A Tangible Displacement of Narrative
Tangible art works, like much of New Media practice in general, often concern themselves with context rather than what is traditionally considered media content. These works create meaning at sites taken for granted in traditional storytelling media. As such, it is often helpful to frame our thinking about tangible and new media works by considering the dominant role of context and then locating aspects of narrative within the structures provided by the artist.
It is obviously true that some tangible media projects sit in service of traditional narrative structures. These pieces tend to be narratively driven and place the site of the work and its ‘story’ away on a screen (even when that screen is as proximate as one’s nose). I am personally drawn to tangible works that displace the site of storytelling and subordinate the role of narrative completely. These works unfold with rich contextual layers and many possible narratives are held incidentally in the spaces created. In such works the idea of narrative and story become abstracted. They give way to a system where multiple possible interpretations may be woven about the work while the work itself offers only threads.
“… I lack the capacity or more specifically interest to design exclusively from a formal place. I am realizing that I desire art on some level to function rather than to express.” Andrew John Milne
Such works serve as conceptual vessels. They are apparatuses that use material strategies, space and context to become sites of contemplation, discussion and consideration. Critically, they are not containers of narrative or archives in and of themselves. Within this mode of experience production the traditional ideas of narrative can be quite disorienting.
In the tangible and object-based work of Winnipeg’s artist Andrew John Milne, apparatus is used to strategically displace the site of image formation. Milne’s sophisticated and beautiful viewing machines create entirely new ways of experiencing images. These works are deeply challenging and beautifully realized. His installations and performances are rich with examples of contextual juxtapositions that use tangible objects to displace notions of narrative. As such novel interpretations of what narrative is, how it is formed, and how it relates to the machines that create it are required. If it exists at all, narrative is an incidental artifact of these works. It occupies the interstitial spaces of his objects. Milne’s work invites audience to consider how our technologies shape, constrain and normalize the stories we share. And more importantly they show us a path to undermining those systems.
In Pinawa: Forgotten Futures (2015) Milne brings multiple 19th century technologies into tension with each other to construct an impossible space that questions current ideas about image and narrative within augmented and virtual realities. Central to the work are three identical apparatuses each suspended from the ceiling by five downward curving arms. These supports form a series of inverted vaults that allude to the stone ceilings of gothic cathedrals. The apparatuses are constructed of laser cut plywood and like the ancient stone work they suggest, hold themselves together through friction, gravity and interlocking joints that function as keystones.
At the nexus of these arms is an internally illuminated chamber with a view port and crank arm. Milne refers to each of these as a ‘Spectral Viewing Apparatus’ or ‘Psychic Viewers’. The chambers are directed toward an adjacent wall where, following the traditions of formal photography, three black and white still images are hung. The images depict the ruin of the old Pinawa hydro dam. Pinawa is a small town in Manitoba that lies at the south eastern reach of the Canadian Shield in that province. The dam was the first hydroelectric power station on the Winnipeg River. It was decommissioned more than half-a century ago to allow for a larger downstream station. Today it is a jumble of imposed concrete geometries that are decaying into timeless shield rocks.
Audience members are invited to look through the viewports while rotating the crank arm. The interior space of the viewer is filled with a flickering apparition. It is formed by an internal shutterless praxinoscope that merges a moving image with the still image on the wall. It takes a moment to realize, with absolute wonder, that Milne has created a completely analog, wooden, augmented reality viewing platform. The Riemann space created inside Milne’s apparatus does not shatter scenic space as 19th century stereoscopic images did. Rather it fuses the moving and still images to create the hybrid and layered virtual space of his forgotten future.
The accompanying text suggests a reading of these devices and their relation to image. But it too is an illusion. Referencing research grounded in the artist’s own practice, it implies that these machines are pointing to a moment of technologically driven cultural revolution. They claim the position of fortune teller. But how this relates to the devices and photographs is left to the viewer to resolve.
For Milne, his Psychic viewers are a gateway to large issues surrounding narrative and digital spaces. As he explains: ‘Psychic Technology and Psychic Computing are the product of a thought experiment that asks “if digital technology is ubiquitous, how can we imagine a future techno-scientific relation to the world that isn’t digital technology; that is other?” Psychic technology is such a proposition. It is defined as being logistically inverse of digital computation. Where digital computing is disembodied, deterministic, only able to process that which has been quantified (ie past focused); psychic computation is embodied, indeterminate, only capable of processing that which cannot be directly measured/quantified (ie future focused). Psychic technology is an embodied technology of precognition.‘
This play with temporalities and technologies brings us close to Flusser’s etymological and contextual inspection of the meaning of apparatus as it relates to the technical image. Flusser suggests that apparatus can be translated to mean a system that ‘lies in wait or in readiness for something’. The Psychic Viewers of Pinawa: Forgotten Futures lie in wait for their future but face the ruins of past grand utopian narratives. Their ephemeral image invites us to critically ask what we want from augmented realities.
As novel devices, the Spectral Viewing Apparatus that form the core of Milne’s piece Pinawa: Forgotten Futures do more than offer us an image or story. Their chambers provide a contextual image space that focuses our attention on the site of image creation and the role of the apparatus. We do not simply look at an image but rather become part of the machine that creates it. Milne’s novel image forming apparatus undermines the cultural focus on image-as-product and frees us to consider truly alternate realities. Similarly, traditional notions of narrative and meaning creation are displaced within the experience. While Milne provides a contextual framework for reading his work, the resulting narratives occupy the interstitial spaces and volumes created by his apparatus. Story, to the extent that it exists is an ephemeral vapour clinging to his machines.
Notes:
Pinawa: Forgotten Futures is currently installed at Interaction. Digital Dynamics 2018. The Museum. Kitchener, Ontario. Curated by Jane Tingley and Alain Thibault. Show runs from January 26 to May 13, 2018. https://themuseum.ca/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/digital-dynamics-2018/interaction/ Last accessed March 2, 2018.
Andrew John Milne’s work can be found at http://andrewjohnmilne.com/. It is a rich collection of image questioning ‘Post Cinema Machines’. He can also be found on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewjohnmilne/?hl=en
The block quote is from Milne’s blog post on CAD design:
http://andrewjohnmilne.com/category/current-work/computer-automated-design/
Last accessed, March 2, 2018.
Inline quotes extracted from further email discussions with the artist.
For extended consideration of images spaces made possible through Victorian machines see Techniques of the Observer. On vision and modernity in the nineteenth century. Jonathan Crary. Seventh Ed. MIT Press, 1996.
For deeper thoughts on the role of context in New Media works can be found in Context Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts. 2011. Margot Lovejoy (Author), Victoria Vesna (Author), Christiane Paul (Author).
For consideration of the role of apparatus and the technical image see Towards a Philosophy of Photography By Vilem Flusser. Reaktion Books Ltd. 2007. (Originally published in German, 1983).
My sincere thanks to Andrew John Milne for his beautiful work and for taking the time to discuss with me his rich interpretations of the relationship between apparatus and image. I have done my best to capture the beauty and depth of thought in his work. All errors are mine alone. I am also indebted to David Bouchard and Henry Warwick of the RTA School of Media for many discussions about the tensions between context and narrative in New Media art works.
Disclosure: I am also exhibiting in the Interaction. Digital Dynamics 2018 show in Kitchener. This article and many of the ideas here were born from conversations I had with Andrew during the installation of our works.
