Dennis van Vreden/annochrissie

Chrissie Iles
Issues in the New Cinematic Aesthetic in Video

Chrissie opens with the notion that younger artists are going back to "the older moving image technology of Hollywood film" (p. 131) in response to "the traumatic effect of the sweeping power with which new technology has transformed our social and cultural environment into an all-embracing , interconnected, cybernetic force-field." (p. 131)

The cinematic aesthetic in video is a hybrid of old and new technology. "The relationship of the video image in relation to physical space has changed" she says. The interesting nails Iles is hitting with her writing hammer is that she describes exactly what is happening with video from television to video in installation. Stating that video was awkwardly communicating through the interface of the monitor with a small electronic image. The monitor being a sort of sculptural object, which then gets replaced by large scale images (I'm assuming in projection) "that position the viewer in a direct dialogue with architectural space". (p. 132)

Also an interesting note Chrissie makes is the "pull", she calls it, of the video walls and stacks during the 80s. They pulled the focus away from the single image stare. "Theatrically constructed environments" she calls them.

But the new form of video installation is an "internal psychological experience, in which space is no longer tangible and theatrical, but illusory and filmic" (p. 132). The cinematic experience is again answered by this: "without the viewer the work would not exist" (p. 133)

Then Krissie gives some examples of work with video where the space between the viewer and the image collapses. She speaks about the development that was happening. Awareness of "the intrusiveness of the camera, and of the gradual interpenetration of technology and the human body and psyche". (p. 134)