AUDIO VISUAL SELFPORTRAIT
research
Sources of inspiration
Looking into self-portraiture, there is lack of self-portrait (selfportraiture can be seldom seen in installation work) when it comes to installations or another medium that is not the traditional painting or photograph. In the book Aesthetics of Installation Art by Juliane Rebentisch, suggesting about Intermediality in art, she argues that "What lies between the arts is not theatrical but intermedial. Intermediality, at any rate, is the term that has become established since the sixties for all those artistic practices that can no longer be categorised according to the traditional classification of art into the various arts. They seem to belong instead to new hybrid area between the arts. But what is specific to sound installation is that this dialectic does not, or at least not primarily, refer to the acoustic-musical phenomenon itself but occurs between the sound and the concrete space in which it is installed, that is, exhibited." From this, I was inspired to explore that gap in which the significant object of attention (in this case; self-portraiture) with sound and space, with the audio and visual phenomenon in a form of audio-visual installation.
La Monte Young's Dream House
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The Dream House installation is currently exhibited in Soho, New York city where I had the chance to visit over the summer. People come and spend a decent amount of time in the sound and light space. The way in which Young has created a space for people to have the real experience of sound and light that is truly unique to every single visitor was very intriguing. Different kinds of reactions were acquired with each visitor, the experience could be very soothing to some people, while others may find the experience irritating and depressing. The importance of the whole experience was being put into a space where we knew it was a part of their real, living house. This experience for me, evokes the importance of sound, image and space, especially on environment as a whole.
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Autobiography in the form of Self-portriat
I started to look at how artists might use self-portraiture as a form of diary recording. A good example of an autobiography artist would be Sophie Calle. Calle was an artist who obsessively collected information about the life surrounding her. She recorded her food, her sleep cycle, her medical records, her love letters, her encounters with strangers, and also the gifts she received. Whilst it is not difficult to find her face standing along side with her installations or performances, her face or form is in fact never used as a subject in her works. This means that Calle’s own existence plays an important role in her works. The documentary manner in which she presents her work suggests a high level of authenticity. She presented self-portrait in a modern way. Here is an example of her work where she exhibits all her birthday presents gathered between 1980 and 1993 and her 40th birthday. Each shelf is filled with the birthday presents for a single year, artfully arranged on the shelves where she also write details such as who did or did not come, sometimes even displays the names of the giver of a particular present. With a closer look, visitors can come to realise that certain guests always bring the same kind of gifts or make assumptions of what she likes in that year. The idea of autobiography really inspired me to think about how an autobiography of an instrumentalist would look like, or how a collection of things can speak for itself without directly telling the viewers. It enlightened me to experiment with collecting moments of my own life, more specifically concerned with my music life. (which will then be shown in the methodology section)
The Birthday Ceremony (1980-1993)
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