Passages of Light

While this research primarily addresses artists’ film and video, it should first be noted that some practitioners working in a mainstream context, such as the Hollywood studio system, pursue unusual and occasionally progressive moving image display formats for creative effect. Director Ang Lee and cinematographer John Toll exemplify this in their recent demonstration of a complex high frame rate 3D projection system created for the exhibition of their recent production Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016), proclaimed by Benjamin Bergery (2016, p. 34) “a glimpse of the future of cinema”. Outside this mainstream context, however, Catherine Elwes (2015, p. 2) points toward more prevalent and longstanding tendencies to expand, create and interrogate alternative exhibition techniques amongst artists’ film and video work, stating that “the co-existence of the mimetic enterprise of the image and the concreteness of its material support, framed by the volumetrics of the gallery space, resolve not so much into contradiction as an unfolding dialogue.” An exposition of light in moving imagery concerns this entire process of capture and display. This means that any detailed consideration will be necessarily entwined with a chain of events: from a source of illumination at the point of capture through to the projection system and the viewer perceiving its resulting images at the point of display. Sharon Russell (1981, p. 40) summarises this centrality when arguing that “the physics of light governs not only the transmission but also the process which transforms the profilmic into the filmic.” While the discussion of light in moving imagery is typically limited to an arrangement of sources, filters and modifiers to sculpt the aesthetic appearance of surfaces within a two dimensional image, it should also encompass these intentional orchestrations of capture and display processes that allow practitioners to present moving imagery in specific configurations - a distinction I will refer to as the light ‘of’ an image as opposed to the light ‘within’ an image.

In the process of outlining metaphors to connect camera mechanisms with the human eye, William Wees (1992, p. 25) puts forward control over this passage of light as a central tenet in experimental practices, suggesting that moving images “represent the same kind of ʻflowʼthat impinges on the retina, the only difference being that their ʻflowʼ is shaped by the filmmaker through the materials and processes of the cinematic apparatus”. Following this phenomenological approach, a huge range of possibilities could be available to a practitioner exploring the light of moving images, and in this contextual passage I will outline several common methods of exploiting a ʻflowʼ of light to demonstrate such potential. Artists’ film and video works often draw upon the aforementioned cinematic configurations as a subject of investigation, seeking to expose or deconstruct the tools and conventions behind mainstream moving images that are designed for exhibition in a theatrical context. 

A brief examination of  Mark Lewis’ work shows the potency of engaging with cinematic conventions in this critical manner. In his Venice Biennale project Nathan Phillips Square, A Winter’s Night Skating (2009), for example, an unnerving tension emerges between analogue and digital through the use of traditional rear projection, which involved filming an ice rink on 35mm celluloid and projecting the resulting images in a studio as a backdrop for actors performances during digital capture. The superimposed relationship between these image forms is foregrounded through the exhibition of the work as a large lifesized projection, bringing into light the artificiality of cinematic techniques such as rear projection through this merger, as Lewis (2011, p. 125) attests: “an important visual transformation was achieved; for once film was ‘inside’ of film, film became truly modern: it could quote itself, it could use itself as its own material or subject matter.” Highlighting tensions between cinema and gallery environments, Jihoon Kim, a film scholar writing about the hybridity of film, video, and digital forms of moving imagery, suggests that works of this sort could be viewed as taking on a certain impurity caused by their appropriation and reinterpretation of cinema, insofar as they refer to cinema both as a form derived from film’s material and technical components and as a discourse illustrating cinema’s cultural and institutional influence on the visual arts. (2016, p. 243)

In one sense then, manipulation of the passage of light in moving imagery affords practitioners the ability to engage with and react to these cinematic configurations toward a critique of mainstream norms, by deconstructing conventional production and exhibition techniques, and also through the celebration of mainstream norms by re-working or re-mixing iconic films in their work.

Although manipulating passages of light during production, these faux cinematic works still uphold a lens-based Renaissance perspective that Cubitt (2014, pp. 220-221) suggests arises from a lineage of wealth and privilege so deeply ingrained it is often forgotten. To explore how practitioners can manipulate the light of moving imagery in ways that eschew this power structure, it is necessary to look elsewhere in the field of artists’ film and video. Perhaps the most apparently suitable work falls under the category of direct animation, during which artists work physically with celluloid and avoid camera mechanisms altogether by scratching or marking film to create various impressions of light when the material is later projected. Vicky Smith’s Primal (2016), for example, is an abstract animation created through a direct manipulation of film whereby she rubbed an unprocessed fogged negative. Discussing this work, Karel Doing (2017) suggests that an impression of space prevails for the viewer despite the absence of a camera during the creation process; he describes, “the piece starts with a small gap in the middle of the frame, permitting a golden coloured and dancing light to shine on the screen. The gap widens and starts to take shape, producing an illusion of an organically formed space.” This work, then, reveals the moving image as simple alternations of light and darkness, varying the shape and size of the eroded gap across each frame of the filmstrip to either allow or restrict the passage of illumination and creating an impression of forward motion within the projected candle-esque apparition. 

