FINAL EDITED ESSAY

Assignment One

Understanding Visual Culture

The interaction of media

This assignment investigates the manner in which artists have been influenced by new media since the

beginning of the twentieth century. To address this discussion I have selected works by three artists who,

whilst using different types of new media, are linked by their use or omission of text, making statements

either through its presence or by its absence.

Jenny Holzer is an American installation and conceptual artist (Tate, s.d.) who works mainly with text, using

language as a vehicle to make often politically-charged commentaries presented through a range of non-

traditional media. Blue Purple Tilt (2007) is constructed of seven double-sided vertical LED columns along

which a selection of messages taken from Holzer’s earlier works scroll upwards continuously and rapidly, with

identical texts on each column.

Fig. 1. Blue Purple Tilt (2007)

All ‘found’ phrases (Ritter, 2012), the messages are mostly aphoristic with Holzer stating her intention as to

‘routinely invite the reader to sort out the offerings and complete the thoughts, and to echo, amplify or shrink

from the feeling that the work elicits’ (Holzer s.d., cited in Breslin, 2008:119). She therefore takes the post-

structuralist stance, posited by Barthes in Death of the Author (Barthes, 1967), of rejecting ‘authorial’ intent

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and passing ownership to the viewer who will form their own response to the work, establishing their own

dialogue from their network of knowledge and experiences.

The LED display used for Blue Purple Tilt references both modern electronic public advertising and information

signs. Holzer has described her motivation for using electronic technology as a medium as

‘… to do with my needing to be where people look. I thought I should present as many hard germane subjects large, loud and well as what’s done for celebrity gossip, concerts, products and the sometimes too cautious reporting of the news’ (Holzer s.d., cited in Breslin, 2008:120).

The relationship between art and advertising is clearly demonstrated by Holzer’s choice of media in this work.

The questioning nature of much advertising allows the latter to target both a large audience and the

individual, a model which has enabled artists such as Barbara Kruger to use their art as a similar mouthpiece

in a propagandistic manner. The invitations offered by Holzer’s texts encourage the viewer to see themselves

as being ‘hailed’ as an individual and to become an active subject, reflecting Althusser’s theory of

interpellation. (Althusser, 1999). The overall result of the work is a highly personal viewing experience

tailored to resonate and interact with each viewer’s personal history, with the installation’s verticality also

providing a common link with the viewer.

Ben Rubin is a multimedia artist who uses audio, visual and digital electronics to explore different types of

communication (Donoff, 2007). With an interest in text and grammar since childhood, Rubin explains

‘… there are the laws of language that hold words together in a certain configuration. And breaking those apart and reassembling them and discovering new meanings is just something I’ve been drawn to do … The more interesting the language and the more coherent the resulting artwork is, the more compelling the project is for me’ (Geha, 2012).

Fig. 2. Moveable Type (2007)

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Moveable Type (2007) is a collaboration between Rubin and Mark Hansen, a statistician and professor (UCLA

Design Media Arts, 2016). A permanent installation commissioned by The New York Times newspaper for

their office lobby, it comprises 560 small vacuum fluorescent display (‘VFD’) screens hung in two grids. Each

screen displays constantly updating pieces of text taken from three sources; a live feed from The New York

Times which captures text and data in nearly real-time; on-line viewing and search activity on the

newspaper’s website and finally the newspaper’s archive dating back to 1851 (The New York Times Building,

2013). The work is programmed to select fragments of text through computerised algorithms which parse

the source data in specific ways (ibid.) and hidden speakers provide a background of sounds that one would

expect to hear in an old-fashioned newsroom such as the clack of typewriter keys (Walker, 2008), reminding

the viewer that the installation represents both the past and the present.

Providing in essence a portrait of The New York Times and being essentially corporate wall art given its

location, the artwork is continuously changing due to the constant updating of the text content with Rubin

explaining that ‘we want it to feel almost like an organism that is living and breathing and consuming the

news’ (Kennedy, 2007). Rubin and Hansen specifically chose VFD technology as the medium for this

installation as they felt ‘it has a timeless and undated quality that will keep the piece fresh many years

hence’ (The New York Times Building, 2013).

Advances in technology provide an overwhelming amount of information, coming at us fast and from all

directions, and there is a feeling of frenzy emanating from Moveable Type. Do we as consumers of

information demand this constant flow? Do we really need it? I believe there is a hint of Freud’s fetishism

about our perceived need for real-time information, our fear of missing out, and this is something into which

Rubin’s work feeds.

Thomas Demand is a photographer who originally trained as a sculptor. Often inspired by political and cultural

events, and using ‘found’ images taken mainly from mass media as source material, he constructs life-sized

models of interior and exterior environments out of paper and cardboard and then records these

photographically, subsequently destroying the sculpture so that only the photograph remains (Jaeger, 2010).

At first glance Office (Büro) (1995) is a banal photograph showing a chaotic, untidy office. However on closer

inspection many details are missing. The sheets of paper are devoid of text. The folders are unlabelled. The

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drawers and cupboards have no locks or handles. Everything is jumbled up yet pristinely clean. Viewers who

are aware of Demand’s practice know that it is likely that this untidy room holds some cultural or political

significance. They also know that they will have to seek out this information themselves.

