Response: Moving the Moving Image
I attended the panel discussion at the Walker with Steina Vasulka, Christiane Robbins, and Amy M. Youngs. Honestly, I didn't particularly find myself grasping what the artists were attempting to do with their work. Vaulka's work was the most interesting I felt, mostly because the innovation of moving images with the use of sound at varying frequencies is an innovative concept. I suppose I was most intrigued by this because it shifts the control of the image slightly away from the artist to create something that is above them in a way by allowing technologies to discover patterns that did not previously exist. While the idea is good, I didn't really like the application of it. As a spectator, I did not find myself feeling moved by the images I saw. Robbins work seemed short of the mark as well. Her use of the camera to act as an eye observing the movement of cars on a highway was, again, an interesting idea, but I felt bored after a while just watching the a flat highway with the occasional car driving by, or the images cycle of the gas stations cycling over and over. In terms of it being a commentary on the impact of cars on the environment, I made that connection quickly, but then I had no where to go with it. Clearly burning fossil fuels is bad, but the piece stops there and simply becomes mundane movement. I felt stuck in the lurch watching it.
And then there were Amy's crickets. Watching those crickets barely moving around their fish bowl made me feel very dull with only tiny lurches in my brain chemistry when the screen images moved in response to the chirp of the cricket. And hey, maybe that's intentional. Moving the spectator to boredom can raise a lot of interesting questions and thoughts. For me, I found myself glad that I was not a cricket stuck in a bowl with minimal changes in scenery.
Instead, I'm a human frequently stuck in a car watching electronic billboards change as I drive by. It is good to examine boredom.