Tony Oursler

Phototropic

By Tony Oursler
Published in
Apr. 0, 0

The spectrum of tragedy brings people together. Its many jagged colors, together make a white light.... or so they say. He takes his broken dreams to the congregation at the TV show in hopes of illuminating many homes. The contestants, suffering from a range of sexual maladies, a major problem in the modern world, volunteer to be artificially stimulated to orgasm. With the aid of the highest technology the images which run through their minds at the exact point of orgasm are presented for all to see, these visions are scrutinized and rewarded according to their entertainment value. 
--Tony Oursler, Spheres of Influence (a video tape and installation) 

Evidence of a Narrative MetaSystem: The function of a NMS can only be described by its effects upon the lives of its Hosts and by the traces left by its subsurface ebbs and flows as they emerge through psychomimetic technologies. The NMS, coupled with these technologies, acts as constructive corrosive and dissolves physical boundaries to form the Screened World. 
What has happened to my body? 
First, I would like to match the two clocks. 

Zita Mellon Advents
Artist (1897- 1996). 

Electricity

Born
Radio
Automobile
Flight
42nd year TV
Atomic
DNA
Moon
Synthetic
Virus

The bowerbird family, Ptilonorhynchidae, is closely related to the bird of paradise. The satin, stagemaker, and all other members of this species are known for their remarkable bowers .These chambers, arenas, and runways are constructed for the sole purpose of mating. Within his bower, each male bird performs an elaborate 'dance' until he attracts a mate. the bowers are built out of decorative, color-coded (by plumage) materials such as insect bodies, shells, feathers, creepers, grasses, mosses, orchids, and other flowers. The decorations, as they become withered or faded are cleared from the site and replaced. Recently, the bowerbird has added brightly colored synthetics that fit into its building palette. Some bowerbirds are festooned with bright plumage, while others are rather dull and inconspicuous. This range of coloration is reflected in the process of bower building; the more colorful the bower the less colorful the bird and vice versa. (There is a continuing debate surrounding the phenomenon in relation to theories of evolution. Some say the bird is a freak of nature, constantly struggling to make up for a lack of adequate gendermarking wile others see its habits as a 'neo-natural' mutation with far reaching implications.) 
The Screened World has facilitated the displacement of the 'natural ecosystem by the 'artificial' Echo-System. Thus, a shunting of life force transpires. 
Artifice redefined. 

One of the most interesting things about TV is that people spend so much time watching something that has nothing to do with their lives. 
--Unknown member of the medical industry

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) broadcasts, once received, cause the location of their reception to undergo a tranformation of psycho/architectural fusion: electronic prison: 
There is a distinct presence of Christianity here, an adulterated brand of Christianity, suffering from a perversion of its founding doctrine resulting in the shift of its primary symbolism from the resurrection to the crucifixion. This shift in emphasis and its endless contradictions is central to the schizophrenic predisposition of the American. The FCC piggybacks its narratives on this predisposition, exploiting it as a means of supplying the public with an endless stream of capitalistic verisimilitude. The FCC, acting as both the pusher and the drug, profits by narcotizing viewers and keeping them addicted. 
Within the confines of this prison, the viewer is conditioned to automatically and unconsciously enter into a state of willing suspension of disbelief. The viewer sits as a nullity, hypnotized by the light and synced to the electromagnetic waves of the Utility of Television. 

A body may live long underground conserved by the Astral Light in a complete state of lucid somnambulism. Their souls are then bound to the sleeping body by an invisible chain, and if those souls are greedy and criminal they can draw on the quintessence of the blood in the persons who are naturally asleep; they can transmit this sap to their interred bodies for their longer preservation in the vague hope that they may be restored ultimately to life. 
--Colin Wilson, The Occult* 

While under the influence of the Utility, the viewer manifests one of the predominate signs of schizophrenia: the inability to identify the perimeter of the body or to perceive the point at which the body ends and the the rest of the world begins..... 
To induce the out of body experience a symbolic species identification is evoked within the viewer. To achieve this, a visualsonic code is projected that can be decoded or constructed by the viewer to resemble a human form known as a Surrogate. Electronic Animism is triggered by the presence of the Surrogate, followed by a remarkable degree of viewer empathy, decapitation, possession, and finally, the most damaging result of FCC transmissions, representation of the Evolving Collective Unconscious. 
There is no such thing as an actor. 
What are these empathy-inducing entities? To understand the psychoactive cipher the code must be broken. To begin, we must identify some of the elements that retain the characteristics of the Surrogate. 

A period. 
A period screaming
A hole with language coming out of it. 
Effigy. 
Six Japanese dressed in black, all operating one small puppet. 
A piece of meat moving around. 
......in sync with language. 
Excrement. 
Anything in the foreground. 
The whole picture. 
Anything that moves. 
Anything more interesting than you. 
Mirror. 
Anything mind altering. 
Anything mood altering. 
Frankenstein. 
Empathy. 

One encodes sensory experience by means of rearrangement of neural electronics and chemistry, resulting in the physical imprint of a neural narrative. 
When I was a young child, I was convinced that what I was shown on the Utility was real--even the scenarios depicting death. I thought that the prisoners on death row were given a choices to die as a TV cowboy or army man, or die in a gas chamber or electric chair. 