Office is based upon a photograph published shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall depicting a room in the

Stasi’s central office in Berlin after it had been ransacked by East Germans looking for their personal files

(Marcoci, 2005). Marcoci (ibid.) posits that by excluding all evidence of text from this work, Demand

references not only the censorship that was prevalent then in the East German regime and the necessity for

people to search for meanings in heavily blanked-out documents, but also the erasing of people’s history.

Office forces us to question what we are looking at, our understanding of reality.

Like most of Demand’s work, Office is three times removed from the original scene that it depicts; it is a

photograph of a sculpture of a photograph. So why does Demand use photography rather than sculpture as

his ultimate medium? The answer would appear to be to ensure that his artistic intention is delivered

precisely to the viewer: ‘You can walk around a sculpture as often as you like, and with photographs - mine

are very large so that, as with the sculptures, you can also walk around them - you have a [single, forever

fixed] moment and my particular angle of vision’ (Demand, cited in Fried, 2008:271).

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Fig. 3. Office (Büro) (1995)

I have presented three artists who use new media to communicate with their audience, either through the

use of text or by its absence. Holzer and Rubin use media which invite the viewer to consider how modern

technology is used to attract attention and deliver information. Differing in intent, Holzer’s work invites viewer

participation and contemplation whilst Rubin adopts a more scattergun approach with a bombardment of

information. Conversely, Demand uses a deliberate lack of textual information and a precise artistic intent to

deliver his message to his audience.

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Holzer, J. (2007) Blue Purple Tilt [7 light emitting diode columns]. At: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-blue-purple-tilt-ar00082 (accessed 22 February 2016)

Figure 2. Rubin, B. and Hansen, M. (2007) Moveable Type [vacuum florescent display, copper and steel cable and custom software]. At: http://ear-test.earstudio.com/?p=28 (accessed 22 February 2016)

Figure 3. Demand, T. (1995) Office (Büro) [photograph]. At: http://www.saatchigallery.com/aipe/thomas_demand.htm [accessed 07 February 2016)

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Bibliography

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Barthes, R. (1967) The Death of the Author. At: http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf (accessed 16 February 2016)

Buchloh, B. (2008) ‘An interview with Jenny Holzer’. In: Breslin, D. (ed). Jenny Holzer Chicago: Hatje Cantz

Donoff, E. (2007) Visual Communication: Media artist Ben Rubin explores the interaction between light, sound and symbol. At: http://www.archlighting.com/projects/visual-communication_o (accessed 17 February 2016)

Duncan, D. (2011) Ben Rubin. At: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/ben-rubin/ (accessed 17 February 2016)

Freud, S. (1999) Fetishism. In: Evans, J and Hall, S. (eds.) Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage

Fried, M. (2008) Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before New Haven: Yale University Press

Gibbons, J. (2005) Art and Advertising. London: I.B. Tauris

Geha, K. (2012) Interview with Ben Rubin. At: http://glasstire.com/2012/08/12/interview-with-ben-rubin/ (accessed 17 February 2016)

Howells, R. and Negreiros, J. (2012) Visual Culture (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Polity Press

Jaeger, A. (2010) Image Makers, Image Takers (new and expanded edition). London: Thames & Hudson

Kennedy, R. (2007) ‘News Flows, Consciousness Streams: The Headwaters of a River of Words’ In: The New York Times [online]. At: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/arts/design/25vide.html?_r=0) (accessed 17 February 2016)

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Manovich, L. (2002) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

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Moveable Type at the New York Times Building (2015) [User-generated content online] Creat. Hansen, M, Rubin, B. and Nisselson, J. At: http://ear-test.earstudio.com/?cat=6 (accessed 17 February 2016)

Ritter, F. (2012) Jenny Holzer. Blue Purple Tilt (2007). At: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/holzer-blue-purple-tilt-ar00082/text-summary (accessed 15 February 2016)

Singer, R. (2013) Beyond James Turrell: 10 More Great Artists Who Use Light as a Medium. At: http://flavorwire.com/398739/beyond-james-turrell-10-more-great-artists-who-use-light-as-a-medium/7 (accessed 10 February 2016)

Smith, K. (2012) ‘Jenny Holzer’. In: Interview Magazine [online]. At: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/jenny-holzer/#_ (accessed 15 February 2016)

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Tate (s.d.) Jenny Holzer. At: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jenny-holzer-1307 (accessed 15 February 2016)

The New York Times Building (2013) Moveable Type. At: http://www.nytco.com/wp-content/uploads/Moveable_Type.pdf (accessed 17 February 2016)

UCLA Design Media Arts (2016) Mark Hansen. At: http://dma.ucla.edu/faculty/profiles/?ID=45 (accessed 22 February 2016)

Valentine, V. (2011) ‘Moveable Type’ Captures the Contents of the New York Times in Fragments. At: http://www.artsobserver.com/2011/11/17/moveable-type-captures-the-contents-of-the-new-york-times-in-fragments/ (accessed 17 February 2016)

Walker, A. (2008) Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen’s Installation at the New York Times Building Moves Us. At: http://www.adweek.com/fishbowlny/ben-rubin-and-mark-hansens-installation-at-the-new-york-times-building-moves-us/275856 (accessed 17 February 2016)

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