Syndicate: once upon a time III

["Ventsislav Zankov" <venci@osf.acad.bg>]

Sharing the effort to find, to keep and preserve, we embalm our
memory, we get rid of our tiny sweet remembrances. We have desperately
tried to get over time, to fight oblivion, and yet . . we forgot that
they hide this precise selection, that they lend this subtle
decoration, that they keep the doors to eternity.

We gracefully led our feelings to memory, memories on their turn
ignite emotions, that belong to the past, yet still keep feeding the
present.

Collective memory gives birth to myths and legends: history can only
kill them with its cool objectivity.

As long as the Past has not been caught into the claws of History, it
is still breathing.

The facts we invent, the documents we produce, the symbols we grasp:
we've tried really hard to keep the Past, to have it fixed, polished
and properly esteemed. To have it always in front of us, neatly
arranged on the shelves of the years and centuries. To have it always
at hand at moments when relief is needed. When paragon is needed. When
punishment is sought. When reason is to be found or a lesson to be
learnt. Our childhood memories tell us about the lessons hidden in the
fairly tales, yet they also tell us that lessons come last. 

Let us assume that today we are finally facing the end of History, the
end of our history at least, then maybe the Past will be brought to
life again, life then may never be the same. And let us finally
recognize the Apocalypse, we've waited for so long, and see behind the
anxiety to become different. 

The fear to get rid of all imperatives of History, to discard ethics,
aesthetics, morality and law. The grounds for our own existence,
falling apart around us. The fear to lose our barren values, lost for
good in the labyrinths of politics, the modes of rationality, the laws
of economics, the everyday life of everyday concerns. We simply do not
need them, yet nobody dares to admit it, to articulate it into words.
We still fear the unimaginable consequences to setting free 'the
evil'. We are still part of the effort to keep `what is good'.

It would e senseless to lend our memory to the artificial memory.
Chased away by our fear for oblivion we get over time and space: we
enter the network with brace hearts, pretending we don't feel the
amnesia, befalling on us. Communications, media, and artificial memory
push us towards total amnesia, yet this is our chance to survive the
memory of objects, the memory of History, our collective memory. . . 

It may be painful and fearsome to lend14 our bodies to the virtual
worlds that invite us, to surrender to the alien dreams, waiting for
us. How about if they remind us of HELL? How about if we proudly
subject our bodies to the perfect artificiality, to the superb
subtlety and immortality that modern medicine can helpfully provide?
We will be the living mummies of the next century. WE-E-E-E-LL, we've
tried hard to keep to our material world, didn't we?  

Here we go again . . . let's get over time, let's fight space. You
don't have remember things any more, surrender to your new memories,
to your virtual memories. Be brave: surrender to the memory of things
that have never been and hope for the myths about the people from the
Christian Eon to come out . . . somehow.  

It is maybe that the computers, that have taken our memory, will bring
us back to our memories, the living memories about the human kind.

We are facing the end of our century, with the appropriate foretelling
about our future. . . Waiting for the Anti- Christ to appear. At last.
It seems we badly need him. . .

Yet cathedrals will survive . . .we still have the chance to let time
pass by, ruin and destroy, and give a chance to memories to come back
alive. I guess we may call it "entropy", or we may call it anything we
like: it will be still the chaos flooding on us . . . we still have
our ultimate responsibility in our hands: to be ourselves.

The sea of Oblivion may drown us, but this is our chance to become
different. The Past can survive Oblivion and come back to life in the
Present. Past will never be the same anyway, yet it can breath again
in its legend. 

1 Portapak is the first portable, ½ inch film video camera, produced
by the SONY Corporation in the mid-60ies, that appeared on the
American market in 1968.

