- Venue
- Liverpool Biennial
- Location
- North West England
LAND is a triple-screen projection—a triptych by the German artist Ulf Langheinrich. With an algorithmic process we are presented with images of pure noise backed by an ambient soundtrack piped out from speakers that surround the audience. In darkness. The strobe effect that is overlaid upon the images and thrown into the room makes it hard to find a seat to sit down at. At first your senses seem to be compromised! But you sit down and then you are taken by the work. It wants to mould your senses into something else. It wants to “guide” you.
Before you wander down the narrow corridor into the wide space where the piece lives—you are asked if your intention is to view the work and someone hands you a pair of 3D glasses if you say “yes”.
The piece starts off with what appears to be a more traditional 3D optical effect with soft grey smoke-like images appearing to jump out at you. Eventually this transforms into something which is more like the algorithmic structure that seems so popular with this artist. All of these images seem to mostly be varying interference patterns of red. If you alter your eyes focus these illusively seem to be moving toward you as well. Temperature in colour and sound seems to intensify as the piece progresses moving from very cold to very warm as the patterns seem to speed up like water molecules in a pan full of boiling water.
“…Ulf Langheinrich’s 3D projecting LAND (2008), filmed in the historic widescreen CinemaScope format, even comes with a prop—a pair of 3D glasses given to each visitor to enhance the effect of strobes and flashing patterns. Yet ultimately, the work leaves one cold, lacking any meaning.” Oliver Basciano
LAND isn’t meant to have “deeper purpose”. If you are unwilling to engage with artwork on a more “physical” level then I can see how it might leave you cold. It may be that we all enter a gallery situation needing different things at different times. But does the piece need us more than we need it?
Can this piece exist as a complete work of art with the absence of the viewer? This work is comprised of two major components – the installation itself, and the sensory interpretation of the audience. If this piece were to be in an empty room, without a viewer present, would it still be a complete artwork? LAND must be viewed in order to be “whole” –experienced without its components—glasses and sound (even sofa perhaps?)—it does not exist as the art that it is intended to be.
“…Due to the impact of the sonic and the subsonic sound the virtual space gains immediacy however, it’s proximity and tension and the impact that the sound and the flicker have on the physical body the sound through your core takes it away from the virtual and makes it a direct external physical experience: that is what I intend.”
Ulf Langheinrich from an interview in Digital Cult (website)
He seems to want to take us to a virtual world and then pull us out again with keeping us held to our senses in “reality” by the soundtrack and the varying pulse of the images.
Film and TV are directed in such a way that we are only fed what is intended for us to see: the panning camera moves on a spot that it wants you to focus on, the soundtrack changes to alter how you feel about what you are viewing; if it wants you to feel a sense of sorrow, it will play music that might send you to that place whilst you are viewing the supposed “sad” images. Sound and image can work together in this way to manipulate the viewer. But this is not always a devious process—often we, as viewers, want to be manipulated. In our day-to-day lives we can become very disconnected and jaded. Life seems cold and dull, the same experiences seem to repeat themselves time and time again and we move toward a life of de-sensitized deadness. I don’t think that Ulf’s intention with LAND is to put us in a Hollywood movie-type situation where we are being made to feel something for the sake of control but possibly his aim is to sensitize dead zones instead, bringing us back to a more “feeling” place. Does it manage to do this? What other feelings might he be trying to latch onto?
If one of its purposes was to create a feeling of “illusive uncertainty” I’m not sure that it did in me as I was able to fall into a kind trance-like state after a while and I think if there was a feeling of “not knowing” what will happen next I would have been more “on the edge of my seat” unable to totally relax.
At first you might be questioning “where is it going”? But you eventually catch on to its objective pattern and you can guess where it’s headed—it’s going in a smooth progression of change from where it started.
Is being in a trance-like state being “sensitized”? Or is it disconnecting one in a different way—perhaps not in a negative way, but disconnecting, nevertheless? One of my dilemmas, as someone who has worked with sound and image, is how can the use of sound and image “pull you in” rather than “pull you out”? There is a fine line between transporting someone to “another world” and helping someone to come back into their own body…in the “reality” of the self.
Alessio Galbiati and Paola Cato/ Eng: Nicola Ferloni, 2008. ULF LANGHENRICH THE FASCINATING LOOK, Digital Cult.
Available at: <http://www.digitalcult.it> [4 November 2008].
Oliver Basciano, 28 September 2008. The New Face of Liverpool, Art Info.
Available at: <http://www.artinfo.com> [4 November 2008].
