By Rachel O’Reilly
Considering that spectators’ active involvement with moving images in public was happening long before the computer (Andreas Broekmann), Kekou considers historical analysis in this area as a history of “activation” – of new and creative forms of public projections becoming visible.
Citing Abel Gance’s 1927 cubist film Napoleon as a key early film for urban projection theory, Eva Kakou’s paper (presented by a colleague) first addressed cinematic and videographic pre-histories of urban screen projection as a means to appraise contemporary work in the city. Other film history mentioned included expanded cinema, John Cage and Ronald Nameth’s hpschd (1969) Robert Whitman, Happenings, and Jeffrey shaw’s Movie Movie (1969) which multiplied and mobilized the screen. Video practice from the 70’s onwards was brought in to parallel, especially “closed circuit” installation (e.g. Bruce Naumann) linking subjectivity to public screen experience, and video installation experiences to dissipated or dispersed observers.
Kakou then drew on Rokeby’s digital aesthetics (“creating relationships rather than finished objects”), Bourriard on the sociality of contemporary art’s spatial practices and Manovich on public and ubiquitous computing to argue that today’s landscape of public projection practices and experiences are even richer. The taxonomy Kakou suggests, includes:
- ephemeral cinematic projections within the urban fabric ( e.g. London’s Secret Cinema group for which viewers are electronically informed about the new location of each new projection screen – this in opposition to the stability of the contemporary movie house);
- alternative uses of urban information screens [and networks?] (e.g. Michelle Teran’s “Frilufts kino” – querying the public’s depiction and presentation of itself through migratory and economic imageries of surveillance);
- the appropriation of existing [commercial?] projections within the urban fabric – promoting new audiences and different engagements (e.g. Jenny holzer’s appropriation of “historically large screens” – normally relays for public events or flat worlds of advertising – in Truisms, re-negotiating the city as an apparatus of spectacle.)
- urban screens and telematic displacement – eg. Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, Hole in space (1980)
Other urban projection works discussed included Stefhan Caddick’s Storyboard 2005, Rafael Loazono-Hammer, Under Scan, 2008; the Chaos Computer Club’s…..Blinkenlights; and Paul Sermon’s – Liberate You’re Avatar.
The paper gave close attention to the complexity of urban projection practice to consider the work that projection artists do critiquing technology in public domains, impacting upon the performance and interpretation of the city, and querying decorum and public space (Virillio).