A written conversation between

Tony Oursler and Christiane Meyer-Stoll

'Projection' seems to be a key term in your work. What does the term 'projection' represent to you?

It comes down to light, shinning light. Light passing through objects, space, playing on a surface forming a new skin. Physics tells us this: we see light not objects. Many of my works play with the projection as skin, as identity. They change from male to female and back again. This leads us into psychological projection - which is the concept of inner thoughts projected outward onto the world. One viewer sees a woman projected onto a figure the other sees a man, this has happened time and again. I finally realized that they are projecting onto the figure as well, psychologically. In this way the viewer exposes the gender of their reaction, to the artwork. The viewer has always been the artist's collaborator; finishing the work, carrying their own personal history into the process. The Rorschach tests are a great example of a device to illicit projection, to measure it. We have all been fascinated by these tests but art itself is much more than an ink blot test. If not one has lost faith in language, and is left with a blank surface to reflect everything. Of course the interesting part of the ink blot test is the fact that 80% of the public sees the same thing within reason and the other 20% see something altogether different. Its the testing system itself which becomes interesting, its implications in visual/verbal communication. There is something there that relates to media grammar, editing, evolution of visual literacy; the point at which the dots form an image, the point at which empathic bonds are formed between the viewer and the electronic entity.

OK let's get back to basics, Physics tells us we don't see matter- the forms, the objects -but the light which it reflects. As it bounces off the surface it picks up colors and textures and other properties inherent to the object. I like to mess with this relationship, short circuit it. Maybe it would be a good idea to give the pigs heart a mouth? Let it talk. Lets see what it can say and get away with. That's projection on my part. I have to decide what it could and could not say. Make up the rules the logic the text. As it turned out the organs were worried about being alive or dead. They could not decide where they were on that scale. Also, they were not too smart. So I project my mouth onto a pig heart. I talk through it, or is it talking through me at this point?

In retrospect, the flower works were the most directly about psychological projection. Flowers have always struck me as a free floating signifier. A symbol cut loose from any historic relevance yet, flowers remain ever-present to this day. Often invisible, the flower uses ornamentation as domestic camouflage. Take the lonely bouquet in a vase on a table in the corner of the TV room. It was adorable when first set. But now with the passage of time no one sees it any more. No on can remember why they wanted the flowers. No one pays any attention. Seemingly dormant, they just take up space; somehow, magically, they become part of the room. Cloaked in invisibility, they absorb life, exuding fragrance in return. The flower's true design is reflective, it monitors everything around it, all that is said and done-- even the thoughts and emotions behind each interaction. It is especially sensitive to the negative spectrum of human activity, embodying it, converting it, to fantastic perfumes. Just as their stems suck in water and minerals, the fleshy colorful trumpets suck up evil. This osmosis keeps them alive. Alas, over days and weeks they become toxic with the corruption of man. No matter how horrible the projected event, flowers are prepared to receive whatever is cast upon them and will happily reflect it at the proper time.

In your work these flowers-cameras and projectors have been replaced by miniaturized technology. It is not only the motive, the content they reflect, but quite directly the process of viewing itself (i.e. the way these contents are perceived).

I owe a great deal to the relatively new technology of LCD video projection. I had always been attracted to the power of video: two tracks of sound, instant replay and feedback of moving images, reproducible, cheap production: Mimetic technology . This is a term I borrowed from Pharmacology, psycho-mimetic drugs, drugs that mimic portions of our mental states. It seems an appropriate perspective to gage whole groups of inventions such as the phonograph and telephone on through virtual reality and the internet. One can ask the question: what mental facilities do these technologies mimic? This starts to become interesting. Technologies as amplifiers of instincts. Mimetic technologies are at the heart of our moment and the most accessible and feasible of these devices is video.

