Astrid van Nimwegen - Annotation: Issues In The New Cinematic Aesthetic of Video, Chrissie Iles

“Issues in the New Cinematic Aesthetic in Video” -Chrissie Iles-

In her essay “Issues in the New Cinematic Aesthetic in Video” (19??) Chrissie Iles talks about the change in video installation caused by ‘the new technology, which transformed our familiar experience of the visual into the cybernetic terrain’ (p.130).

With the new technologies, the three-dimensional video installation, in which the monitor was the object, shifted into the two-dimensional image by the use of video projection. The use of projections and the ‘hybrid of old and new technologies'(p.131) becomes the new cinematic aesthetic.

By this major shift ‘the relationship of the video image to physical space has changed’ (p.131) thus ‘The release of the video image from the monitor began to dissolve the space between the viewer and technology’. (p.133) In some works, there even is not a distinction between technology and the body.

Also the relation of the image to the viewer changed, ‘…. Towards a more internal, psychological experience, in which space is no longer tangible and theatrical, but illusory and filmic.’ (p.132) The viewer even becomes part of the work, ‘the viewer became an active constituent of the work; indeed, without the viewer, the work would not exist’. (p.133)

Mc Luhan states that film and photography are primary visual media but television and video are more ‘an extension of touch rather than of sight’ (p.133)

Iles mentions examples of several works from a number of artists such as Hill, Viola, Thater, and Gordon who all made use of video projections; they all ‘merged real-time video psychology with the dreamlike psychology of film to create a new cinematic experience of the projected image in space’ (p.137)

In the end of the essay Iles writes that ‘the disappearance of the more traditional experience of the visual from video is not necessarily a negative prospect’.

…… ‘The five senses are not individual things but, integrated with the mind, they form a total system and create this field, an experimental field which is the basis of conscious awareness. This is the only true whole image.’ (p.141 quoted from Bill Viola ‘putting the whole back together’ 1992)

Astrid van Nimwegen