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Themesicon: navigation pathArt and Cinematographyicon: navigation pathImmersion/Participation
 
 
 
 
 

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increasingly improved their aptitude in the realm of new media. Taking the form of theatrical scenes and kaleidoscopic, largeformat projections, these projects added the parameter of time to the space-defined visual parameter of the classic museum; indeed the mechanical means of representation increasingly shifted the focus of visual perception from the experience of space to the experience of time. Pollock’s color diffusion, a seismograph for the artist’s ecstatic osmosis (a form of auto-immersion), which also visually dissolved the material basis of the painting, was a harbinger of this transformation of artistic practice. During the decades that were to follow, and aided by new technologies, artists perfected ways to stimulate the observer by creating spatial settings that engrossed him or her entirely. The all-encompassing effect of action painting initiated the tendency to de-materialize the medium and emphasized the importance of physical presence in the process of representation to the point at which, as Pollock himself stated, the act of forgetting the self through painting led to the artist literally entering the painting. Similarly, in cinematic, illusionary spaces, today’s

 

observers experience the reality-altering maelstrom of projected images. Owing to both the influence of time as a medium which itself makes reference to the situation of reception, and the atmospheric conditions of that reception (the flickering and often acoustically-intensified sequences of images in the darkness), these images are inscribed in the viewer’s perception as either an emotional overload of stimuli or as distanced moments of reflection.

From the White Cube to the Black Box

Sam Taylor-Wood belongs to the generation of artists whose work methods have absorbed the cinematic experience. Their installations transform the static, presentational space of the museum into a space for projection and illusion. Looking at the consuming, all-encompassing effect of Pollock’s paintings from today’s perspective, we can now say that the artistic practice of the past two decades has turned the black box into the new place for the dissimulation of the frame. The black box has become a sphere for virtual events, where the public experiences moving pictures as engrossing images that stimulate the senses, while

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