'Oh, looks like I killed her.' 
--Robert Chambers, from his untitled videotape

{The tape was produced by Mr. Chambers and four 'girlfriends' before the start of his trial for the murder of Ms. Levin. Ms. Levin, whose body was found in Central Park (cause of death: strangulation) near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was at one time the 'girlfriend' of Mr. Chambers. He claimed that he killed her by mistake during 'rough sex' in what became sensationalized in the press as the 'Preppie Murder Trial' 
{After a protracted debate regarding Chambers guilt or innocence during which the defense mounted a campaign of character assassination against the late Ms. Levin, Chambers was convicted and sentenced for man-slaughter to a minimum term in prison. Soon after he began serving his sentence, one of his 'girlfriends' who helped make the videotape sold it to a local New York TV station for $10,000. No one, except Chambers and friends, knew of the existence of the videotape until the announcement of its sale. The videotape, which showed Chambers committing mock strangulations while the 'girlfriends' acted as victim, judge, and jury, won top prime time ratings and, as was noted by the press, outstripped Wheel Of Fortune for two days in a row. The Chambers statement quoted above, was made on the videotape while removing a doll's head from its body. ( It had been brought to my attention by filmmaker Joe Gibbons, that if the security cameras at the Metropolitan Museum had been in working order at the time the original murder was committed the event would have been captured on video for all to judge.)} 

In Manslaughter ,the heroine was a speed demon. In one scene, her car was to be chased by a motorcycle policeman. Then her car was to skid around and be hit dead center by the motorcycle....The stunt man somersaulted over the car, landing on the other side with broken ribs, pelvis, and collarbone. Later the actress commented, 'They shouldn't have risked a man's life for that shot. When you see it on screen it looks just like a dummy!' 
The director of the first Ben Hur carried the use of real people to the fatal extreme...It was the fiery clash between the slave ship and the pirate ship that really upset newspapers and public opinion. When the Italian extras had been hired for that scene....each had been asked if they could swim. A simple 'yes' got a job for each peasant paying more than he could ever make in the fields. To make sure the ships would burn well they were liberally doused with oil--- without warning the passengers. No one ever combed through the conflicting stories of the filming enough to prove how many extras drowned that day
--Susan Hilton, It's Smart To Use A Dummy

The word Television comes from the Greek word tele meaning 'far' and the Latin word videre meaning 'to see.' 

Transportation. 
Perspective. 
Elf. 
Giant. 
Filter. 
Bunker. 

It is well known that Elvis Presley had violent reactions to the Utility. During the singers wild viewing parties he would become enraged at something he saw on the TV, produce a loaded twelve-gauge shotgun, and shock his house guests by firing both barrels at the offensive appliance. As was often the case with many of Elvis's impulses, his TV shoot-outs were prophetic. {Please note the singers use of two-way mirrors (stealthily installed around his home to his specifications) during masturbatory sexual activities. Also, later, the 'viewer interactive' works by artist Dan Graham. Although it was Little Richard ('Richard the Watcher' to his friends) who laid the foundation, it was the King, followed by Mr. Graham, who produced the primary works of Architectural Video Interactivity} 
Soon after news of the shoot-outs hit the tabloids, there arrived, on the wings of a new technology, the first popular interactive video game--Tank Commander. The player of Tank Commander stands, control stick in hand, head partially surrounded by and facing into a dark chamber. This chamber houses a screen that acts as an opening in a tank used to sight the tanks' guns. This simulated gun turret looks 'out' onto a hostile environment. Using the controls the player can gain the illusion of moving in any direction on the horizontal battlefield. The landscape is pictured in hard edge, phosphorescent green, computer generated lines on a field of jet black. The horizon remains constant, to be broken only by motion: the approach toward an angular mountain range or the onslaught of a multitude of geometric enemy vehicles. The computer keeps the player's point of view at the perspective center of the world; the surrounding objects fall off sharply, diminishing perfectly toward the distant horizon. The object of the game is to destroy the enemy before they destroy you. The frightful sounds of tanks exploding seems strangely familiar; through these explosions Elvis and his twelve-guage song live on. 
After Tank Commander and other similar-in-theme, eye-hand dexterity intensive games has been around awhile, a conspiracy theory was hatched in the arcades and malls around the nation. The word was this: The Pentagon was behind the deployment of the games. They were in fact the mechanical embodiment of a domestic propaganda campaign. The goal was to develop a consciousness sympathetic to that of the military. Other theories went on to speculate that they were a part of a pretraining process targeting recruitment age youths. At this point the word branched out , into a general history of camouflage, and made a fuguelike cycle.... 
Trojan Horse
The hand-painted cardboard sets of buildings that Mussolini had erected along roads to be toured by Hitler Inflatable Tanks. 
Biosphere relation to surface coating color theory. 
Clandestine integration of propaganda into popular entertainment forms. 
Computer War Games Centers. 
Interactive flight simulators. 
The CIA's use of LSD as a truth/amnesia drug. 
Subliminal video messages. 
Tank Commander. 

'Everything is true,' he said. 'Everything anybody ever thought.' 
--Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Sheep (Blade Runner) 

It is estimated that the human body completely rebuilds itself every decade, systematically replacing its intricate structure on the molecular level. Although this subtle process of biological reinvention is largely ignored by the cultural-military complex, its significance is noted within certain sectors of the medical industry. It is there we find the American Pioneer spirit at its finest, engaged in deadly battle, returning the Citizen to the Body. 

...Take some time to observe whatever image appears as carefully as you can...if you would like it to become clearer, imagine you have a set of controls like you do for your TV set, and you can dial the image brighter or more vivid...notice the details about the image...what is the shape? ... color? How big is it in relation to you? .... How close or far way does it seem?.... 
....notice any feelings coming up, allow them to be there... look deeper... are there any other feelings present as you observe the image?.... When you are sure of your feelings let the image know how you feel about it--speak directly and honestly to it (you may choose to talk out loud or express yourself silently)... 
Then in your imagination, give the image a voice, and allow it to answer you... listen carefully to what it says.... 
--Martin L. Rossman, M.D., Healing Yourself: A Step-by-Step Program for Better Health Through Imagery