laurie spiegel : an installation

Common now at galleries of any size are numerous looping films, of varying interest, aesthetic merit, typically deviating from traditional narrative.  I propose a larger and bolder project, of which here I only provide the most cursory notes and directions.  Others, more oriented to detail and with the capital means for execution, can fund and implement this installation, should they find it sufficiently worthy.

1.      laurie spiegel uses the five senses (expressed, for example, through film, music, incense, food, textures) and their varying absences, strategically choreographed for effective interplay and effect.

2.      While, ideally, the installation would shift in physical space—across the earth and beyond it—to accommodate its objective of simulated infinity, this may—with our present technology—be impractical, as it would entail the viewer being shifted in space without the aesthetic-sensuous experience being interrupted in any meaningful sense.  In the interim, this simulated infinity should itself be simulated through facades and sets (whether campy, ironic, lifelike, surreal, etc.) which partially or wholly are recreated in a permanent or shifting space, perhaps in a dedicated gallery, in a dedicated space within a larger gallery, or in a space not typically called a gallery.  In terms of existing galleries, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal would be suitable.  In terms of spaces not typically called a gallery, the Joint Defence Space Research Facility Pine Gap near Alice Springs would be suitable.  Regardless, if indoors, the dedicated space should be sufficiently large as to give the impression of boundlessness, whenever required, shifting its environmental effects as necessary, as input(s) to the spontaneously and choreographed aesthetic whole.

3.      I call this infinitely expanding work laurie spiegel, in honor and admiration.

4.      laurie spiegel is infinite.  While looping elements are present, elements shift in relation to one another such that (disregarding for the moment the reality of the viewer’s perpetual heraclitean shiftings) no combined sensuous experience repeats itself.  Thus, for example, Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates may play 39 times in a century (approximately 0.006% of the time or 1 in 50,000) and while there may be—or as likely not—a few overlaps with Land of Kush’s Monogamy, exact synchronicity between audio and video would be highly improbable and, even in the rare instance of occurrence, the other sensuous factors (smell, taste, touch), the shifting environment (whether ‘real’ or ‘simulated’ or a simulation of simulation), and the viewer’s own state will combine as to make the occurrence seem to be different, even as two July afternoons in different years, similar in meteorological effect and the same two humans picnicking in the same park, will be experienced as varied events, perhaps even more unlike than events more superficially disparate.  (The tunnels, or wormholes, in the narratives of our lives—what we more scientifically call time—appear and contract according to principles barely understood.)

5.      Precise synchronicity between or among elements intended by their designated creators to be synchronous (e.g. the soundtrack to The Holy Mountain advancing synchronously with the advancing video to The Holy Mountain) could be programmed into laurie spiegel so as to be more likely to occur, the likelihood being a parameter in the program.  Or the volume of material could be such that (along with an acceptance of randomness or possibly a facilitation of it through a parameter setting) intended synchronicity is highly unlikely to occur, like finding Hamlet in Borges’ Library of Babel.  A great discovery, to be sure, if it happens (whether one is familiar with the source or not might vary how one perceives the greatness) but not necessarily necessary to one’s enjoyment.  (One could suggest that laurie spiegel challenges, subverts [and even strangely fulfills, through the principle of mirrors] our assumptions of authorial intent and control, individuality, time and history, causality, and freedom.)

6.  The common prototype for "unintentional" video-audio synchronicity is, of course, Dark Side of the Rainbow, about which awed aficionadi point out at least 168 precise and shocking synchronicities.  But these aweful ones are obvious neophytes in AV synchronous experimentation.  Try Dark Side of the Moon with Svankmajer's Alice; The Expanding Universe with Santa Sangre; Ege Bamyasi with Planet Earth's Ocean Deep; F♯ A♯ ∞ with Cremaster I or IV; The Seer with Futurama's The Beast with a Billion Backs ... or, indeed, any particular kind of music with any particular kind of moving image.  Whether such experiments yield knowledge of pattern generation, whether they challenge or even crumble knowledge of the supposed integrity, containment and control of aesthetic vision, intent and individuality, whether they do other things in or to the realms of generation, annihilation, and identity, may be subservient,  in the moment of aesthetic experience, immersion, to the reconstituted and reconstituting reconstitutions.  laurie spiegel, then, is an experiment in the construction and decimation of reconstituting reconstitutions in the human, aided by a choreography of art and technology, strategy and chance, experimental research into whether all meaning is a form of apophenia.

