The exploration of the spatial conditions of film and its presentation is as old as the medium itself. Time and again efforts have been made to render visible the parameters inherent in the medium or that had been laid down as standards, or to overcome them and to recognize their accompanying perceptual practices. This subject was intensely examined as early as in the 1920s with the establishment of movie theaters, from which, especially, vigorous impetus with respect to reflection on the projection equipment emerged.
After World War II, it was experimental film, Expanded Cinema, and film installations that advanced the discussion about spatial conditions. In the process, attention was increasingly given, on the one hand, to new architectural conditions of film presentation, such as, for example, the museum, public space, and the gallery. On the other hand, the aspects of perception and the interaction between image, space, and recipient clearly gained importance. Reflection on space increasingly meant dealing with the aspects of motion, processuality, and continuous becoming.
The idea of a spatially open form of filmic presentation did not first emerge in the second half of the twentieth century, but dates right back to the initial years of film. It was precisely in the early years, when film was not yet integrated into movie theater architecture, that a visionary examination of the presentation of this new medium took place. Not only the filmic image, but also the technology and the spectacle of the presentation were part of large-scale productions in penny arcades, winter gardens, and revues. However, the very different forms of the spatial experience of film were soon confronted with the rapid propagation of a cinema setting that defined itself by rows of seating, an invisible projector, and darkened screening rooms. While this setting would subsequently become the dominating form, the original variety of forms of filmic presentation disappeared in favor of what was now an established cinema paradigm. Only in few cases did approaches that went beyond the cinema apparatus survive, of which various architectural and theater designs deserve particular mention.
For the International Building Trade Exhibition in Leipzig (1913), Bruno Taut developed the Monument des Eisens (Monument of Iron) in the form of a film projection dome that did not correspond with the classic viewer arrangement of the movie theater but with that of an observatory.[1] Projections were not made onto a screen in front of the audience, but could completely surround them or span the dome’s ceiling.
In a similar spirit, Walter Gropius and Erwin Piscator somewhat later collaborated on an idea for a total theater (1927) in which the expanded film actually became a primary element for Gropius. He writes: In my ‘total theater,’ I not only envisioned the option of film projection for the three deep stages onto the entire cyclorama with the aid of a system of movable film projectors, I also plan to project films onto the walls and ceilings of the entire auditorium. . . . The projection room takes the place of the previous projection level (cinema).[2]
Works by László Moholy-Nagy may also be seen as a continuation of this concern with issues regarding the overlapping of architecture, spatial images, and projected light. Moholy-Nagy consistently explored this dynamic relationship in his publications on the relationship between urban space, photography, and montage, and in his well-known Light-Space Modulator. Furthermore, in his idea for a simultaneous or polycinema,[3] as well as in designs for his project Dynamic of the Metropolis,[4] he time and again opened up new questions with respect to light projection and the perception of space.
The treatment of questions regarding color-light projection or so-called visual music represents a further developmental line of Expanded Cinema that distances itself somewhat from architectural issues. Oriented toward the then recent development of theater stage lighting, and in particular toward the legendary color-light performances by Loïe Fuller, in the early twentieth century, artists such as Thomas Wilfred, Alexander Rimmington, and Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné developed color organs and other technical devices (the Clavilux, the optophonic piano, etc.) initially intended to be used to create fundamentally different-colored light-similar to sounds — that could be experienced as freely floating in space.[5] This examination of the possibilities of freely playing with colors would, however, soon influence the treatment of the possibilities of presenting film. In the tension between color-light projections and abstract film and their differing esthetics, increasing understanding developed for the relationship between color-light projections and their reference to space. The impressions of these very differently arranged color-light presentations would markedly gain in importance, in particular for the experimental filmmakers of the 1950s and 1960s (such as, for instance, Jordan Belson and his considerations with respect to a space-consuming experience of film).