But, let me go back, I hated the TV set. The box which was really designed as furniture, which is OK if you are a house. It is interesting technology as furniture but that had been addressed- even became a sort of fetishism for a previous generations of media artists such as Paik and Vostel. I always wanted to use the language of video as a tool of communication not the tangible object as a design tool. It just seemed like cutting the wings of the medium to keep it in a box. And the projectors at the time were very expensive and hard to come by and difficult to use. Besides, I like to work with technology that I can have in the studio, things I can hold. Anyway from about 1981 - 1991, during the production of installations and sculptures, I enjoyed figuring out ways to remove the image from the screen, reflecting in glass, mirror, water, lenses, spheres and so on. Then I discovered the small video projectors.

Using these projectors you transfer images onto objects and dummies. The inanimate dummies become animate through their opposite, the video camera. This immobile dummy which is indispensable for the life to appear animate. Is this relationship intended or would you prefer a unity of both sides?

It's interesting that you call the projector a camera in this question! It ties into what we were discussing: information moving back and forth between the subject and the object. Is it a conversation as you suggest? Is the machine a projector or a recorder? One gives life the other takes it away. I like having the apparatus and the sculpture separated by space or should I say connected by light. I fantasize that someday there will be video cloth or paint but until then I'm happy to have them in their symbiotic relationship. There seems to be numerous media metaphors in this bond. In a way everything is a camera today--don't you feel it? Here is where I start to think of electronic blood, prosthetics and Frankenstein. Someone said that some of my figures were imbued with more empathy than is bestowed on many humans and I find that very sad.

These figures resemble magical fetishes. Their human features are all but gone, but nonetheless one is inclined to project personal characteristics and effects onto them.

When I first started making dummies or objects in 1989 or so it was the culmination of years of experimentation in relation to the figure and its cultural representation both in and outside of media. I was always interested in finding a sort of molecular figure: that which could not be reduces any further without loosing its characteristics. I used found dolls and modified dolls as surrogates, miniatures of all sorts which mostly ended up as props in my early video tapes, starting when I was at CAL ARTS in 1975. I really liked how video transformed these figures into a large digress, made them more real through the ground down, ghostly, low resolution of the medium at that time. I realized that by letting the figures jump the media barrier, enter in the realm of electronic entity in the endless stream of TV narrative. Movie stars, Bad Guys, Soap Opera Families, in my own simple way I could send my figures into that place. That's how video making felt to me back then. Like entering a place which was almost impossible to get to. And with the right lighting and language my figures had equal power there. Yet sometimes they were not much more than small balls of paper with a voice over. But in fact the stars and the speck were made up of the same ingredients.

Anyway, in the late 80's I was trying for the first time to make figurative work without video-

sculptures which could stand on their own. Again, I was looking at reduced primary forms which did not sign art, which is not so easy. as part of my research I looked at how the average person might make a figure if they had to; for instance a farmer and a scarecrow, a kid on Halloween, a dummy, an angry crowd and an effigy. This way of working struck my fancy so I made a number of dummies out of old clothing. One of them, about my size, I sat a the chair at my desk. Strangely, every time I came into the room, the figure scared me- especially when it was dark--- I mean really scared me, I jumped when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Even though I knew it was there in my conscious mind, for I had made it and placed it there, still it scared me every time. It also scared my dog, who growled at it in alarm. That's when I realized the dummies were primary in another way, in the way that a hawk recognizes certain patters or silhouettes of prey. Instinctively these images are burned into its brain. The dummy was formally and always a stranger in the wrong place no matter where I put it.

I could never figure out how to put a face on these figures. I tried everything and took snapshots as a record: rubber masks, hand painting, collage, photographs, cartoons, everything I could think of. Yet each new face I tried on the dummies seemed to destroy their magical effect, made them too specific. Their beauty was in their distance. So I left their faces blank , using the same material which covered the rest of the body. It was at this time that the Fujix P40U LCD mini video projector came onto the market. I had read about it in a magazine and sent away for one to see how it worked. To put it simply, its like a slide projector except that the slide is replace by a small transparent TV screen. A bright light is focused through the TV screen which in turn is focused through a lens and the image which comes out of the lens can be projected on any surface. The beauty of this system is that the projector is only 8" x 2". Of course, it took a while to figure out that I could record a face using a video camera and then play it back using a VCR attached to this projector which I finally projected onto the blank face of the dummy. So you can see the symmetry of this inversion: real to recorded to projected to simulated. The device allowed me to puncture the media barrier again many years later and drain some of those characters out into this world.

