Progressive Recession

Description

"A live interactive installation (using no recording equipment) which, as the participant moves through, progressively separates and distances his/her image from its origin." David Hall 1974 (Source, website, Rewind)

Additional Informations

"My own installation, Progressive Recession, has similar concerns. It uses nine cameras and nine monitors also in a corridor configuration. Two monitors are placed either end (facing each other) and the rest line one side. Each has a camera placed on top of it. The first monitor (at the side) reflects the spectator confronting it - the camera above is directly linked to it. The second remains blank when facing it, the image from its respective camera appears on the next (ahead of the participant's progression along the corridor), the third is also blank with its camera's output appearing on the monitor two ahead, and so on - the image progressively appearing further and further ahead by a systematic rate of 'acceleration'. The return journey along the corridor is similarly structured - spectator relative to his image. The two end monitors are linked to their opposite cameras, each image receding concurrent with the participant's move toward it. With no recording equipment involved (hence incorporating no technical facility for actual time delay), my intention was the exploration of a schematic manipulation of correlative spatial events - the image and its origin. The relative disparities of movement in the visual field induce the analogue of temporal 'extension' and 'contraction'." (Source: David Hall, "British Video Art. Towards an Autonomous Practice", Studio International, May/June 1976, p. 248-254.) (Source, pdf, Monoskop website)

"Requirements: 9 monitors, 9 video cameras, custom built plinths and corridor enclosure." (Source, website, Rewind)

Progressive Recession, technical information sheet & sketches. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

View photograph of the installation on Rewind's website

View plan drawing of the installation on Rewind's website

View Technical information and materials (Source, pdf, Rewind)

"Many early installations were mottoed as a complex analogical mirror where the viewer, interacting with his/her image as collaborator rather than spectator, was simultaneously the viewed in a process of 'self-referring consciousness'. It is quite obvious here that artists were intent on exploring relationships of hitherto unapproachable psychological innovation and response, where the formal, physical (and technological) framework was essentially the site of the experience..." (Source: David Hall, "Early Video Art: A Look at a Controversial History ", Julia Knight (dir.), Diverse practices: a critical reader on British video art, University of Luton Press, Luton, 1996.) (Source, website, Rewind)

The monitors in this installation are connected to the various closed circuit video cameras.

Presentation place

- The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, Londres, 1 - 26 mai 1975.

Publications and Periodicals which reference the work

- David Hall, "British Video Art. Towards an Autonomous Practice", Studio International, May/June 1976, p. 248-254. (Source, pdf, Monoskop)

- Tamara Krikorian, "Video Installations in Britain", London Video Arts Catalogue, 1984. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Julia Knight (ed.), Diverse practices: a critical reader on British video art, University of Luton Press, Luton, 1996.

- David Curtis (ed.), A Directory of British Film and Video Artists, John Libbey Media, Luton, 1996.

- Joanna Heatwole, "Media of Now: an interview with David Hall", Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Volume 36, Aug/Sep published by the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York, 2008. (Source, pdf, Rewind)

- Stephen Partridge & Sean Cubitt (eds.), REWIND| British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s, John Libbey Publishing, East barnet, Herts, 2012.