Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018
Sept 28, 2018–Apr 14, 2019
Signal, Sequence, Resolution:
Image Resequenced
4
Several of the “programmed” works here reflect on how rules and code are used to rearrange images. Nam June Paik’s massive wall of televisions, Fin de Siècle II, for example, choreographs music videos and “dissolves” the television program into combinations of dancing patterns, providing a different framework to understand broadcasting. Other works resequence images while engaging with such varied subject matter as image processing, interactive storytelling, and political commentary. Steina’s multichannel video installation Mynd investigates the aesthetic effects of software processing, while Lynn Hershman Leeson’s interactive installation Lorna prompts visitors to navigate a branching narrative with multiple endings and the two works from Barbara Lattanzi’s series C-Span x 4 annotate news reportage with subtitles borrowed from a political sci-fi film or karaoke-format song lyrics.
Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lorna, 1979–1984
Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), Lorna, 1979-1984. Video, color, sound; with television, interactive laser disc shown as DVD, modified remote control, television cabinet, night table, end table, wood chair, upholstered chair, mirror, fishbowl with plastic goldfish, clothing, wallet, belt, shoes, watch, telephone, magazines, framed storyboards, and framed art, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist; courtesy Bridget Donahue, New York. Photograph by Jason Mandella. © Lynn Hershman Leeson, courtesy the artist and Bridget Donahue, New York
Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Lorna is one of the earliest examples of interactive art of the 1970s to explore nonlinear storytelling. It is also the first interactive artwork on LaserDisc, a now obsolete digital-storage technology that was introduced commercially in the late 1970s. The project invites visitors to use a remote control to navigate Lorna’s branching story, which unfolds on the television screen. The installation mirrors the environment that Lorna, an agoraphobic fearful of leaving her apartment, inhabits in the TV set. Depending on the path chosen, there are three possible endings to the narrative: death, escape, or the destruction of the TV. The work addresses the role of women in mediated society, with its interaction mechanism serving as a metaphor for the ways in which Lorna is “remote controlled” by society and her televised existence.
See Lynn Hershamn Leeson’s diagram of pathways through Lorna’s narrative.
Artists
- Josef Albers
- Cory Arcangel
- Tauba Auerbach
- Jonah Brucker-Cohen
- Jim Campbell
- Ian Cheng
- Lucinda Childs
- Charles Csuri
- Agnes Denes
- Alex Dodge
- Charles Gaines
- Philip Glass
- Frederick Hammersley
- Channa Horwitz
- Donald Judd
- Joseph Kosuth
- Shigeko Kubota
- Marc Lafia
- Barbara Lattanzi
- Lynn Hershman Leeson
- Sol LeWitt
- Fang-yu Lin
- Manfred Mohr
- Katherine Moriwaki
- Mendi + Keith Obadike
- Nam June Paik
- William Bradford Paley
- Paul Pfeiffer
- Casey Reas
- Earl Reiback
- Rafaël Rozendaal
- Lillian Schwartz
- James L. Seawright
- John F. Simon Jr.
- Steina
- Mika Tajima
- Tamiko Thiel
- Cheyney Thompson
- Joan Truckenbrod
- Siebren Versteeg
- Lawrence Weiner