How do you perceive the relationship between body and spirit in your installations?

Video is to figure as spirit is to body. I think its safe to say that in this day and age, information has taken the place of spirit which now resides within the head. And as we all know information enters the brain through the eyes. Each eye is created by first videotaping a person's eye and then projecting it onto a sphere. This way we can inspect the organ in great detail. The video image wraps around half of the sphere as though it were a round movie screen.

The viewer is positioned within the lines of sight and delegated to voyeur status. The eye as object is a model of a number of systems and machines; in a movie theater-- the retina can be seen as a screen: camera or projector. It is a versatile port. The separation between media and reality is in the process of dissolving at this point in time and I wanted to use this installation to play with this as the eye is the versatile port, central to this drama.

The works seemed to have stirred-up some talk of spirituality, "windows to the soul" and things like that. But as I isolated them from the face as single giant orbs to my surprise they took on a much more alien quality devoid of human and emotional characteristics. I discovered that the isolated organ of the eye is incapable of showing emotion, which resides in the face which surrounds it. A number of people have reminded me that at one time it was believed that the eyes of the dead retained the last image which was seen at death. By carefully slicing the eye one could find this image and solve a murder perhaps by revealing the identity of the killer.

Real eyes are not so easy to read and people focus a lot of attention on them, trying to find something inside them. They are organs which constantly seek and watch and are in turn being watched. This eye, titled 'Zap/Flash', performed by Joe Gibbons , is looking at television while surfing the channels, and we all do here in America. So you see the eye with a little TV image reflected within the iris. The pupil contracts and expands. It seems to be almost feeding. Sometimes you can hear the soundtrack and sometimes you can recognize the images and sometimes not, they are just too dim or small or far away. The reflections are random because at the time they are recorded they are broadcast live so I never know the combinations which will occur. I switch channels intuitively while recording the image. This is probably the only improvisational part of my work, surfing.

Do you identify with the camera, viewing, recording the objects themselves or the dummies, in particular?

Point of View, or P.O.V. as its known in the industry (that being film and other mimetics) has always been a consideration. Where am I? Where are you? Where is it? What kind of motion will occur? Where is the camera? Some of the recent figure / ground works such as DUST, 1996, have more than one P.O.V. built into it. One lone figure stays at rest and the ground, which is literally a camera angle pointing toward a bed of roses. The red and the green of the flowers and leaves are inspected in extreme close up, a macro-camera POV. Here the camera takes on the characteristics of wondering , almost depressed POV. Each rose is compared to the other which looks better? why is this one dying and that one budding? The flowers become free floating signifiers and culturally layered, each group has a name plaque such as Class Act and Red Devil . This large rectangle of video is projected over the figure and upon the wall behind it. The figure looks left and right but is frozen in the vertical position. She refers to the ground of flowers occasionally, try's to understand them. She speaks and is covered by the larger projection as though she is floating in a double exposure. She never moves. The garden seems to be an extension of her thoughts, then it's also something external which she is in reaction- to inside of- like a fast moving body of water. But she does not move-- except for her face. A P.O.V. relativity is enforced between her space and the ground space: they share the same space as an impossibility. Like a bad back projection in an old movie which we chose to go along with. Some times one might identify with the text more than the pictures in Dust, it gives us yet an other POV:

Listen to the message behind the language. Boom. Balm!. Crash. Security, Intelligence, Force, Chance, Flash, Legs, hair, attraction, money, Poor, 14-15, yellow tooth, propeller, brilliance, Dust, auto pilot, cartoon (La La La)... 4501532-5 4000001532-- You're a martyr ain't you? MAINTAIN Contact. Fill in the Blanks: I want you to Be part of it; Takeover.

