Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Gary Hill_Interview

In the last few years, technology became ubiquitous. Do you have the feeling that the more

it progresses, the more freedom there will be for some artists?

Being human means being technological but one must appropriate technology rather than be appropriated by it. The image is what has become ubiquitous, indeed, with the help of technology. And the image is what should put us on guard. The continual stream of changing images produces an unconscious fascination and this is what is dangerous when it goes unmediated. The speed at which technology changes and the “possibilities” that it offers are exponentially increasing with time. What were once gadgets are now everyday “must have” devices; what were once special effects are ordinary parts of the image language. When technology stops working we see what technology is. In a similar way when we become very ill or have a brush with death we feel the presence and vulnerability of life. I have surrounded myself with machines for making art and sometimes I think it's only so I can refute them.

Do you actually think of technological interactivity as something very different from the

interaction of the aesthetic experience?

“Interactive” is another overused term much like “installation”. The best description I've heard to differentiate these two notions of interactivity is by the terms "implicit" and "explicit". Implicit meaning interacting with the world at large (aesthetic experience or not) and explicit meaning there is some kind of technological interface with which a participant engages a work through/with. It wouldn't be difficult to add many subsets to these. This latter definition puts one in the loop with machines. It involves feedback and cybernetics. I think for an explicit interactive work to be successful, the interface and its complexity cannot feel self-conscious but instead are rather “natural” - one engages an explicit interactive work as easy as one drives a car. Many early explicit interactive works had the problem of forcing the participant into a self-conscious position every time a decision had to be made. For example: "you are here; where do you want to go; A, B, C, or D?". This was particularly true of CD-ROMs and other interactive “branching” media. Intuitive processes are halted by bringing you back to the surface - the technological script so to speak. Current interfaces are considerably more sophisticated and intuitive, nevertheless, one remains aware of the inter-face. There's something about it that's almost fetishistic and this is why in work that is powerful the question of interactivity is mute.

You started working with sculpture. At what point did you realize video was a good medium to deal with the phisicality of language?

My initial experience with video was very powerful. It seemed to have something to do with my nervous system having to do with feedback and watching myself see myself and “interacting” with this conversation. I was sitting inside a process and at the same time I could view the process from the outside. Maybe it was something comparable to one's first acid trip, or a certain kind of breakthrough in psychoanalysis or “the moment” in an extreme sport of some kind. Unfortunately, at least in retrospect, I became fascinated, or should I say, mesmerized by the electronic image - its architecture, how one could process it and manipulate it and so on. I was a pixel slave. It wasn't until the mid-seventies that I began to speak and use my body to interrupt the steady flow of images - the signal. At that point things got a lot more interesting for me.

In the 80's, many artists were using video in a rather static way.

Now we see video being used in the film industry, on the internet.... Do you actually

think all media are becoming more and more intermingled?

Once it's digital, there go the flood gates! The web is here to stay and “intermedia”, a term coined by the poet Dick Higgins decades ago, is so natural to the web that it will foster many more possibilities than it already has. Net art is going through a similar process that video did in its early stages. They are very related because of this notion of intermedia - not to mention the political implications that play into access and who controls and owns the media. The aesthetic possibilities of the net are not as interesting as the more conceptual based projects. It's important to realize that video, net art, etc. are linked to many sources in the past-its not just new technology and therefore new forms of art.

To what extent is meaning important in works like "Remarks on Color", that will be presented in São Paulo, and which consists on reading?

"Remarks On Color" is very much about meaning; how we agree on meaning even when, ultimately, we are not really sure what another person is precisely saying. We go on in dialogue, speaking and listening because we seek meaning - we want meaning in our lives and in the things around us. In "Remarks on Color" I've tried to externalize this process by having a child reading something that she understands very little of which changes the pronunciation and inflection. Its something like when one sees an optical illusion or when a word has a double meaning there is an instance when one crosses over and sees the other image or word/meaning. In this kind of space meaning doesn't feel fixed but something that is closer to an ongoing process wherein the nature of meaning makes itself known.

Philosophy has an important place in your work. In "Remarks on Color", for example, there is a reference to Wittgenstein...

I've made a number of works that were inspired by specific texts rather than full readings of particular thinkers. In all cases I would say it had to do with treating these texts almost as physical objects in which understanding and comprehension are brought to the fore and experienced as process. My relation to these texts and how I worked with them comes partly from Gregory Bateson's metalogues and his description of their structure. He talks about the content of the conversation being reflected in the structure of the conversation itself -- something like form and content but from a slightly different angle. In fact, one of the first works I did after a writer's text was Bateson's “Why Do Things Get in a Muddle?” I made a kind of metavideo on the metalogue of the same title with the addition of the subtitle (Come On Petunia).

What are the changes in works like "Remarks on Color" when itís

presented in English, German or Portuguese, languages with different

structures?

Well I'm hoping that the gist of it is pretty much the same as far as the actual readings go. Sure there are changes in nuance, inflection, (mis)pronunciations and word transformations, but the way meaning kind of comes and goes and the listener reflexively experiences comprehension must be very similar. On the other hand the sets or staging of the readings are somewhat different, particularly the Portuguese version, which takes place outside in green foliage. Also, the colors that the readers wear are different which brings about different relationships to the text depending on what colors are being referred to.

Are there special areas/issues you'd particularly like to address in the future?

I'm still interested in an ontological space wherein being, thinking and perceiving are active in a somewhat self-conscious way and at the same time experienced on a very visceral level -- where thinking becomes almost palatable. On the other hand I remain fascinated with the everyday problem of how one image follows the next.

How do you see the intersection between sound and image in your work?

When I began using video I was doing a lot of sound work with sculpture. I worked with steel welding rods which by chance had rich sonic possibilities. This led me to tape-recorders, tape loops, feedback and ultimately electronically generated sound. I became very interested in the notion of seeing what one hears and visa-versa - something like a mobious band where neither takes precedence over the other. I extended this idea with speech. In "Around & About" and "Primarily Speaking" the images are edited to the syllabic elements of the language giving the effect of language having space and time as opposed to being an object of meaning.

Time is a crucial issue in the video environment. How have time,

memory and language been articulated in your work?

This is an extremely broad question that covers a lot of ground. I will try to get at the spirit of it by talking about a specific work, "Midnight Crossing", 1997. To begin with, the title itself comes from a moment that occurs in time code. When 23:59:59: 29 changes to 00:00:00:00 it can be referred to as “midnight crossing” which really refers a kind of no time - or perhaps a brief moment to think about time. In the work there is a spoken text constructed by individual phrases that are heard at varying distances apart, say 15 seconds to 90 seconds with silences between. During the time of vocalization a number of high-intensity lights come on instantly lighting up a screen and its scaffolding-like structure obliterating whatever image that was there. As the viewer waits for the next image that fades up from absolute blackness they are dealing with afterimages of the screen and scaffolding which are “moving” around and “mixing” with a new image slowly making itself visible and re-anchoring the screen and support device. The time of light intervenes on the construction of narrative through the images at the same time sounding the next link or phrase that the viewer continues constructing and re-membering the spoken text. More and more the question arises: was that a memory of an image and/or language from this space and time or that of the viewer's collective memory?

(13th Videobrasil catalogue) ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL, " 13º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica Videobrasil" [13th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival]:19 to 23 September 2001, pp. 105-106, São Paulo, SP, 2001.