7.      The infinity referred to in #4 above is achieved in our installation through a program not dissimilar from Spiegel’s mouse in intent.  Preset lists of movies (chosen primarily for their imagistic content:  perhaps 5,000 – 10,000 films and clips, allowing too for the absence of video), music (etc.) would be drawn on and combined, according to principles—including randomness—themselves built into the program.  laurie spiegel would have an adaptive aesthetics built into it, aiming for a constantly regenerative range of moods, effects, experiments, surprises, failures, ecstasies.  What is really distinctive about laurie spiegel is the compositional logic, the logic by which the various sensuous inputs and rhythms evolve and are constructed by the computer algorithms.

8.      One can imagine viewers dedicated to a lifetime immersed in this simulated world, who spend their lives at (or perhaps more accurately in) the installation, who are even placed there at birth by parents or the state and are taken to the grave from the installation (perhaps their corpses even being incorporated into its aesthetics).  This is no less experimental and perhaps contains more grounded hope than those who cryopreserve themselves; examined from a different context, it is little different than being immersed in a world of banking, law or domesticity—worlds into which some children are essentially placed at birth and which can easily be considered equally simulated.

9.      One can also imagine viewers being able to affect the programming, not simply in terms of how their inner states inevitably alter how they receive it, but in terms of active or passive voice- or other user- response/detection systems, whereby, for example, the synthetic cloud formations—colour, type, speed, quantity, etc.—on the “sky” are a concatenated reflection of the moods and emotional responses of those present at the installation at the time (which will include lifers, long-terms, short-termers, novices, repeaters).

10.      But we have omitted an important element!:  the courtiers, maids and servants, waiters and dancers, serving food, lighting incense, stroking attendees with feathers, throwing Play-Doh at them, poking them with paperclips, etc., perhaps on occasion committing (or appearing to commit) inappropriate, transgressive or even atrocious acts on the flesh, thus mirroring aspects of history and the soul, the vaudeville of excess in the flesh supporting and strangely mirroring the vaudeville of excess in art.

11.  The supporting fleshy cast—why not?—could (should? must?) exchange itself with the observers, such that the two casts (castes) become indistinguishable, a new effective democracy, whereby roles can be and are routinely exchanged so that they are primarily virtual and so never ossified.

12.  The entire enterprise itself should be filmed, subtly integrating itself into the simulated dramas, perhaps eventually overcoming it.  (Can we not imagine a series of future wars between laurie spiegel as defined by the compositional logic, the attributes of its program … and laurie spiegel as produced by the production of laurie spiegel, by that which is born of its attributes?)

13.  In this process, do play and replay, viewer and viewed, sense and nonsense, reality and simulation, life and art, become indistinguishable?  Isn’t this a question of the installation?  Isn’t this the question it seeks?

14.  Laurie Spiegel, the human and musician, is the patron saint of the transtechnological imagination and intercedes on behalf of artists everywhere in their quests to stay on the way of the imaginative spirit, not falling into the pit of product or the chasm of commerce.

15. 
An Example

Play Can’s Tago Mago with The Colour of Pomegranates and patchouli incense.

Tago Mago vinyl.  Film on a circular screen no less than 50 m high, using the 78’ Armenian version.

LP, film, & incense should begin simultaneously, a new stick of incense should be lit at the beginning of each of Tago Mago’s songs.  The final 4.5 minutes of the film will play in silence.

