Historical panoramas were invented because people wanted to see many times and spaces at once, while cinema has from its inception also been a means to envision a more expansive and more detailed reality. Muybridge’s motion studies, PainlevÈ’s seahorses, and Brakhage’s sea of nameless greens all realize Vertov’s KINO EYE, extending human perception. The science of biomimetics tries to get machines to see how humans do, but tonight’s artists use cinematic machines to see beyond the human and even induce the sense of a body that you don’t have. Featuring Robert Schaller’s My Life as a Bee, made with a pinhole camera; Kurt Kren’s matte box virtuosity in Asyl; Urban Episodes by Steina, part of her “Machine Vision” series; Orkan Telhan’s immersive virtual environment On Escape, and going straight from camera obscura to DV, Ernie Gehr’s weightless Glider. (Konrad Steiner)
Sunday, May 2, 2004
Excellent Adventures in Visual Space
California College of the Arts