This is a hostile ENVIRONMENT. Look out (La La La).

We are not Here for money? Not That. Taste it. Touch. The TRUTH is Difficult. Etc, Etc, Etc.

Coming up $40 $60 $100 who cares! Coming up: hell on Earth.

That's stupid, immature, HA HA Funny Person, Gargoyle, Shark Attack.

Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep The ICE, so much Cold Cold Cold Numb all over.

You will enter Paradise, 3 X. This is an experiment.

Liquid Laser Gum, Blood Sucking Eels, Killer Apple Slime, Razor Wires, Pig Face, Chocolate, current, Needle Muting, BODIES, SEX BOMB, NICOTINE, WAVES, BEDROOM, MISSILE, OK STOP 4X, LOOK, LISTEN, Police Police Police Police ... you have a lot to lose. Think out loud.

Scorn, Perfume, lips, mud, time, stimulate, 5:00, space, scrumptious, Experience, candy, cyanide, RX, Chemical, Clean, Clear, NEW, Truth, Multiple Points of view, now AT once.

You will have 70 lovers, ONE, you could Be on TV., Flute.

YEAHYEAHYEAH ... HAPPY TIME LIQUOR DROP.

O.K. let's Focus all together-- Focus all together, FocusFocusFocus on the positive.

Do Dat DA Da here I am! Alive, IT TAKE A lot to Finish.

This life is meaningless. GIVE us Your Money. Me, OFF. Let me live!

This is the first day of the Rest of your life. Bacteria.

Funny HA HA Welcome BACK home clown Jackpot.

Follow all your friends to heaven!Follow all your friends to heaven!Follow all your friends to heaven!

Thank god you are alive. They know how to multiply.

Join The human Race. A Sunny Suprise! (Kiss sounds)

Troubleshooter, walk on the wild side, calm down.

TELL us all of your problems, its O.K. LIVE! LIVE!

The Largest number yet. Fire Flood Famine Forget it.

Fall into the Lap of Luxury;Fall into the Lap of Luxury;Fall into the Lap of Luxury; I'm sorry you got Hurt.

My Psychological Batteries are running down, you Now have all the power.

You are working with film-pictures of professional actors as well as of yourself. How do you see their (your) role? Are they representatives? What do they represent for you?

Often I work with people for what I know they are good at, the way they look, the sound of their voice, acting ability; but, as in the case of Gibbons, Kelley, DeJong, and Conrad, verbal improvisation upon a theme was a big reason to work with them. Some of these projects are very collaborative, as much theirs as mine, others are not. I've worked with many performers. Some have had training and some have not. Some are artists, writers, friends and friends of friends. I've had the good fortune of working with: Warren Niesluchowski, Constance DeJong, Mike Kelley, Noel Williams, Kiki Smith, David West, Carlo McCormick, Ann Landi, Kristin Lucas, William Tremblay, Jim Shaw, Catherine Dill, Tony Conrad, Joe Gibbons, Robert Appleton, James Casebere, and last but not least, Tracy Leipold.

I first met Tracy when I was working on my sublingual series, that is an emotive series of works. These came after a film deconstruction phase of work in 91, which involved long texts which were were to be the length of a film and discussed fictitious films. I was fed up with writing, I wanted to isolate some of the dramatic elements associated with, drama and empathy: the idea was to remove these elements from the context of narrative and see what happened. I had always been fascinated by the ability of performers to evoke emotions at will -- out of life's contexts, and our desire to suffer emotions along with them. I asked around to find someone who could cry upon command... for a fee, of course. A friend, composer, and collaborator, Steven Vitiello, suggested Tracy Leipold. She came over to the studio and cried for as long as she could- up to an hour at a time. It was very exciting to find someone who could do that ! And this was the first time that I had directed someone in a psudodramatic or should I say metadramatic way.

