A R T I S T ’ S
A R T I C L E
My Only Sunshine:
Installation Art Experiments with
Light, Space, Sound and Motion
Jennifer Steinkamp
A B S T R A C T
T
Light consists of waves of energy that excite the eye.
—X—The Man with X-Ray Eyes [1]
In my artwork I use computer animation to craft immersive
interactive projection installations. The three-dimensional
(3D) computer graphics that form the basis of my abstract
animation take full advantage of the computer’s ability to create motion and points of view that are not available by any
other means. I use multiple video projectors strategically
placed in a space; the projections of the animation are then
fitted or remapped into architectural situations. The art can
then be experienced physically in relationship to one’s movements through the space.
The first installation I executed was a multiple-site work
titled Gender Specific (1989) [2]. The piece ran simultaneously
in different parts of the city and viewers had to drive across
town to experience the entire installation. One site was a
house in Pasadena, while the other was a storefront at the
Santa Monica Museum. Two animations, a series of orbiting
Earths and a polka-dot whirlpool divided each building into
quasi male and female halves. I addressed issues surrounding
the cultural specificity of gender in relation to domestic and
consumer architecture by bifurcating the architecture and
sites across town (Color Plate A No. 1).
ery and light corporeally. Some
people actually experienced the
physical sensation of seasickness.
Ever since then, I have set out to
investigate illusions that transform the viewer’s perception of
actual space in a synthesis of the
real and the virtual.
he author discusses her interactive architectural installation
art. As an artist who works with
new media, she finds herself refitting existing genres and creating
new languages for her particular
art form. Her artwork consists of
projected interactive computer animation installations. She investigates illusions that transform the
viewer’s perception of actual
space in a synthesis of the real
and the virtual.
SHIFTS AND
DECENTERING
I have used various methods to decenter or reconsider subjectivity; I recently completed another installation, The TV Room
[3], in which the projected image underwent a disorienting
parallactic shift as the viewer moved through the room. I
stretched three wall strips horizontally across a room in the
museum and projected animated water streams on each strip.
The wall behind was filled with a multicolored waterfall. The
back surface and the wall strips interlaced to form the image,
somewhat akin to the scan lines on a television set. Further
shifting occurred as the animated imagery tilted; consequently, the architecture, virtually destabilized, seemed as if it
were tilting as well. Viewers, unable to decipher the half wall,
found the experience mysteriously ambiguous (Fig. 2).
USING LIGHT TO DEMATERIALIZE SPACE
As my ideas and work developed, I found I could dematerialize architecture by combining light, space and movement. I
had always been fascinated with light and space artists such as
James Turrell. His perceptual light illusions transform our
experience of architecture. Following this tradition, I investigated how light could create an illusionistic sense of space
and dimension. Unlike the light-space artists, I added the
component of motion to my light-projected illusions, which
made the surrounding architecture appear to dematerialize.
I first accidentally discovered this visual phenomenon in the
work Untitled (1993), a floor projection piece (Fig. 1). In this
piece I projected a colorful water animation from the ceiling
down across the floor. As a result, the inanimate floor seemed
to breathe; the architecture was transformed by light. The
viewers perceived the non-physical components of the imag-
Fig. 1. Untitled, 18 × 7 ft, 1993. (© Jennifer Steinkamp) A “river”
of light cuts across the floor of the gallery. Water imagery seems
to breathe, destabilizing the viewer’s relationship to the normally
solid architecture; some viewers actually experienced seasickness.
(Photo courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles)
Jennifer Steinkamp (artist, educator), 12029 Marine Street, Los Angeles, CA 90066,
U.S.A. E-mail: <jennifer@artcenter.edu>. Web site: <http://jsteinkamp.com>.
© 2001 ISAST
LEONARDO, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 109–112, 2001
109
SHADOWS
Fig. 2. The TV Room, 18 × 13 × 60 ft, with soundtrack by Andrew Bucksbarg, 1998.
(© Jennifer Steinkamp. Photo: Alex Slade, courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles.)
The viewer’s shadow becomes part of
the image as she passes through the projection, partially disrupting the image,
breaking the illusion. The projectors are
often placed low, so the viewer has no
choice but to become part of the work.
Children immediately understand that
they are expected to play in the projection. Humor and play are important aspects of the art, ways of further involving
the viewer in the work. As the viewer internalizes the image in her mind, she
also experiences it physically and narcissistically in real space.
The imagery I use tends to be abstract. I am intrigued with abstraction,
perhaps more so than representation,
because the point of view in abstraction
is complex and perhaps not fixed. One
could ask, where is the point of view in
abstraction? What is the viewer’s relationship to an abstract image? This
thought has had a profound effect on
my contemplation of abstraction and
subjectivity.
