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Jordan Crandall
Jordan Crandall : »Drive (Track 6), 1998-2000; »Heatseeking
(Course track)«, 1999-2000
by Sabine Himmelsbach
Andy Warhol als a cartoon figure in the Miracleman comic:
»Do you like this existence, Andy?
Oh, sure. It’s wonderful. I like being a machine.
It’s what I always wanted to be. You see, I used to carry a
camera with me everywhere I went. Now my eyes are cameras, recording
all they see. I don’t need tape recorders any more – I am a
tape recorder. This is heaven.« [1]
Jordan Crandall's work Drive (1998-2000) consists of
a series of seven films which, in terms of content, deal with
the combination of traditional ways of seeing and new technological
methods of image generation. Crandall has combined traditional
cinematographic methods with military target finding technology,
tracking systems and pattern recognition programs. Drive.
Track 6, subtitled Projectile/Gaze the »arming of
vision« is powerfully visualized in two projections. One shows
an extreme close-up of a man's face. The camera is directed
towards his eye, yet his gaze keeps the penetrative intensity
of the camera at bay. In slow motion we see how the eyelid slowly
closes and opens again to renew contact with the observer. On
the film projected opposite we see found footage of military
high-tech technology; radar and infrared shots, target lock-on
systems, computer images that are specialized in locating, classifying
and identifying moving war machines. The human gaze is contrasted
with militarized visualization practices, and compared with
a projectile.
The work Heatseeking (1999-2000) is, similar to Drive,
composed as a seven-part series whose content also deals with
how technology changes perception. Heatseeking was filmed
in the border regions of San Diego and Tijuana and centers around
the problems created by the border situation, the surveillance
methods used there and the definition of borders as frontiers.
In Heatseeking (Course Track) two golf players meet to
tee off on the golf course at night. Alone in the darkness they
play their game observed by a camera with night vision technology.
In this strange scenery, the camera alternates between the tension-filled
game between the two players and the golf course’s expanse.
Camera shots of the golf players in this location alternate
with shots from surveillance cameras and computer-controlled
search programs which makes the two protagonists appear as if
they are in the system's target-finding zone. Quite unexpectedly,
one of the players hits his opponent with his golf club - a
fight ensues, they roll around on the ground while the camera
attempts to follow them. Almost imperceptibly, aggression switches
over into ambivalent eroticism. The video ends abruptly in a
sequence of quick film cuts and breaks which looks as if the
film has ripped. Crandall has perfected the use of a broad range
of film methods in Heatseeking. With rapidly changing
camera angles, B/W and color changes, and the use of various
levels of media, the observer is confronted with a flood of
images which he is hard put to process. The soundtrack heightens
the surreality of the night-time golf course scene - in place
of the expected swish of flying golf balls Crandall has used
sound material from weapons in action, underlying the latent
aggressive undertones.
In both videos, we are confronted with the military's »strategic
view« and an increasing militarization of the human gaze. The
military visualization images used by Crandall are those with
which we are all familiar from the media coverage of modern
wars. A prominent example is the Gulf War which was followed
on television world-wide and whose images of military high-tech
operations engraved themselves in the minds of viewers. Indeed,
devices which were developed for military purposes have long
since infiltrated the civilian market and in fact are in high
demand. Switching from normal image to infrared is now a common
feature of video cameras and this is enjoying ever-greater popularity.
The way we see is being altered by technical aids - these ways
of generating images are increasingly defining our perception.
Vilém Flusser describes the apparatus way of viewing as such:
»We see everything as if we were constantly looking through
a camera.« [2]
Crandall himself speaks of »militarized images«. [3]
»Tracking, targeting and identifying formats begin to seep into
the way we see, behave, and desire. They enter into the very
structure of perception. The camera marks the place of battle.«
[4]
Computers generate images and learn to analyze and interpret
images. Computer pattern recognition image analysis describes
a new kind of vision which lies beyond the central perspective.
The image is the result of the process of data analysis. In
his book "Techniques of the Observer" Jonathan Crary desribes
abstraction of the visual, the change in our perception thanks
to computer-controlled viewing. He draws attention to the fact
that new techniques of image production will become dominant
visualization models. [5]
New technology
influences not just our perception but also our physical being.
Movement only becomes legible once the underlying patterns have
been analyzed. In their studies on the human body, Muybridge
und Marey have made movement readable by creating sequences.
"In computerized tracking and targeting systems, however, movement
is indicated differently. It is represented by way of its processing
through databases. A new kind of moving image results – these
new images do not so much represent movements as track them.«
[6]
Computer technology records movements and analyzes them. The
film Moving Image is altered by recording movement. Movement
is not presented but data-processed. In Crandall's work, real
movement and computer representation are mixed and become congruent.
Modern technology constructs the body of the viewer anew. »There
is a kind of mutation of images that occur in this landscape,
in that images become part of processing systems, parts of apparatus
that »see back« at us. It involves a kind of reversal of vision,
displacing our location as privileged sites in the viewing exchange.
We are seen, before we see. We are identified, before we identify.
There are biometric systems, and other kinds of systems, which
lock onto you, identify you through your behaviour patterns
or biological characteristics. It is a kind of switching of
positions, and this is a very important change to think about.«
[7]
1 Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham, in: Miracleman,
19 (Forestville, Calif.: Eclipse Comics, 1991), quoted from: Scott
Bukatman, »Terminal Identity. The virtual subject in postmodern
science fiction«, (Durham and London, 1993), p. 328
2 Vilém Flusser, »Bilderstatus,« in: Christos M. Joachimides
and Norman Rosenthal (eds.), Metropolis. Internationale Kunstausstellung,
(Berlin, 1991, Stuttgart, 1991), p. 51
3 Jordan Crandall, »Notes for [!] Militarized Images«,
nettime-Mailinglist, 16 April 1999, http://www.desk.nl/nettime~archive
4 Jordan Crandall, http://www.rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2070
5 Jonathan Crary, »Techniques of the Observer. Seeing and
the Modern Age in the 19th Century«, (Dresden & Basel, 1996),
p. 12
6 Jordan Crandall and Lawrence Rinder, »Transcript of presentation
at The Kitchen«, New York, http://www.blast.org/crandall/interviews/kitchen.html
7 Ibid.
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