Usually I would direct for timing and image in my single channel video tapes or in the early stuff it was all me. Sometimes I had people doing voice -overs and that always took some directing, usually I enhanced voices with sound effects or music which gives another chance to shape a performance. But Tracy really took off with the emotive works. I had shot a lot of me and needed to get behind the camera because it also gave me a chance to control things on another level which you can't do while performing. Then I got deeply into the process-- let's see what we can do next -- hysteric and so on, very good, next on and on. Then I wondered about the fact that I was having a woman act out these situations. What about that? It seems that she had become a kind of alter ego, me but not me at all. These works become very psychodramatic. The scripts were something like the following written on a piece of paper: sexual, pain, joy, stupid, fear, laughing. I developed a great rapport with her through the years and when we work we have a private language almost of sign language and when that fails I whisper to her and hope it never shows up on the soundtrack. But the process of directing, using a surrogate, and the process has lead me to do a number of figures which direct a world which is unseen to the viewer and only referred to, for example: "MORE LIGHT, MORE SUNLIGHT. MOVE THE CROWD NOW IN THAT DIRECTION. LOUDER. BRING THE CAMERA CLOSER. 2X I WANT TO FEEL IT!" Godlike or egomaniac, I enjoyed these pieces quite allot. They play themselves out directly in the viewer's mind -- Tony Conrad did a few of these which are incredible as he is really a great director and brilliant artist himself. But, later I made some double figures which were both Tracy and me , perform together. You see my lip moving , silently manacing her , and you her only her response. This come from living in NYC and watching so many people walking down the street talking into thin air. I always wanted to hear the other side , the miserable, tormenting side, but after a while I realized that half of the conversation is better in the end. The viewer may fill in the other half, but it's also a comment on the directorial process to mental illness, another one of my favorite topics.

In some of your early works you have used video directly, in the manner it is used by amateur film makers, as a cheap and easily manageable medium for shooting and re-playing moving images (not as part of installations). Will you continue this work 'inside' a medium? After all, video seems somewhat outdated these days, with everybody talking about 'new media,' computer animations or interactive media surfaces. Do you think this involves something you could also make use of in your work?

My early video works are not see that much now but were show around when they were made. Anyone can view and rent them at the NYC distributor Electronic Arts Intermix, which has an incredible archive. Well, I was trying to use video to build my own language, a reaction to traditional film/video, which was constructed of a grammar that balanced images, text, sound, music. I used everything from miniatures, belly dancers, found objects, dolls, painted sets, worms, body parts, friends, anything to make the scene. They were very poetic fractured narratives. I made most of my own music and did the writing and voice-overs, built the sets -- they had the feeling of the inside coming out--I wanted to make something which was closer to the way the mind really works, wanders, associates, flashes back, thinks. It was all very vernacular, dark and humorous, lots of liquids, coming from the punk aesthetic... to understand my work then and now, its important to understand the connection between punk and conceptual art. Its there, look at my friend Dan Grahams work. In the late 70s early 80s everyone had a band, did performances, believed that it was as important as anything else...

But that thinking has connected to one of my current projects Fantastic Prayers , which was first a performance and now a CD ROM with writer/performer Constance DeJong and musician Stephen Vitiello, which is being produced by DIA Center for the Arts. First, we three artists and Karen Kelley and Sara Tucker at DIA produced a web-site which was storyboard, image-text-map of ideas, which you can still visit via the internet. Then after we toured the performance around a little we wanted to grow the ideas into something lasting, and a CD ROM seemed natural. The content of the work is entropy and loss, being lost in time, in media, in narrative, you have many themes interconnecting, which is a great aspect of CD ROM they are vast in terms of how much information they can hold. Its really a psychological place you can enter. Right now it feel as though we are making a puzzle, we invite the player to put the pieces together, to fight against entropy. We tried to push the medium to the edge of what we can do with it. I made video tapes for so many years then I sort of stopped; now I feel that energy again like I did in 1977 when I first started fooling around with a port-a-pac, except it's anything but instant! We expect a release date this fall-- god willing.