2 The Random Access Memory is also essential. Unlike the video tape
where the access is linear, the access to memory in computer
technologies is random similar to the functioning of the brain. The
ways information is processed in computer technologies resembles the
way in which the brain processes memories and emotions during the
active phase of dreaming. Virtual realities in general and computer
animation in particular become our new electronic dreams. If we assume
that video art abides the technology of seeing then it comes out that
computer-generated images belong to the technology of dreaming.
Computer art is rooted in the technique of dreaming.

3 A parallel with the road maps is implied here, which present a
scheme of the road network with its highways. (allusions about
information highways, terminals and hosts).

4 Rassim Krastev, a young Bulgarian video artist recorded with a video
camera a TV screen on which invisible spectator randomly switches from
one satellite channel to another. Among the well known satellite
programs the author inserted short cuts from his everyday life, shot
live, with no montage or any logical sequence: like phone
conversations, bodybuilding sessions, love making. The impression is
that the author's personal life is on TV, together with the popular
satellite TV programs. Maybe it is the author's  sincere intention to
set his everyday life bits in the context of TV shows, movie stars,
etc.

5 Wulf Herzogenrath or his idea about the mirror room, similar to the
work of Dan Graham `Present Continuous Past, 1974. Live camera and TV
screen play like a mirror in this case. The camera reflects the
spectator in the present moment and the TV screen give a reflection
three seconds later. The spectator can see his paste, that just
passed, or his present, that is already passing by. By the words of
the artist this work is a philosophical essay on Perception, Being,
Past and Present.

6 A kind of a dress rehearsal `The WAR in the Gulf LIVE'.

7 One of the simplest and most telling examples of a Closed Circuit
Installation in Video Art is the work of Nam June Paik `TV
BUDHA'/1974. A wooden sculpture of Budha is placed in front of a TV
set, with its image LIVE, transmitted by a video camera. The TV
picture is live, static and motionless.

8 Nam June Paik, Richard Nixon Videotape study N3, 1967-69. Together
with Jud Yalkut they distort and manipulate the picture of the
on-going TV show. This is their way to comment the policy and the
message of the TV show.

9 One man exhibition at the New School for Social Research: `Nam June
Paik: Electronic TV, Colour TV Experiments, 3 Robots, 2 Zen Boxes & 1
Zen Can'. TV sets are used in this exhibition to give the spectator
the chance to join the production of TV images. One of the works,
presented at the exhibition (Life Ring, 1965) comprises of an electric
magnet, ring-shaped, placed in front of a TV set, The magnet
interferes with the light waves and as a result they visualize the
magnet waves themselves. These experiments introduced the pattern of
spectator controlled TV. This concept is basic to all Paik's work. 

10 It is probably a sheer coincidence that the social and political
collisions in the States during 60ies run parallel to the extensive
introduction of video technologies on the market. We see in different
ways, documentary videos are a good example, alternative TV may be
another one. Feminists found their video, their electronic image and
response.

11 Studio Azzurro il nuotatore 1984

12 In the meantime Bill Gates bought all copyrights over the Louvre
digital collection.

13 Portable cameras provides the evidence we need in our personal
lives, it creates our personal history. Every significant step we make
should be recorded: we need to remember that we got married, that we
were here and there, felt this way or that way, some really boring
hours filled with videotape.

14 Motion capture: for the purposes of animation it is already a
practice. During certain computer simulations actors may lend their
bodies as a source of movement, his task being to act the motion. Via
the sensors on the body of the actor the computer interprets it as a
material for movement, further the computer may lend any body to the
movement lened by the actor. This holds not only for the movements of
the body: the movements of face, caused by emotions may also be
interpreted this way. The computer memorizes the movement of
expression and lend it to any other face. 
Ventsislav Zankov
Freelance Artist & Lecturer
Video Art
Theatre Department
New Bulgarian University
21 'Montevideo' Str.
Sofia 1635
Bulgaria
phone ++359 2 95591 39
      ++359 2 5585 70
fax   ++359 2 55 82 62
www.photone.ch/zankov/index.html
home phone/fax: ++359 2 569 682
e-mail: vzankov@mont.nbu.acad.bg