References

Beck, S., Video Weavings [Video]. Chicago: Video Data Bank, 1976

Bergery, B. (2016), ʻCutting-Edge Clarityʼ, American Cinematographer, vol. 97 no. 12, pp.34-49.

Cubitt, S. (2010), ʻMaking Spaceʼ, Senses of Cinema [online]. Available from: http://sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/making-space/ [Accessed 21st January 2017].

Cubitt, S. The Practice of Light: A genealogy of visual technologies from prints to pixels (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014).

Doing, K. (2017), ʻTowards a Post Materialist Practice in Expanded Cinemaʼ [Online Article]. Available from: http://www.doingfilm.nl/research/Post_Materialist.html [Accessed 15th February 2017].

Duncan, M. (2004), ʻAutoethnography: Critical Appreciation of an Emerging Artʼ, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 3 no. 4, pp. 28-39.

Elwes, C., Installation and the Moving Image (New York: Wallflower Press, 2015)

Fickers, A. and Van Den Oever, A. ʻExperimental Media Archaeology: A Plea For New Directionsʼ, in: Fickers, A. and Van Den Oever, A. eds. Techné/Technology: Researching Cinema and Media Technologies, Their Use and Impact (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), pp. 272-278.

Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana Press, 1993)

Hadjioannou, M. From Light to Byte: Toward an Ethics of Digital Cinema. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

Huhtamo, E. and Parikka, J. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)

Kachkaev, A. & Wood, J. (2013) ʻInvestigating Spatial Patterns in User-Generated Photographic Datasets by Means of Interactive Visual Analyticsʼ. Paper presented in: GeoViz Hamburg: Interactive Maps that Help People Think, 6-8 March, HafenCity University, Hamburg, Germany. Available from: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/2829/ [Accessed 20th January 2018]

Kim, J.  Between Film, Video and the Digital: Hybrid moving images in the post-media age (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)

Le Grice, M., (1966) Castle 1 [Online Documentation of 16mm Performance]. Available from: https://www.malcolmlegrice.com/1960s [Accessed 15th February 2017].

Lee, A., Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk [4K Video]. Culver City: Sony Pictures Releasing, 2016

Lewis, M., Cold Morning. Canadian Pavillion, 53rd International Art Exhibition, Venice. 7th June - 22nd November 2009

Lewis, M. ʻFilm as Re-imaging the Modern Spaceʼ, in: Penz, F. and Lu, A. eds., Urban Cinematics: Understanding urban phenomena through the moving image (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2011), pp. 119-134

McCall, A., Line Describing Cone [Film Installation]. London: LUX Collection, 1971

McCall, A., Solid Light Films and Other Works. Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, 28th September - 30th November 2014.

Meigh-Andrews, C., A History of Video Art. 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014)

Rees, A. L., Curtis, D., White, D. and Ball, S. Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film (London: Tate Publishing, 2011)

Rodowick, D. The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)

Ronai, C. R. (1995), ʻMultiple Reflections of Childhood Sex Abuse: An Argument for a Layered Accountʼ, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 23 no. 4, pp. 396-426.

Russell, S. Semiotics and Lighting: a study of six modern French cameramen (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981)

Sherwin, G., Light Cycles. Christine Park Gallery, London. 13th - 27th February 2016

Smith, V., Primal [16mm film]. London: LUX Collection, 2016

Takashi, M., Generator [HD Video]. Rotterdam: International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2011

Terrone, E. (2014) The Digital Secret of the Moving Image. Estetika: The Central European Journal of Aesthetics. 51 (1), pp. 21-41.

Viola, B., The Veiling. US Pavillion, 46th International Art Exhibition, Venice, 10th June - 5th November 1995

Viola, B., Bill Viola [Exhibition Catalogue]. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1997

Visconti, L., Ossessione. [35mm film]. Rome: Cinecittà, 1943

Wees, W. Light Moving in Time: Studies in the visual aesthetics of avant-garde film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)

Conclusion

The transition to digital technologies may have once been understood through a disruption to established notions of medium specificity but in practice it has been accommodated by the proliferation of creative methods. With the digitisation of capture and display technologies a standardisation of cinematography practice that emerged as part of industrialisation has been surpassed by more complex and fluid ways of orchestrating light both on screen and, as this exposition asserts, during installation projection. Rather than revisiting the well-rehearsed arguments around medium specificity, this exposition attempts to compliment them by understanding different technological tools through direct creative enquiry. The work presented here examines the impact of analogue and digital processes on what I have termed a ‘passage of light’, revealing how capture and projection formats become entwined in a practitioner’s creative decisions as a method to orchestrate illumination.

Each installation project presented here was also exhibited in multiple group shows and a summative exhibition, providing several opportunities for audience interaction and feedback.^[13] Investigation into the technical systems of moving image capture and display is a consistent theme amongst these artworks, and particularly in Piccadilly Circus (2015) and #Life_Drawing (2017), which both utilise novel combinations of analogue and digital formats within the same aesthetic frame. Moreover, #Life_Drawing (2017) took this line of enquiry further, exploring the nature of agency in the technological systems themselves, which constitute an increasingly crowded digital landscape and afford the ubiquitous circulation of imagery. Experimentation across these artworks indicates that, in a similar fashion to arranging light within the image, creative exploration of the light that constitutes an image can be seen as a negotiation between a practitioner’s intentions and properties of the environment.

This tussle between aesthetic light within an image and passages of light conveying the image was present in my first installation Camera/Projector (2014) and continued as a line of enquiry throughout the artworks. Discussing projected light in these creative terms gives an insight into how practitioners might recognize and understand the involved, loaded, nature of their production and display tools. To work within a gallery environment rather than a traditional cinema environment and orchestrate the relationship between audience and frame, thereby considering passages of light directly, has opened a new form of creative expression that I am keen to continue exploring with through additional installation projects. Although this research has been informed by artistic experimentation with projected light, there is a wide array of installations using other forms of illumination in the context of gallery-based and site-specific work that I have only been able to touch upon tangentially and which would warrant further creative enquiries.