Beware of the Research Culture

Selected Extracts From Expanded Cinema Works: 1. Little Dog for Roger, 1967 2. Yes No Maybe Maybenot, 1967 3. Berlin Horse, 1970, music by Brian Eno, extract (total duration 9 minutes) 4. Horror Film 1, 1971, extract from documentation of live performance (total duration 14 minutes) 5. Threshold, 1972, extract (total duration 16 minutes) 6. Matrix, 1973 - 2007 7. After Leonardo, 1973 - 2007, extract from documentation of installation (total duration 35 minutes) 8. After Manet, 1975 9. Gross Fog, 1973 10. The Cyclops Cycle, 1998 - 2003, extracts (total duration 60 minutes) This includes an extract of an interview with Le Grice by Fergus Daly made for Irish TV in the Triskel Gallery during The Cyclops Cycle installation. 11. Autumn Horizon 3, 2005 12. Denisined, 2006 For Dennis Oppenheim. Music: J.S. Bach 'crab cannon'. After: ANEMIC CINEMA by Marcel Duchamp. 13. Digital Aberration, 200

Found Footage: Some Thoughts

Então, novamente em retrospecto, o que eu (intuitivamente) queria ou exigia do material de found footage? Primeiramente busquei uma qualidade de mistério sobre uma imagem - o que agora chamo de “latência” - encontrando algum aspecto da sequência que não foi visto ou intencionalmente colocado ali pelo diretor de fotografia original e que, quando em contexto, abriu significados novos e surpreendentes.So, again in retrospect, what did I (intuitively) want or demand from the found film material? Firstly I sought a quality of mystery about an image - what I now talk about as a ‘latency’ – finding some aspect of the sequence that was not seen or intentionally put there by the original cinematographer and that, when re-combined in a different context, opened up new and surprising meanings

“Discourse” versus “medium”: interview with Malcolm Le Grice

Malcolm Le Grice, a filmmaker and intermedia artist active in the Arts Lab and the London Film Makers' Cooperative, revisits the emergence of the British independent and expanded cinema scene, reinscribing it in a highly politicised context. Opposing the logic of medium specificity, he reinscribes his experimentations with expanded cinema in a strategy of discursive construction that challenges the flatly representational logic of narrative cinema

The Cyclops Cycle

The Cyclops Cycle is a 1-hour, 3 projector video installation. Three of the seven sections were shown in an earlier version in 1998 but were substantially re-edited in 2001. The first presentation of the full Cyclops Cycle continuous installation in its final form was in 2004 at the Triskel Gallery, shown as a special feature installation in the 49th Cork Film Festival (Catalogue in Portfolio) together with a two programme retrospective of earlier work. The Cycle which comprises: Joseph’s Newer Coat; Even the Cyclops Pays the Ferryman; Still Life and Lunch in Little Italy; Jazzy Jazzy Jazzy; Neither Here Nor There; Travelling with Mark; and Cherry; has been exhibited at a number of venues since 2004. At the Kiasma Museum it was also shown in the context of a parallel retrospective at the Finnish Film Museum. At IVAM, Valencia, it was shown as part of a four day Master Class (Taller de Artista). The installation explores issues that have formed part of my published theoretical work, in particular, the re-positioning of the spectator in the context of multi-projection where each screen develops different versions of the source material through digital editing and image transformation. It also explores the transformation of diary sourced material into metaphor and allegory related to theoretical work published in the essay ‘The Chronos Project’ (Chapter 20 - page 251 in my Book 'Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age' - BFI Pubs. 2001 ISBN 0-85170-873-0). Through 'Cyclops Cycle' I have reviewed continuities between new multi-projection video and my earlier expanded film work helped by their inclusion earlier works as installations in two historical review exhibitions:' X-Screen', December 2003 at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMOK), Vienna (catalogue , ISBN 3-88375-761-6); and 'Behind the Facts'. February 2004 at the Fondacion Juan Miro, Barcelona (catalogue ISBN 84-923925-8-4)

After Leonardo 73-07

‘After Leonardo 73- 07’ is a large scale (10 x 3 meters) video installation made following invitation to eleven artists to create a work addressing another from art history and exhibited as ‘On History’. Its main concern is the way the meaning of an artistic icon, a monochrome reproduction of Leonardo’s la Gioconda, is changed by time and context. This new digital installation incorporates, as one part of its subject, aspects of a six-screen film first shown in 1973 exploring deterioration of the reproduction itself, physically present in the screening. It focussed on crazing depicted and actual in the reproduction and further deterioration through repeated re-filming from the screen during projection. The new digital installation doubles the length and the number of screens taking documentation of the film’s performances during the intervening years as raw material much as the film had previously treated the torn reproduction. Using high resolution, extreme close-up photography and layered superimposition, it reflects on the film medium as transformed by the digital context. The new work pays particular attention to the text of Sigmund Freud’s monograph ‘Leonardo da Vinci – a study in Psychosexuality’. This text, on the soundtrack and in visual superimposition, opens interpretation beyond Leonardo’s possible awareness. It becomes a paradigm for the way artworks are transformed through history by unpredictable methods of study, media and technologies available to future generations exploring the problematics of this transformation. ‘After Leonardo 73-07’ and the exhibition as a whole received extensive critical coverage in the Spanish national news and cultural press and was documented in a substantial catalogue (ISBN 978-84-89913-80-6). The work is not site specific and has since been presented at the Palais de Baux Arts, Brussels in June 2007 (see also output 3 Portraits and Particulars)

