Jeffery Shaw was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1944. His
academic studies included architecture, art history, and sculpture. Shaw’s
particular focus is on immersive installations and augmented reality, where the
viewer is a direct participant in—or instigator of—the aesthetic experience. As
early as 1966 he was already exploring ways of creating art that incorporated
electricity-based technologies (though not yet with computers) and audience
interaction. Among his early installations was a piece called “Emergences of
Continuous Forms”, which featured film projections that an audience could
manipulate by a variety of materials and objects placed between the projector
and the screen. He subsequently developed more of these pieces—which he terms “air
structures”—that were even more elaborate, such as “Disillusion of a Fish Pond”,
described as follows on Shaw’s website:
“In
this work a naked woman swathed in bandages of cotton-wool was sitting at the
edge of a large indoor fish-pond. Her feet were embedded in thick yellow gelatin
which filled the pond. The film Continuous Sound and Image Moments (1966) was
projected down onto the surface of the jelly. Polythene tubing laid on the
floor of the pond was slowly inflated with air and smoke, causing the jelly to
lift and crack open. A masked figure burst white balloons that splashed bright
yellow liquid over the seated woman. The tubing continued to inflate up out of
the pond, pushing itself into the audience, who then dragged the jelly-covered
plastic all around the room. When punctured by rough handling, the tubing
released jets of white smoke that in turn created another medium for the
ongoing film projection.”
In 1981 he produced an installation called “Points of View I”.
A simplistic computer graphic image depicting a flat plane (the stage) and
several symbolic figures (the actors) was projected onto a screen. The viewer
could then sit before a pair of specially modified joysticks and move around
the virtual space. Different points in the virtual space were associated with
different sound clips, which would shift as the viewpoint shifted.
There is one other piece I must mention, and it’s the reason
I decided to report on Shaw. It’s a video installation from 1993, titled “Disappearance.”
Though not interactive, there is a beauty to the concept and, particularly, to
the way the elements are balanced together—indeed, it provides a new way of
seeing. The piece exists as a rotating forklift in a gallery. Resting on the
forklift’s tines is a large television. As the machine rotates, the tines
continuously raise and lower the television in a fluid motion; meanwhile, the
screen is simultaneously projecting the partial image of a ballerina, in such a
way that her feet are only visible when the tines reach the ground, and her
head only visible when they reach the top. The source of the image is a tiny pirouetting
ballerina figurine standing atop a music box, being scanned by a small moving
camera inside the forklift itself. The contrasting fragility of the ballerina,
bound up with the normally ungainly mass of the forklift, adds weight to one
and grace to the other.
Shaw has served as the director, co-director, and even
founder of numerous organizations during his career, including the Artist
Placement Group in London; the Institute
for Visual Media at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany; and the
Center for Interactive Cinema Research at the UNSW, Sydney. He has also taught
at universities in both Germany and Australia.
Jeffrey Shaw is currently the Dean and Chair Professor of
Media Art at the University of Hong Kong.
Sources:
On the same page with the video of "Disappearance" was one for another project called EVE. It is something like a cross between IMAX and a 360 view video, created in the early 90's. I think something that has been most interesting to me in this class is the ability to observe the evolution of art and technology outside the standard parameters of "art history". What this EVE exhibit did 20 years ago is something we come to expect as a standard feature of any hotel or realty website. Art becomes the practical.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed T-Visionarium. It was a very neat concept allowing the user to choose the gestures. It allows one to create their own narrative and let them be in control. Shaw installations structures are great way to project film. It allows people to see film in a new way.
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