggett adopts a relational perspective according to which it is neither the elements or the emergent whole but the relations between the elements (transformations) that become primary through the use of logical procedure. All of Mike Leggett’s films call for special effort from the audience, and a passive audience expecting to be manipulated will indeed find them difficult for they seek a unique correspondence; one that calls for real attention, interaction, and anticipation/correction, a change for the audience from being a voyeur to being that of a participant.” – Roger Hammond
“Shepherd’s Bush (Mike Leggett, 1971) is a startling black and white abstraction, advancing from the deepest black – through frenetic gray-scale contrasts – to a luminous white, in its several repetitive loops. Soundtrack is a pleasingly electronic burbling possibly produced with an early EMS synthesiser.” Jim Knox, Senses of Cinema, (‘Shoot Shoot, Shoot’ at the 51st Melbourne International Film Festival (2002).

Camera Null series

The Camera Null series use a scanner, not a camera to capture the images; these are digitally assembled into the frame of the picture. Unified in this way, the tangibility of the material components move from a utilitarian domain to an exotic context created from unexpected juxterposition of scale and setting. (MORE to follow)

2005

Bristol Bands Newsreel 1980

The film was commissioned by South West Arts as a community collaboration with some of the bands active in Bristol, UK in 1980. It was screened as part of a rock film season at the Bristol Arts Centre (seen at the very end, on the stage of which some fans perform). The 27-min full version – is now available here – made on Super 8mm film with sync sound and edited on video, it includes the music of the bands: Apartment, Art Objects, Black Roots, Blurt, Exploding Seagulls, Brian Damage, Glaxo Babies, Slow Twitch Fibres, Shoes for Industry, Stingrays, Talisman, TV Eyes, Untouchables, Various Artists.

Following completion of the project, the filmmakers prepared a report for the Arts Association (see in left column), on their experiences working with the community – the musicians and the cinema – using the often under-used super 8mm single sound system, making recommendations for better integration of the funder’s policies and filmmaker innovations.

A film by Mike Gifford and Mike Leggett.

1980

27 mins

Arts in Focus (Australia Council Forum online Moderator)

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.

1999

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.

Artists Burning Art : Contemporary International CD-ROMs at Microwave, Hong Kong

1997

"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.

Chris Welsby at Artspace, Sydney

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.)

2004

1-minute (detail)