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Landscape
and sky, drifting clouds, flights of birds, flowing rivers, waving
trees, spectacle of sunset and rise, span of twinkling stars, human
and animal silhouetes over the horizon, all that might have been
inspiration sources for the picture scroll. Raked sand, ondulating
cave walls, animal hides, tree bark, long leaves, battered fibres,
woven threads, slabs of clay, wood and stone became carriers of
information. Banners, buildings, impressions, painting, scratching,
carving, tapestry, frescos and friezes made the eye wonder and the
spectator wander as over time these information surfaces conconated
in vast picture trajectories on the walls of temple complexes, palaces
and public buildings.
Pompe, parades,and processions with iconographic objects carried
around: banners, flags, statues, shrines lifted on many shoukders.
This 'promenade', itself, became the subject of all sorts of linear
visual representation, whereby the spectator might either unroll
the spectacle represented on a roll or scroll, or stroll along walls
with pictured stories and ceremonial display.
Somehow this tradition must have caught me, be it in an unconscious
way at first.
In the seventies of last century I started to make visualized 'time
lines' as part of a whole series of exhibitions on urban questions
of the inner town of Amsterdam. These time-lines were horizontal
strips which combined text and images, showing the development of
the Nieuwmarktbuurt over a few centuries. Later a friend of mine
had acquired a panoramic photo camera and his images were frequently
used in the displays we made for citizens actions. Using horizontal
strips of images became a regular method over the years, we even
developed simple transparent plastic enveloppes to facilitate this
exhibition method; slide in photographs, caption texts, newspaper
cuttings and the like. (This first period, (1975-1985 is not yet
visually documented.)
A selection of seventy examples of horizontal and vertical scrolls
made since 1988 are shown here. When one would measure their total
length as a print-out it would be over a quarter of a kilometer.
The scrolls have served all kind of purposes: citizens urban actions,
artistic historical representations, an exhibition on alternative
European culture, an interactive media installation on shamanism,
visualizations of space and content of libraries and archives, portfolio
like overviews of my work and most of all for lectures and presentations
with a wide variety of subjects.
Som early scrolls were just long strips of photocopid images taped
together, others crude and spontaneous collages. Over the years
a method for constructing elebarorate layered scrolling compositions
evolved. Most scrolls are panoramic, so they move horizontal, though
there are also vertical scrolls and in some projects with interactive
movies, horizontal and vertical scrolling (like panning in a movie)
has been combined.
Horizontal scrolls have special qualities especially for narrated
presentations: images can be presented in a continuous way and the
visual narrative is not constantly disrupted by sudden disappearance
of one and appearance of an other image (like in slide shows and
regular power point presentations); images slide smoothly in and
out of view; one knows where one came from and one can also see
where one is heading; it is supportive of what can be called 'short
time memory'; there is a constant feeling of orientation, backward
is to the left, forward to the right; it has the logic of scanning
the horizon with a double movement of neck and eyes, constantly
shifting the point of attention, also being capable to swiftly turn
one's view back or forward.
The physical materials I have used for making scrolls have differed
over time: montaghed paper strips, photocopies, microfilm, photostrips
and all kind of digital formats. After the crude monatged paper
strips the first collage and merging of pictures have been done
photographically. Color slides were superimposed with a special
backlit duplicating device, overlapping and masking and direct painting
on the film with special dyes made the edges of the frame difuse
allowing for a more continuous visual experience. Beginning and
end of these horizontal filmstripswere joined in a loop and projected
by modified slide projectors with a horizontal transport system.
Digital image and managment techniques have enabled a further merging
and more subtle and suggestive interpretation of images into panoramic
story- and mind-scapes. Some of the later scrolls have up to a hundred
image layers. The quantative and qualative leap of both hardware
and software of the last decade has made the creation of such compliex
pictures possible, whereby the biggest amount of work tends to be
picture research, scanning and documenting. Keeping track of the
original meaning or context of a picture in the production process
is essential if one's aim is to create visualized forms of history.
To end up with a hundred or so picture element means having a ten
to twentyfold amount of images to chose from. To be able to work
with such an quantity of pictures one needs a database system allowing
for what can be called 'interactive visualization'; going back and
forward between picture selections, a technique that makes spontaneous
decisions possible, that fosters playfullness in the creative process.
Most scrolls have been made for some sort of public use, but I have
used the format also for personal and intimate expression, like
a small series of funeral scrolls for my girlfriend Josien who died
totally unexpected in 1990 and a set of memory scrolls for friends
and family after the death of my mother a few years ago summarizing
aspects of their lives.
Another development was the 'Micro-Chrono-Machine' of 1994 a hybrid
installation that combined a long strip of microfilm streched below
a set of rails over which a microfilm projector mounted on wheels
could be moved by the spectator. ( realized with the Rolf Pixley
and Otto Schuurman). Each centimeter of microfilm resulted in a
projection of two by one meter on the wall. The position of the
micro-film was continuously tracked by a funky sensor system - with
pullies and a rope - producing digital sound related to each part
of the microfilm, played through a loudspeaker mounted on the wheeled
projector. The content displayed was an overview of 30 years of
my work in the field of art and social action.
Special wooden scroll boxes have first been constructed for an exhibition
on shamanism in the Tropen Museum Amsterdam in 1997. This design
in collaboration with Gert-Jan Leusink and Frank Hoogveld could
contain scrolls of several meters printed on a special back-light
foil. The construction had to be very sturdy because it was meant
for an exhibition with mass attendance (over 100.000 vistors have
used the scroll boxes), so the user can not turn it the wrong way
and can not break the encased scroll as a a slipping device was
built in. These scroll boxes have been recycled for use in in other
exhibitions.
Most scrolls used for 'visual lectures' did at first not have a
fixed narration. The idea was and still is that the flow of images
will help to generate a flow of speech, including hesitations and
associations that can differ at each occasion. The scroll becomes
a kind of score somehow fixing the main argument in suggestive image
combinations, at the same time allowing for spontaneous variations
and adaptation to audience and mood. After doing a visual lecture
a few times a process of fixation, of writing and editing may take
place ending with a publishable iamge and text scroll.
Lately touch screen versions of scrolls have been produced with
touchable areas that produce half transparent overlays. One of these
was a museum installation about Papua musical instruments and had
a two to three minutes (aynschronous) sound track. A last version
has been a scroll interface on 'Visual Language' that has left right
navigation sensors and all areas of the scroll on the screen can
be touched and will produce back ground information overlays. |
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