Week 7- Science and reason-Video art by Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist's video art- how can we link this to science and reason?

 

Still from 'Ever is Over All' (1997)

 

1. Define the 17th century 'Scientific Revolution', and say how it changed European thought and world view. 

 Of all the changes that swept over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the most widely influential was an epistemological transformation that we call the "scientific revolution." In the popular mind, we associate this revolution with natural science and technological change, but the scientific revolution was, in reality, a series of changes in the structure of European thought itself: systematic doubt, empirical and sensory verification, the abstraction of human knowledge into separate sciences, and the view that the world functions like a machine. These changes greatly changed the human experience of every other aspect of life, from individual life to the life of the group. This modification in world view can also be charted in painting, sculpture and architecture; you can see that people of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are looking at the world very differently.

http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/23.html

2. Give examples of how we can we still see evidence of the 'Scientific Revolution' in the world today. 

The Scientific Revolution: The Medieval World View 

 
A world-view is a composite of several interpretive models through which the individual establishes his or her identity relative to everything else in the universe. In the broadest of terms, any world-view is made up of four component elements.

In the first of these components, which can be designated the Theological element, man tries to define himself in relation to the transcendent. In general, a person's transcendent presuppositions have a determinative impact upon all other aspects of their world-view.

The second component is Psychological in nature, and asks such questions as Who am I, and what is my significance in the greater scheme of things.

Third would be the Sociological aspect.

Fourth, What is the nature of the universe? How did it begin and how will it end? What is the nature of my relationship with the material world? In the broadest sense, this may be designated the Cosmological aspect of a world view. 

http://u15259039.onlinehome-server.com/essay.php?t=27772

Research Pipilotti Rist's video installations to answer the following;

3. From your research, do you think that the contemporary art world values art work

that uses new media/technology over traditional media?

World Views:

• Modernity and post-modernity are reductionist in their approaches to complexity
• “Old science” and its modernist and simplistic models
• Humanities with its simplistic reduction to ‘randomness’ and relativism

I do think that the contemporary art world values art work that uses new media/technology over traditional media. On the contrary, a work of art – whether based on technology or not – is usually classed as New Media Art when it is produced, exhibited and discussed in a specific “art world,” the world of New Media Art. This art world came into being as a cultural niche in the Sixties and Seventies, and became a bona fide art world in the Eighties and Nineties, developing its own means of production and distribution, and cultivating an idea of “art” that is completely different from that entertained by the contemporary art world.

 

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:qY0iS336ZR0J:medianewmediapostmedia.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/the-postmedia-perspective/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz&client=firefox-a

4. How has Pipilotti Rist used new media/technology to enhance the audience's experience of her work.

Pipilotti Rist is internationally known for her rich vocabulary of sensual images, often focusing on the body, that articulates an open-ended vision of truth and identity. She is engaged in a deep dialogue with disrupted harmony, exposing the darker underbelly of her utopias and manipulating video to reveal her agenda. With her project for the Public Art Fund, Rist continues this direction in her work, realizing snapshots that glorify the ordinary, the hidden, the longed for, the ugly and the awkward as expressions of urgency and desire.

5. Comment on how the installation, sound and scale of 'Ever is Over All' (1997) could impact on the audience's experience of the work. 

Rist positively describes the negative aspects of femininity, which have been rejected by women themselves. She articulates her ideas with weightless images of love, death, everyday life, and fiction. Her unique style is a product of the pliant, sensual relationship between music and video art. Rist is also a band member and has designed the stage sets. Her video installation inspires body awareness in the audience as a totally new experience, different from large video clips shown on a huge screen. 

6. Comment on the notion of 'reason' within the content of the video. Is the woman's behaviour reasonable or unreasonable? 

I think the rational and irrational practices of women from different angles to define. In today's rule of law, smashing the windows for a woman of such acts is completely unrecognized.  But we also need to make clear that this behavior is a woman out of what state of mind, and spirit, or a woman would like to express to us what. 

7. Comment on your 'reading' (understanding) of the work by discussion the aesthetic (look), experience and the ideologies (ideas, theories) of the work.

Ever is Over All (1997) shows in slow-motion a young woman (Rist) walks along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. At one point a police officer greets her. The clip was purchased by Museum of Modern Art, New York City. For me I think Every different technique can practical application nowaday Through the realizable gimmic to the audience resonance. She used special way to express her work without word.

                                http://colquitt.k12.ga.us/wjwpg2/sciencerev/science.htm   

                              http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/gilbert/23.html 

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81191 

http://www.pipilottirist.net/moss.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJgiSyCr6BY