Projection Art

From Interactivity

Projecting On Things

Dead Leaves And Dirty Ground : White Stripes video on youtube showing an interesting technique of blending projected video of a space on top of live acting in the same space.

It's very reminiscent of Michael Naimark's Displacements circa 1980, and the projection-on-3D-surface art works of Tony Oursler.

And also one can't forget Robert Whitman's work in the 60's mixing theater with live actors and projection. Unfortunately it was not very well documented until very recently - see "Playback" (2003) from the [www.diabooks.org Dia Arts Center] (revision - now there are DVDs of re-staged performances from the 1960's available from Artpix! Also some performances from Robert Rauschenberg and others). I am thinking of "Prune Flat" in particular, where actresses face their projected onscreen images and attempt to mimic them (life imites art, the mirror reversed?)

With all video work time becomes the medium for the work to work to unfold in, as compared to painting or sculpture when the work is static and can only react to the immediate viewer and the space. With projected video, the work unfolds over both time and space.

If film is record, a memory of an event or space, then projection is capable of blending both past and present in the actual space, as Whitman, Naimark, and the White Stripes et. al have shown us.

“The thing about theater that most interests me is that it takes time. Time for me is something material. I like to use it that way. It can be used in the same way as paint or plaster or another material. It can describe other natural events.” -- Robert Whitman, in Michael Kirby's "Happenings" (1965)