Part 1

Interpreting video art – Sam Taylor-Wood

27th Apr 201927th Sep 2020 lornacole99Leave a comment

fruitstilllife — Screenshots from Still Life, Sam Taylor-Wood, 2001 – pinterest.com

Initial Reaction

Sam Taylor Wood’s Still Life is a video time-lapse that depicts a bowl of fruit decaying. My first reaction to it was mostly one of disgust since mouldy fruit isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, however, it’s also weirdly fascinating. I do wonder where this was done as it’s not something you’d want in your house that’s for sure.

Media and Form

Fruit is often used in art, though this is a different take on it – I think the fact that she chose something natural reflects how we can’t control the decaying process and in a way, this also links to the inevitability of death.

Still life art is usually a stationary piece of art like a painting and this could have been done in a series of paintings too. The decision to do this as a time-lapse in video form allows you to physically see the decaying process and how time affects it, which I feel prompts more of a reaction.

Context

This piece resembles a Vanitas painting since fruit is a common symbol for the pleasures of life. Similarly, the decaying process links to the theme of death and mortality that is significant to Vanitas art. The juxtaposition against the natural fruit decaying and the plastic pen remaining in good condition is a reflection of the environment and world. These artificial items will be the things left when we are no longer here since no living thing can escape the inevitability of death.

Taylor-Wood also has another time-lapse piece that shows a dead hare that gradually decomposes alongside a peach. Again, this shows how fleeting biological life is and forces the idea of death on us. I immediately think of Damien Hirst’s work with regards to this theme – the shark in particular as he also puts death on show like this and forces the audience to contemplate the control it has over living things. Tacita Dean is another artist that physically shows the passing of time with the use of nature (mosquito, birds, baby crying).

Time

This piece links to time since the choice to use video means you can literally see time passing and how it causes the fruit to decay. In a wider sense, this conveys how short biological life actually is in regards to how much time passes within the universe.

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I wasn’t overwhelmed by the time-lapse, without knowing it’s a ‘piece of art’, I wouldn’t call it one – a similar reaction I had to Hirst’s shark. I think Taylor-Wood wants us to contemplate complex themes like death, decay and time, rather than being as direct with a dead shark she uses something delicious and aesthetic. You can’t help but watch the decaying and essentially death of the fruit alongside the mould taking over and coming to life, showing the effects of time and how living things can’t withstand it. The pen seems random but when watching the video it’s condition doesn’t deteriorate and you face the reality of our environment and how these artificial objects that we control are what will remain when time and death takes control of us.

It’s interesting to see how the fruits decay at various rates which is much like other forms of biological life. As humans, we all meet an inevitable death but have no control over the time it takes. Sometimes you see people’s health deteriorate (like the fruit) but often this isn’t the case and we’re reminded of our mortality and how fleeting life can be.

With contextual information, I do have a better understanding of it. By choosing to declare this as a work of art, it makes you stop and question why and what it’s representing which is powerful and the purpose of all art – the artist wants you to experience and have a reaction to something, what that is, depends on the viewer.

Part 1

Additional context for Jem Finer’s Longplayer

26th Apr 2019 lornacole99Leave a comment

Longplayer is definitely an intriguing and ambitious piece. After listening, I didn’t necessarily enjoy it solely as music. However, it’s clear that it’s much more than a musical composition and so I wanted to find more contextual information.

Finer wanted to make sense of a millennium because 1000 years isn’t fully comprehensible as we can’t witness it from beginning to end – yet this isn’t a long time cosmically. Longplayer is essentially a physical representation of time, allowing us to contemplate it better.

Another potential link to our understanding of time is the singing bowl arrangement. Not only does a circle represent something continuous (just like time), the concentric circle set-up for this installation resembles the solar system. Space is significant to our understanding of time as day and night is measured by the orbit of the sun and coincides with our knowledge of time passing.

longplayersetup — Longplayer, Jem Finer – Birdseye view, The Roundhouse, September 2009 – Longplayer.org

Sustainability is vital to the survival of Longplayer, both in withstanding time and adapting to technological and societal changes. Singing bowls can be played by humans and computers so are well designed for this piece and their sound translates well in video and audio, allowing it to be heard online and via global listening posts. As time passes, a desire to maintain Longplayer is important and the medium used means it’s easier to do this, hopefully guaranteeing it successfully playing for 1000 years without repetition or stopping.

I now have a better understanding of Longplayer and how it works as a musical composition but also as an exploration and representation of time as a concept.

Part 1

Time and time-based media

20th Apr 2019 lornacole99Leave a comment

I don’t think I’ve ever properly sat down and thought about time in detail, it’s something we’re all familiar with and use every day but it’s not really something I’ve tried to understand. We just learn and accept that time is what the clock reads and that’s how seconds, minutes and hours pass. It’s such a complex idea that science, philosophy, religion and the arts all have varying definitions.

To me, the main purpose of time is to act as a measurement. It helps to distinguish past, present and the future as well as being able to use the idea of chronology. We rely on it heavily in our daily routines – to get to work, for appointments, how long to cook dinner, when a particular show is on tv, but we never really think about how it came to be. Who decided a second was second?

There’s obviously a link with time and space and I know the sun and stars were used to tell the time but it also gives a sense of day and night, or when a day passes. Then there’s also the geographical element of how there are different time zones.

Going back to the work on Hirst’s shark, I realised how much humans are obsessed with controlling time. In fact, this happens so much that often we forget to live in the present. It’s not a physical thing we can see or even something we can understand yet it has so much power over us and regardless of how much we attempt to stop or delay it, time passing is inevitable.

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Time in the creative world

Like the philosophical definition of art says – ‘it’s something that outlives us’ so I’ve definitely thought about art being timeless, although I don’t think I’ve thought about the concept of time within art much.

I did a project on fashion and art trends over the past 100 years and time is obviously a big part of the different eras. It allows us to recognise the social and historical context and how that affects things like fashion during a certain time period. I also did a project on death and decay and briefly looked at Vanitas paintings. One of the pieces that I painted for the project was ‘Still Life with a Skull’ by Phillippe Champaigne which uses symbolism to represent what makes up our existence – the tulip (life), the skull (death) and the hourglass (time). During this course, I also have more of an understanding of how time is used in art.

vanitastulip — Still Life with a Skull, Phillippe de Champaigne, circa 1671 – Wikipedia Commons

Time-based media can also be shown through things like sound, video and performance. I’ve seen various Shakespeare plays at The Globe Theatre and studied the historical, social and political context behind them. Time is a big part of that since we use it to measure how the world has changed over time and as a way to learn about the history of our country. On a simpler form, time is also crucial to performances in terms of it running smoothly. For instance, the use of music, lighting or even comedic timing are all elements that require it to have the desired effect.

Time is also imperative to the art of reading and writing; I studied The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and, as a dystopian novel, time is used to provide an insight into a fictitious future. She also utilises time to switch between the present and past by using flashbacks to provide further insight into the Offred’s (the protagonist) life before the current totalitarian state the book is set in.

After thinking about time in more depth, it’s clear that it’s a multilayered concept that can certainly be used and explored in various types of media.