An example of this practice, Smith’s work is representative of experimental animations, which assert physical processes directly onto a filmstrip to manipulate the projected light that constitutes moving imagery. Though often distinguished as a highly separate practice due to the context in which it emerged, experiments with video exploring signal/image processing, particularly the early constructions and configurations of synthesisers, can be seen as direct manipulations of this passage of light in a similar vein. Originally created in a live exhibition environment, not dissimilar to the performative screenings of the experimental animation just outlined, Stephen Beck’s Video Weavings (1977) offers insight about this control over the light of the moving image through its constantly shifting colour sequences and mathematical patterns generated by electronic signal manipulation and generation. As Chris Meigh-Andrews (2014, p. 139) outlines, Beck saw his machine as an ‘electronic sculpting device’ designed to generate four key aspects of video image - colour, form, motion and texture… Beck’s stated concern was to open up television as an expressive medium and go beyond the manipulation of the conventional camera image to produce non-objective imagery.

Given the light-based nature of video, the key aspects Beck refers to here could be taken as direct qualities of light (colour, form, motion and texture), in which case Video Weavings and other synthesised works can be seen as a manipulation of the passage of light of the moving imagery via control of its electronic signal. Both these examples eschew typical camera-oriented production processes, and in so doing, break from a representation of space according to Renaissance perspective and instead attempt to work directly with the light intrinsic to their form, whether through celluloid or video.

Finally, the field of artist’s film and video demonstrates a further avenue through which practitioners might explore the light of moving images. While the works outlined thus far are predominately concerned with manipulations of light during processes of image formation, interventions at the point of display/projection also present a range of possibilities. Such works might alter surfaces upon which an image is projected to change appearance, as in the case of Bill Viola’s The Veiling (1995), which allows the beam of illumination from two projectors to permeate through nine layers of translucent scrim fabric in a darkened space. As Viola (1997, p. 120) describes in a later exhibition catalogue featuring the work, “cloth material diffuses the light and the images dissipate in intensity and focus as they penetrate further… the cone of light emerging from each project is articulated in space by the layers of material, revealing its presence as a three-dimensional form.” This use of multiple surfaces gives volume to the light of the image and evokes a sense of spatial distancing that ties into figures, represented in the imagery with separate channels depicting a man and woman in chiaroscuro lighting as they approach and move away from the camera. 

The Veiling (1995) is a superb example of what A. L. Rees, David Curtis, Duncan White and Steven Ball (2011) call 'expanded cinema’ in their edited collection about artwork that exploits the spatial configuration of projection. This can also be described in the terms I’ve outlined as working with the light of the image to control an audience’s viewing experience. Another method through which practitioners might manipulate the light of moving imagery at the point of display involves distorting, reflecting, adding to or combining projections of light, in order to alter spatial features depicted in the moving imagery in a distinct manner. Malcolm Le Grice’s Castle 1 (1966) provides an illuminating example of this, utilising film footage rescued from bins outside Soho post-production facilities in combination with a flashing light bulb hung in front of a screen - at particular intervals the incandescent bulb ignites, its throw of photons disrupting the ongoing projections and dazzling the audience by revealing their usually darkened surroundings. 

Works that manipulate passages of light toward unique configuration between audience and screen in this way are often captured under the umbrella term ‘expanded cinema’, which Elwes (2015, p. 170) defines as “an event that transforms space through the changing effects of projected light”. She goes on to highlight that “the crucial condition for the existence of the shaft of projected light is the absence of natural light”. Overall then, whether utilising and drawing attention to cinematic configurations of the passage of light in a critical manner, as in the work of Mark Lewis; or controlling the light of the image through direct interventions during processes of image formation, as in the work of Vicky Smith and Stephen Beck; or altering these darkened spaces toward new configurations between audience and screen, as in the work of Bill Viola and Malcolm Le Grice, the light ‘of’ moving imagery, that constitutes its projected or emitted form, can be a powerful realm for practitioners to explore across analogue and digital media.

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