My work has evolved out of a deep interest in issues of feminism. My site-spe-
Fig. 3. SWELL, 12 × 26 ft, with soundtrack by Bryan Brown, 1995. (© Jennifer Steinkamp) The walls of the gallery were huge. In response,
I created an underwater feeling in the space; a virtual camera floated through a sea of multicolored particles. The same animation was
projected twice; horizontally, from the front, and vertically, from the rear. The apparent solidity of both projections was disrupted whenever a viewer stepped in front of the rear projection. (Photo: Joshua White, courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles)
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Steinkamp, My Only Sunshine
cific installations set up complex relationships between the viewer and the
viewed. With the environments I create,
the relationship between viewing subject
and art object is recast. My work engages
with the spatial politics of vision. It
breaks down standard—often malecoded—modes of seeing to create a
more open physical state of pleasure
that includes all genders. My work is influenced by the pioneering feminist film
theory of the 1970s, especially that of
Laura Mulvey. I am interested in investigating ideas such as the patriarchal gaze,
point of view and objectification. With
the help of virtual technology, I attempt
in my work to de-center and reconstitute
the viewing subject as we know it.
COLLABORATION
I have collaborated with three composers over the years. Their music is a very
important part of the work: music creates the atmosphere, adding mood and
emphasis to certain visual elements. The
soundtrack creates a sonic dimension in
the space; the physical space is transformed by the audio. For example, in
the interactive piece Phase=Time [4],
eight speakers were placed around the
perimeter of a large square room; the
sound traveling around the speakers
transformed the square gallery into a
circular space.
To date, I have collaborated on 16
pieces with Jimmy Johnson, who has an
electronic music group called Grain [5].
I have also collaborated with Br yan
Brown, whose band is called Blue Bird;
he is also the drummer for Dick Dale. I
am currently working with experimental
composer and artist Andrew Bucksbarg.
When collaborating, I come up with the
structure, or space for the piece. I usually create a virtual scale model on the
computer, then discuss the ideas behind
the work with the composer. We get together a few times, testing the sound in
relation to the space and image.
My first collaboration with Jimmy
Johnson was part of an exhibition and
symposium on photography [6]. One
might say our work was the “extreme
left” of photography, especially since I
never use imagery from the real world;
everything is synthesized in the computer. On the other hand, Jimmy used
highly manipulated sound samples of
Helen Keller speaking to an audience;
by the time he was finished the sound
sample was unrecognizable. I conceptually linked the work for this exhibition
to photography by utilizing three inter-
secting landscape topologies that moved
in and out of focus on a grid. A “photographic” aerial view of my constructed
landscape was remapped into the space.
TECHNOLOGY
As I mentioned, the imagery I synthesize
is derived from software tools, not from
the real world. I use Alias Maya Software
on a Silicon Graphics computer, a 3D
animation package used by the film industry for special effects. As new virtual
reality software tools develop, my work
effectively changes; in a sense the software developer is a collaborator. I often
use particle dynamics, a software tool set
created to simulate natural phenomena.
Particles are interesting because they are
unpredictable; one can assign to the particles a life span and a color, and determine how they will respond to environ-
mental variables such as gravity, turbulence and wind. The simulation test
runs overnight. It can be a pretty random process and it can take a couple of
months of testing to complete an animation. Because the particles were created
to simulate particle behavior as understood in physics, these simulations create a very realistic quality of motion. I
have long been interested in “lifelike”
motion. This is always the challenge for
an animator or anyone who thinks
about motion. SWELL (Fig. 3) with
Bryan Brown taught me to contemplate
our perceptual relationship to physical
scale. The large projections enabled the
wall surfaces to dematerialize convincingly. This piece happened to work well
with many viewers, as they could watch
each other play and perform with their
shadows. Over the past couple of years,
Jimmy Johnson and I have been adding
Fig. 4. Stiffs, each monolith 3 × 17 × 1 ft, room 70 × 38 × 17 ft, soundtrack by Jimmy Johnson,
programming by Sarah Rosenbaum, 2000. (© Jennifer Steinkamp) I built large, floor-to-ceiling monoliths, following research on the phenomena of monoliths in nature and of quarried
obelisks from Europe, South America, North Africa and the Middle East. I was intrigued by
their mysterious, long-lost rituals and memorial significance or practical use as sundials, calendars or boundary markers. All these possibilities imbued these forms simultaneously with
significance and openness. (Photo: Steven Heller, courtesy of ACME., Los Angeles)
Steinkamp, My Only Sunshine
111
the component of interactivity with sensors. We recently completed a largescale piece titled Stiffs (2000). I knew
that I wanted to create large, floor-toceiling monoliths; the forms would fill
the space while referencing some of the
existing proportions of the galler y. I
imagined the monoliths as a forest of
tall figures or trees. In the piece we emphasized this effect by arcing the animation and sound around the viewer, who
becomes enveloped when approaching
a monolith. The viewer has always been
an integral part of almost all my artwork—the shadow disrupts the image,
breaking the illusion of the projection.