Long before the idea of Expanded Cinema had been formulated in full — before the coining of the term at the beginning in the late 1950s — the basic motifs of a discourse concerning the spatial expansion of film and its settings had already emerged.[6]
In his investigation of film and its historic development, in particular after 1945, Gilles Deleuze formulated a clear criticism of the lack of reflection on how film actually works. His considerations made reference to filmmakers such as Rossellini, Antonioni, and Godard, who deliberately broke with conventional cinematic traditions. This increasing scrutiny of the filmic apparatus not only became apparent with reference to film itself (montage, framing effect, etc.), but also clearly concerned the presentation venue for film — the cinema — and the circumstances in which films were shown. As early as in 1952, for instance, in his film Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade), by showing only a black or a white screen over the course of seventy-five minutes, Guy Debord attacked not only the established narrative practice of conventional films, he also deliberately cast doubt on the film’s venue and its technical equipment.[7] In the white sequences in particular — when texts on the subject of revolution and youth were read — the audience’s gaze frequently wandered to the movie theater’s architecture, which was otherwise hidden behind a veil of darkness. Thus, the way film works, for which Deleuze called for greater awareness, was extended by Debord to the venue itself.
This criticism of the cinema would several years later be continued by other members of the Situationist International founded by Debord. Not only the cinema, but the organization of urban space in its entirety was opened up for discussion. One project that united this growing criticism of the city and the cinema and sought new forms of presentation was Constant Nieuwenhuys’s New Babylon.[8] According to Constant, in this concept, which consisted of a wide variety of media and formats as well as the life led there, people were invited to liberate themselves from the rigid functional structure of the city and seek a more playful way of dealing with space as a topographical and urbanistic category.
In order to expand his space-related discussion so as to encompass cinema/film, Constant cooperated with the filmmaker Hy Hirsh, who in his film Gyromorphosis (1956) explored the spatial potential of light and color and, drawing on the idea of color-light music, in this way began a critical examination of the narrow spatial idea behind the cinema. The project dealt less with the issue of classic film projection, rather should be regarded more within the context of the sculptural light experiments conducted by László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, such as, for example, Light-Space Modulator (1930) and Light Display: Black-White-Gray (1930).[9]
In the 1950s, renewed interest was again shown in other fields of reference from the 1920s, such as visual music and the color-light organ. Criticism of the filmic apparatus was often no longer the primary interest, rather the expansion of the filmic experience. Harry Smith, for example, conceived his experiments with film not lastly in his intense examination of jazz, and he developed numerous projection ideas for musical performances at the Bop City jazz club in San Francisco.[10] Jordan Belson, Smith’s college friend of many years, also increasingly explored the idea of the visual concert outside the classic setting of the cinema. Beginning in 1957, Belson collaborated with Henry Jacobs to organize a series of film evenings at the Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco that became famous under the name Vortex Concerts. He not only used the particular architectural conditions of the planetarium with its vaulted projection dome, but also all of the technical equipment available there. Belson was thus not only able to show several films simultaneously, but also to superimpose them and insert them in parallel into one other and thus overcome the classic image-framing effect. He nevertheless emphasized that he was not attempting to simulate a psychedelic trip. He commented to Scott McDonald: I used the effects carefully. I wasn’t just blasting the audience psychedelically. It was all carefully composed, and synchronized with the music.[11] Thus the Vortex Concerts became a kind of controlled, expanding spatial experience that clearly set itself apart from the classic cinema setting. Making reference to these kinds of forms of presentation, it was in this spirit that Gene Youngblood coined the term expanded cinema.
That in addition to the resonance in the arts this expanded form of cinema was increasingly endorsed in the commercial sector is clearly demonstrated by a project that originated at virtually the same time as Belson’s Vortex idea. On the occasion of the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, Charles and Ray Eames collaborated with Richard Buckminster Fuller to develop a screening room for the multiscreen project Glimpses of the USA.[12] The intention behind this cinematographic installation was less of a critical or media-reflective nature than an affirmative one. Visitors to the installation could hardly escape the overwhelming immersive impression triggered by the images produced by this propaganda machine.