On the island of Tago Mago, outdoors, the audience seated around the island’s edge and the presumably inflatable screen at an appropriate distance on the water, circumscribing the island in its entirety.

The stage manager should be dressed as Donald Duck and the roaming technician as a 15^th c ashik, playing original compositions on the chonguri prior to and following the film.

This module should be performed and performed in this way and in this place and by these people and for this time to please the father of Sarai Milton, mother of Tlön.

The following foods should be served during the film/lp:dill pickles from Prague; Nova Scotian sour cherries tended and plucked by virgins; sustainably produced Ecuadorian burglar’s thighs blessed by a Kichwa shaman, Beninois fufu, and fried Chinese dog.

A troupe of topless ambient and general practitioners should roam among the observers, occasionally grazing nipples and toes against the observing heads, slapping those who respond.

16.  Preliminary Lists of Sense and Environmental Artifacts

16.1 Preliminary and Incomplete List of Films and Clips

Schroeter (Deux, Eika Kapatta), Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, Fando y Lis), Barney (Cremaster Cycle), Kurosawa (Ran), Parajanov (The Colour of Pomegranates), Elfin Saddle (Wurld), Tarkovsky (Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Mirror, Solaris), Svankmajer (Alice, Little Otik, Conspirators of Pleasure, Shorts), Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange), Bunuel (Andalusian Dog), Vertov (Man with a Movie Camera), Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes), Boorman (Zardoz), Ivory (Savages), Noé (Enter the Void), Bergman (Persona, The Seventh Seal), Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry), Tarr (Sátántangó, The Turin Horse), Gilliam (Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), Lipský (I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen), Herzog (Wrath of God), Scott (Blade Runner), Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive), Maysles (Grey Gardens), Waters (Pink Flamingos), Carax (Holy Motors), Dreyer, (Passion of Joan of Arc), Franju (Eyes Without a Face), Friedkin (The Exorcist), Mitchell (Behind the Green Door), Episodes (from Futorama, Simpsons, Dr Who, X-Files, Twin Peaks, etc.), Various shorts etc., Certain commercials, etc. …

16.2 Preliminary and Incomplete List of Audio

Bach (Gould’s second recording of The Goldberg Variations; The Art of Fugue), Land of Kush (Monogamy), Evangelista (Hello, Voyager), Selections from Colin Stetson, Arvo Pārt, Laurie Spiegel, Daphne Oram, Can (Tago Mago, Soundtracks, Delay, Monster Movie, Ege Bamyasi), Velvet Underground, Swan (The Seer), Scott Walker (Bish Bosch), King Crimson, Shalabi Effect, Ali Akbar Khan, Aphex Twin, Beck, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Holger Czukay, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane, Led Zeppelin, Matana Roberts, Matmos, Nine Inch Nails, Mira Calix, Omar Souleyman, Queens of the Stone Age, Raymond Scott, Sonic Youth, Sun City Girls, This Heat, Autechre, Zoviet France, Blonde Redhead, Silver Mt Zion, Godspeed!You Black Emperor, The Books, Exuma, Elizabeth Cotton, Fugazi, John Cage, Meredith Monk, Miles Davis, Morton Subotnick, Parliament, Stephan Micus, Steve Reich, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, Hanged Up, Janis Joplin, Nina Simone, Pink Floyd, Portishead …

16.3 Preliminary List of Scents

This and the following Preliminary Lists remain to be drafted.

16.4 Preliminary List of Tastes

16.5 Preliminary List of Textures

16.6 Preliminary List of Locations

16.7 Preliminary List of Lighting and Lasers

(Constantly adapted based on viewers, technological advance, evolution of consciousness)

16.8 Preliminary List of Props and Servants

16.9 Preliminary List of Other Devices, Artifacts, Methods and Interrelations

For example, other art forms (painting, architecture, dance, video games, liturgical rites, sculpture, photography, printmaking) should be included.