The viewer’s playfulness and movement
though the space creates the experience. With Stiffs we explored spatial
interactivity, using ultrasonic sensors to
track the viewer’s relationship to each
monolith. As the viewer approached the
monolith, the animation would speed
up. Sensors at the far ends of the gallery
would send the image and sound into a
chorus; and all the monoliths would
then sing together in unison. It is an interesting challenge to construct
interactivity in a large space for many
viewers without losing the impact or experience of the work of art (Fig. 4).
genres, but there are many other ways to
categorize this work; and it has been included in many types of exhibitions, including feminist, video, digital, interactive, photo and abstract painting.
Three-dimensional computer graphics, virtual reality if you will, is a new medium for artists. I find it extremely gratifying to work with such adept’s tools.
Works of art can be created that have
never been experienced before, although this can also be all too tempting.
I feel a great responsibility to create artwork that engenders poetic resonance.
Artwork should work on many levels—it
can be accessible and interesting to an
untrained audience, as well as to the cultural vanguard. One of my greatest challenges is to create work in which complex ideas can be best experienced as art.
GENRES AND INFLUENCES
2. This piece was created for my undergraduate
thesis at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena,
California. It began as an installation for a house in
Pasadena that was also an artist-run alternative gallery space called Bliss; subsequently it was also exhibited in a storefront at the Santa Monica Museum
in California.
I am often asked what genre these artworks can be said to inhabit. They obviously can be considered part of the new
media art genre because of their origins
in, and reliance upon, computer-based
technology. At the same time, they are
part of a long evolution in installation
art. These are the two most overarching
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Steinkamp, My Only Sunshine
References and Notes
1. X—The Man with X-Ray Eyes (director and producer: Roger Corman; screenwriters: Robert Dillon
and Ray Russel; AIP, 1963). Ray Milland plays Dr.
Xavier, a researcher who is seeking a method to increase the spectrum of human vision. He has the
notion that humans are only capable of seeing 10
percent of the visible spectrum. Dr. Xavier comes
up with an eye drop that allows him to see through
things. He manages to kill an associate and become
an outlaw. As the plot develops he is able to see
through more and more, until the end when he
can see through everything, to eternity, and of
course it is painful.
3. I created this work for the Santa Monica Museum
of Art in Santa Monica, California.
4. Phase=Time was exhibited at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA.
5. Grain has albums available on Fragrant,
Astralworks and Moonshine record labels.
6. The symposium and exhibition, Photography and
the Photographic, was held at the California Museum
of Photography, Riverside, California, curated by
Amelia Jones.
Bibliography
Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love, Psychoanalysis,
Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1988).
Ferguson, Bruce W., and Grachos, Louis. POSTMARK: An Abstract Effect (Santa Fe, NM: SITE Santa
Fe, 1999).
Fuller, Diana Burgess. Parallels and Intersections: A
Remarkable Histor y of Women Artists in California,
1950–2000 (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press,
2001).
Hickey, David. Ultra Lounge, The Return of Social
Space; With Cocktails, exh. cat. (Houston, TX:
Diverseworks Artspace, 1998).
Jay, Martin. “Scopic Regimes of Modernity,” in Hal
Foster, ed., Vision and Visuality, Discussions in Contemporary Culture #2 (New York: Bay Press, in association with Dia Center for the Arts, 1988) pp. 3–23.
Lunenfeld, Peter. Snap to Grid: A User’s Guide to Digital Arts, Media, and Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2000).
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,
Art after Modernism (New York: The New Museum of
Contemporary Art, 1984, reprinted from Screen 16,
No. 3 [Autumn 1975]).
Steiner, Rochelle. Wonderland (St. Louis, MO: St.
Louis Art Museum, 2000).
Zelevansky, Lyn. Made in California (Los Angeles:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000).
Manuscript received 1 September 1998.
Jennifer Steinkamp is an installation artist.
She teaches at Cal-Arts, Valencia, California,
and the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Design/Media Arts.