Beginning in the early 1960s, the number of stances that could be attributed to Expanded Cinema began to increase rapidly. More and more artists and filmmakers dealt with the question of the possibilities of breaking open conventional space- and production-related principles. In 1965, artists such as Claes Oldenburg (Moveyhouse), Carolee Schneemann (Ghost Rev), and the ONCE Group (Unmarked Interchange) created numerous works that precisely because they included performances undermined the customary behavior of cinema audiences.[13] These strategies were aggressively advanced a year later through Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Together with the band Velvet Underground, Warhol staged media fireworks in which the audience’s audiovisual sensorium came under constant fire. While films were shown simultaneously by up to five projectors, slides were presented, a disco ball sent beams of light out in all directions, stroboscopes flashed, Velvet Underground played a set, and different artists, such as Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar, performed. Not only was the perceptive capacity of the audience explored, so too was the capacity of a multimedia setting.[14] Standing at the controls, Andy Warhol time and again himself took on the role of director; as soon as he gained the impression that the audience had become accustomed to images or sequences and that a certain perceptual flux had developed, he intervened by changing the image or sound impulses, producing renewed irritation.
In contrast to this kind of scopious multisensorial practice, other versions of Expanded Cinema, such as Tony Conrad’s film The Flicker (1965), can only be called simple. Conrad did not rely on the addition of performative acts in order to expand the concept of cinema, but returned to the matrix, the elementary component of film: the individual image. The flickering black-and-white sequences in The Flicker led the neuronal reactions of the retina to become visible as afterimages, while some viewers perceived colors and spaces with great intensity.[15] By means of the interplay of these visual levels and the sound level accompanying the film, the strongly contrasting stimuli led to a conscious perception of seeing and hearing. In this case, the film idea was not only expanded into architectural space, but internally into the viewer; the viewer’s body presented itself as an essential part of the filmic apparatus.
Paul Sharits was also especially interested in these potentials for film. However, he moved away from flickering, purely black-and-white images such as Conrad’s. Instead, in his film sequences he showed in part different sequences of color (Shutter Interface) or built cells conceived specifically for his film installations (Epileptic Seizure Comparison), in which the audience was virtually visually bombarded with flickering films of epileptic seizures and had to be warned of the risk of themselves experiencing one.[16]
Liz Rhodes further explored the potential of the flicker effect in the 1970s by means of film installations likewise outside of the cinema and against the background of an idea for visual music, for example in her composition Light Music for two projectors. The exploration of Expanded Cinema not only led viewers to more frequently examine museum or gallery architecture, but questions with respect to an alternative cinema architecture also reemerged in which above all the relationship between sound and image (due to the continually improving technological possibilities) played an increasingly important role. Within this context, Stan Vanderbeek would develop a series of projections for his Movie-Drome, created in 1965, and in 1972, Hélio Oiticica conceived a series of so-called quasi-cinemas, such as the project CC5 Hendrix-War in collaboration with the filmmaker Neville D’Almeida.[17] Lying in hammocks, the audience was enveloped in a spatial image-sound atmosphere in which the focus was on a conscious physical experience.
As the question with respect to the expansion of the cinema was more often addressed, other questions arose as regards how film makes reference to art forms such as sculpture or performance. Anthony McCall, who time and again sounded out the relationship between film and the medium of sculpture, is considered one of the most well-known representatives. In his solid light films, such as his 1973 Line Describing a Cone, he used smoke to stage the ray of light being emitted by projectors in the darkness of the room between the projector and the screen in such a way that the people walking about in the screening room felt it was palpable. These works by McCall would exercise a great influence on artists such as Bruce McClure, who began producing films in the early 1990s.
