Producing Installation Videos

Understand the potential of video in an exhibition space as an art form

Past and Current Practise

Rachael Maclean

Born in 1987 in Edinburgh, Rachael Maclean is a video artist that uses film effects in order to create weird and "outlandish" characters, that carry some sort of political point about society. She has a variety of different cartoonish characters in there own fantasy world for each installation. She acts out the character while using a green screen and editing to create the fantasy world for that character. For her audio she uses sounds from other media outlets such as film and television to create a narrative. Some of her video exhibitions and fantasy characters include; Its whats inside that counts, we want data, feed me and eyes to me.

Its Whats inside that counts (2016)

Eyes to Me (2015)

Feed Me (2015)

We Want Data (2016)

She received the Margaret Tait award in 2013 for her video art installation to the Glasgow Film Festival, some of her projects have also been screened at the State Museum of Urban Sculture. All of her characters are inspired by fairytales, horror films and various television shows.

"My work slips inside and outside of history and into imagined futures, creating hyper-glowing, artificially saturated visions that are both nauseatingly positive and cheerfully grotesque"

-Rachel Maclean

An example of one of her video art projects is her 3 minute short film "Germs." The short installation follows Rachel as the female protagonist through a series of advertising tropes. She moves from a perfume advertisement to a bathroom cleaner and so on but eventually becomes more and more paranoid about the presence of germs in all of the ads that her character is going through. There are lots of different characters during the short film and Rachel plays every single one of them, including the germs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GymQKifnfnE&t=79s

There have been a great number of fans and responses to Rachel's work, her fantasy inspired work has generated a huge following. The creative director at Alchemy Film & Arts stated "Rachel Maclean is a powerfully original artist filmmaker , and we look forward to working with her on a striking new film and exhibition presentation at Venice"

I am using Rachel Macleans work as inspiration for my own video installation project because its very quirky and outlandish which is one of the reasons her work is so popular, because it attracts attention which I hope to use in my installation, not as colorful as hers but definitely showing a little of her work. I will also take the idea from her work of using something to get an important point across to the audience..






Jeff Keen

Jeff keen was another very interesting video artist, not quite as outlandish as Rachel Maclean but similar in his own ways. He made a wide range of different drawings, sculptures and paintings but was more well known for his art installation videos. His videos were a mix image collages, animations, live action and found footage clips all mashed together into one. He uses a lot of editing and super imposing in his videos to create very fast moving, wacky imagery, and had a range of different video intallations including Marvo Movie, Rayday film and Mad Love.

A great majority of Jeff's work is hugely inspired by war, as he was called up to serve in the war in 1942.  After being there so long it was hard not to take anything back with him and so it heavily inspired him to make a lot of his art, based on the experience of him being at war.

An example of one of his video installation projects in Flik Flak, a short but very fast paced video that features a lot of quick moving images that are a mix of stop motion and overlaying a lot of images. Di spite the fast moving imagery, the music it features is very calm and slow which is a very different contrast to the paceing of the images.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zeHdcC2uU

I've compared his slightly to Rachel Maclean as they both have the same type of quirky videos that all sere a purpose and spread a message no matter how ridiculous they come across, but having said that, his work is very unique in the way that he isnt just imagining weird things to put on video, its all inspired by the aftermath of the war and what he experienced. Usually when people leave the war they tell stories about how dreadful it was and how emotional painful it was, but Jeff Keen had in fact the opposite opinion. he loved being in the war and you can see it from looking at his video projects.

"His films are so incredibly quick-fire, vibrant and distinctive that it’s hard to find a contemporary with whom to compare him. Jeff Keen is bracketed as an experimental filmmaker, but he himself does not watch experimental films."

Audience



So far i have focused on the artists video and just what they think of it, but another think to mention is the audience. The point of the videos that the artist's make is to be shown to a huge audience in a video art exhibition/installation. The audience plays a very important part in watching the video as they are the ones that are to take away the hidden meaning that the video may hide. As mentioned before, both Rachel Maclean and Jeff Keen have some sort of message in their videos, Rachel's being a message about society, and Jeff Keens being a hidden message to how he feels about the war. 


Peter Greenaway is a well known artist and film director who is slightly similar to Rachael Maclean as he also uses digital technology to make his art installations. He makes people think the meaning behind films as well as just the plot by using digital technology.  He takes inspiration from a lot of old paintings and drawing from the 19th century, and instead of being shown on a film screen, most of his art projects are just projected into bare walls and ceilings. This is different from other artist that put there work onto existing canvases and screens.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c4kx4QDY5U




Norman Mclaren did a lot of live action films and documentaries but was mostly remembered as an animator. He was a Canadian artist that worked for the National film board by experimenting with technology and other media outlets. As mentioned before, he was mostly known for his work of adding music over animations that he created himself. What sets Norman McLaren apart from the other artists mentioned is that although he produced a lot of art and animation, it was not his main career. He experimented with a lot of short animated films but it wasn't until he died in 1987 that his work was shown in art installations and exhibitions.




Steve Mcqueen was also an art experimentalist like many of the other artists I've talked about. He experienced a lot of racism growing up so most of his installations come with a message about strength and coming together. Its not that specific in giving the message, but very hidden to not make that the sole subject of his art. He uses black  and white in his installations and similar to Peter Greenaway he like to project his work onto floors and ceilings


Sam Taylor Wood/Sam Taylor Johnson uses multiple screens on top of each other in order to create one big installation with multiple meaning behind it. She experiments with films and photography to show the contrast between internal and external. The message she wants her work to bring across is how we view ourselves vs how others view us. She has done a lot of films and photography installations, and also directed the popular film adaptation of the book; Fifty Shades of Grey.


Georgina Star uses the same technic as Sam Taylor Wood by using many screens put on top of each other to portray a range of different hidden meanings to across. As well as just random short films with meanings, her work also has a narrative that involves some different characters that have different stories and scenarios in different mediums.