Virtual Reality - Tautological Oxymoron

227-236 This essay continues my theoretical examination of the implications of digital systems for the structure and practice of cinema. My previous work in this field (see my anthology of collected essays in ‘Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age’ BFI Publications 2001, ISBN 0-85170-873-0) has mainly attempted to define some fundamental characteristics of the computer and digital technologies, testing a media based, modernist approach to its limits. This chapter takes this examination into a new field, the specific issues posed by simulatory virtual reality. It examines philosophical and aesthetic questions linking representational conventions like perspective, the extension of sensory factors, movement, sound and tactility when incorporated into the new representational technologies. It further examines the interactive response of the user/viewer as an additional dimension and effect in the sensory realm. It discusses various implications of these sensorially expanded methods of simulation for our understanding of ‘the real’ and its distinction from illusion. It proposes a new basis of definition of reality testing through the concept of an ‘arena of irreversible consequence’ replacing the notion of testing ‘reality’ through matters of sensory presence. The research for this essay has since formed part of the basis of a Key-note address ‘Colour Abstraction – Painting – Film – Video – Digital Media’ in a conference on Synaesthesia entitled’ Empfindungsräume – Zur synästhetischen Wahrnehmung’ at the Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, 13 - 15 April 2007. see: [http://www.adk.de/raum/index.php?id=programm_april]

Portraits and Particulars

Portraits and Particulars is a 35-minute group of 10 titles produced between 2004 and 2006 first presented as a single series under this title at the CogCollective in October 2006. It has subsequently been exhibited at the Media Arts Festival Osnabrueck 28 April 2007 and as part of a four hour ‘retrospective’ at the Palais de Baux Arts, Brussels, 16 June 2007. The work represents a new direction focussing on characteristics of digital video and photography quite distinct from film and analogue video - an absence of the 'tactile' and traces of medium in the image. This ‘lack of medium’ undermines metaphor (the universal) through ultra-specificity. This series explores this specificity through elements of portraiture, person or place, and by focussing on isolated moments. As examples of the issues addressed by the series, 'Critical Moments One' (a learning moment of a child aged one year), is inspired by the detailed observation of his children by Jean Piaget. 'Unforgettable' explores the different camera responses of four females from four generations of the same maternal line. 'Of Keys and Beauty', 'Anthony Dundee', and 'Waiting for Ian', all originate from still photographs where the lack of movement in the context of cinema becomes linked directly to the isolation of time fragments. The title 'H2O-0C-24.02.06-12.01GMT - 03,50.40W - 50.16.30N' reflects the coming inevitability of ultra-specific meta-tagging of digital images with, for example, time, date, temperature and location. ‘Lecture to an Academy' - a portrait of Peter Gidal, superimposes layers of voice and gesture. DENISINED - SINEDENIS is a portrait of the artist Dennis Openheim from four stills rotated in a palindrome within a palindrome. The title echoes the palindromatic theme making reference to Marcel Duchamp's title Anemic Cinema. The music for this work is a development of JS Bach's palindromatic 'Crab' Cannon

British Artists' Moving Image Database/Known Works database

The British Artists' Moving Image Database is now a well-established and effective on-line resource available to scholars internationally. Distinct from the on-line Catalogue (Curtis) this on-line database is the result of my research linking the documents, records and video materials in the collection with other historical sources to produce a highly comprehensive database of all known film, video and related works including installations and performances by British artists. As the database covers a range of �fields� including location of works in collections and archives, the design of the database itself and the web-site structure, also constituted a major aspect of my research on this project. Defining the scope and form of the database involved extensive consultation on: the range and limits of content; the form of the database; and the underlying technical solutions for its realization. There is strong evidence of the success of the database through its extensive use by researchers. Recorded web statistics show that an average of 25% of visitors to the Study Collection�s site consult the database (an estimated average of 300 unique visitors per month) and many report initial contact to the Study Collection has been via the database. Users are widely international with extensive hits from European countries, North America and Australia and the database has become a primary research source for curators, academics and programmers. The database is continuously updated contributing to LUX and Arts Council England�s Moving Image: Legacy and Learning Initiative to provide research information about the dispersed (UK) national collection of artists� moving image