In his works, McClure placed more emphasis on the processuality of the screening by using the projector like an instrument with which one could experiment during the projection. In much the same way as Barbara Rubin, who in her early work Christmas on Earth (1963) provided screening instructions for influencing the projection of the film, in this case McClure, too, modified the normal progression of films in his screenings by using stencils, sound pedals, pigments, and so forth, such as in Black & Blue-Yellowed (2001), thus making the film experience a unique live experience. Other representatives of this spreading form of experimental film are, for example, Luis Recoder, Sandra Gibson, and Jürgen Reble and Thomas Köner. In their performance Alchemie (Alchemy; 1992), in particular the latter again took up a history of visual music. In this case, for instance, a 16 mm film freely hanging in the screening room was constantly altered by Reble through the application of different chemical substances directly onto the filmstrip. These interventions changed the image in an alchemistic way, while Köner created a live sound mix based on the noises emitted by the projector.
These spatial approaches, in which the entire body again became a multisensory field of experience, would also become more and more important for other contexts, such as concerts or audiovisual installations, and to this day they continue to be an interesting field for artistic explorations of the interaction between image and sound. This kind of live cinema can thus certainly be considered a link between the traditional forms of Expanded Cinema and the newer forms of VJing developed at concerts and in clubs.
[1] See http://www.landesausstellung1905.de/index.php?id=305, accessed August 3, 2009.
[2] Walter Gropius, “Vom modernen Theaterneubau, unter Berücksichtigung des Piscatortheaterneubaus in Berlin,” in Erwin Piscator: Eine Arbeitsbiographie in 2 Bänden, vol. 1: Berlin 1916-1931, eds. Knut Boeser and Renata Vatková (Berlin: Frölich und Kaufmann, 1986), 148-149, here 149. — Trans. R. v. D.
[3] Cf. László Moholy-Nagy, “Das simultane oder Polykino,” in Malerei Fotografie Film, Bauhausbücher, vol. 8, ed. Hans M. Wingler (1927; facsimile repr., Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2000), 39-41. Available online at http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/quellentext/24/, accessed August 3, 2009.
[4] László Moholy-Nagy, “Dynamik der Groß-Stadt,” in Malerei Fotografie Film (1921-1922; facsimile repr., Mainz: Florian Kupferberg, 1967), 120-135.
[5] Thomas Wilfred, “Composing in the Art of Lumia,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 7, no. 2 (December 1948): 79-93, here 89.
[6] On the coining of the term see, in particular: Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970).
[7] Thomas Y. Levin, “‘Ciné qua non’: Guy Debord und die filmische Praxis als Theorie,” in Kunst/Kino, Jahresring 48, Jahrbuch für moderne Kunst, ed. Gregor Stemmrich (Cologne: Oktagon, 2001), 17-29.
[8] The manifesto for this project is available online at http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html, accessed August 3, 2009.
[9] Hy Hirsh, “Statement,” in Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in America, eds. Gerald O’Grady and Bruce Posner (Boston: Harvard Film Archives, 1997), 12.
[10] Smith in an interview with P. Adams Sitney. See Film Culture 37 (Summer 1965): 5.
[11] Scott MacDonald, “Jordan Belson (and collaborator Stephen Beck),” in A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 74.
[12] See Beatriz Colomina, “Die Multimedia-Architektur der Eames,” in Umwidmungen: Architektonische und kinematographische Räume, eds. Gertrud Koch, Robin Curtis, and Marc Glöde (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2005), 22-35.
[13] Matthias Michalka, ed., X-Screen: Filmische Installationen und Aktionen der Sechziger- und Siebzigerjahre (Cologne: König, 2004).
[14] Branden W. Joseph, “‘My Mind Split Open’: Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable,” Grey Room 8 (Summer 2002): 80-107.
[15] Ute Holl, “Trance-Formationen: Tony Conrads Flickerfilm von 1966,” in Auflösung, ed. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (Berlin: Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, 2006), 29-37.
[16] Alf Bold, ed., Paul Sharits. Kinemathek, no. 72, vol. 25 (Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 1988), 29.
[17] Michalka, X-Screen, 40-45.
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