Liminal Spaces: Video Art as a Tool for Representing Subjectivity and Poeticizing Perception

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Freedland, Barry

Keywords

Video, Video Art, Installation, Perception, Subjectivity, Otherness, Exhibitionism

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

In this thesis I investigate video as a cultural tool and artistic medium, addressing the way in which the medium is seemingly determined to address and reiterate perceptual boundaries. Historically as well as presently, video art and video systems work to collapse pre-existing modes of perceptual experience. The artwork in this thesis employs interactive video systems in installation settings to challenge subject/object dichotomies so familiar to the process of art viewing. The body of work begins with my construction of mobile, vocal 'avatars' that aim to embody the relatively new cultural phenomenon of electronic exhibitionism. The next series of installations employ live video, nested video, and three-dimensional elements. These features combine to both mirror and distort real events in an effort to disrupt the habits of viewership. During the execution of the body of work, the focus shifted to the disquieting neither-this-northat inherent in electronic representation. The final work in the project combines video projection with three dimensional body casts in an effort to point to that very liminal space. In the paper, I aim to connect this liminality with the philosophical and psychological strain between the subjective 'I' and the outer, other 'me'. As a whole, I hope these works are able to subtly modify perceptual habits among viewers by disrupting the dichotomies.

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