Creative Project Realisation : Installation Films

An artist who has been particularly influential to me whilst thinking about an installation piece has been Susan Hiller. I visited an exhibition of hers a few years ago and was blown away by the depth of her ideas as well as the artistic and inspiration approach she has taken on her various projects. I want to talk specifically about three of her works, all of which i saw for myself at the Tate Modern in London.

Witness                  

I will begin with a sound installation, although there is no film work in this piece I feel her choice of presentation is remarkably clever and achieves a brilliant and unique effect on each viewer. Basically there was a room, it was lit only from a main beam coming from the ceiling not unlike a light you would imagine seeing as an alien spacecraft abducts someone. The piece itself consists of lots of hanging earphones, each one playing back an individual (and totally authentic) UFO witness report. Not only does each one differ from the next but there are many languages involved  so it becomes something the world can experience not only a particular culture or language group (as is true with UFO sightings). My fascination with this piece came from the effect it had on me. As I walked into the room I was confronted with a montage of sound, no particular voice being heard over another which created an interesting effect. As i walked through the room and through the middle of all these earphones I would catch glimpses of each report as I passed it, giving me an insight into their experience. There was a constant murmuring in the room which evokes a sense of confusion (not unlike the responses of many of the people the UFO they 'saw'). I explored the room at my own pace, listening to various reports and passing through. It was a lovely experience and made me consider the idea of collective human experience through an individual perspective. I am really intrigued by this and would like to explore this aspect in my film through the use of Televisions playing each room simultaneously on multiple screens to give the audience both a  montage of my character's emotions as well as the ability to focus on particular rooms at their leisure (though the use of sound design within the space allowing the viewer to move between screens to hear each one or to stand back and hear all together), overall hoping to achieve a sense of the man's identity as a whole whilst irrevocably defining each emotion I choose to portray.

              Psi Girls

The next piece consists of five projections on a wall. When I entered the narrow room I wandered along to get the full piece in perspective, other people were milling around and viewing from other various points in the room which made the piece very subjective. Hiller draws upon the themes of adolescence and the media's portrayal of women obtaining special powers combing the sense of growing up and finding your place in the world as well as the desire to surpass what is humanly possible and do what has never previously been done. Each projection is a scene from a movie ( Firestarter - Mark Lester (1984), Matilda - Danny DeVito (1996), Stalker - Andrei Tarkovsky (1979), The Craft - Andrew Fleming (1996), The Fury - Brian De Palma (1978)) which builds to a climatic point in it's respective scene along with music that creates tension in a way that involves you in the films. Hiller gives each film a different coloured filter which is particularly what I want to draw upon in my film. I do not what to literally overlay the colour as Hiller has done but to colour grade each room respective of it's mood. I would like to go a step further and make use of the colours from the NTSC/PAL colour bars we sometimes see on and use whilst creating TV & Film . Each room would be a different colour and be related to that emotion for example anger being shown as red. In this way I hope to link my piece to the use of televisions and evoke a sense that each one is a window into my character's identity and as a whole presents the colour bars which is a recognized symbol of broadcasting and Film.

An Entertainment        

This was possibly my favourite piece of Susan Hiller's work which I saw that day and it took place in a small room where each of the four walls were covered by synchronised projections of a Punch and Judy puppet show. It immersed me in the violence of the show by being slowed down and focusing on shots that looked menacing out of context yet highlighted the irony of it being aimed at children. It made me consider how violence is portrayed to children and how it helps to form their understanding of good vs. evil and ultimately teaching them the difference between right and wrong. The fact that we see the clips out of context of the shows they were performed in provides the adult viewer with a sense of  how children can absorb the wrong understandings from media texts, this is something that people often draw upon when a tragedy occurs involving violence and children. As far as my film idea I feel inspired by the synchronisation  of this piece and would like to form a more elaborate approach by allowing my individual screens of each room/emotion to ultimately come together and end the same (although different colours), in turn allowing me to change to the same shot on each screen of the camera pulling out from the room (reverse to how it begins) and out of  a screen, revealing the man sitting and watching it in a chair. That will be the end in both installation and film however my film will transition to each room/emotion rather than allowing the viewer the freedom they would have to wander through the installation.