The Mediadrome, a site-specific happening featuring live bands and spherical video projections, was truly a spectacle. Nonetheless, the drome was not a hollow shell of awe nor a glorified light show. Through studying the historical and conceptual ideas of Stan VanDerBeek’s Moviedrome, the Mediadrome intentions finally find the words. The action of building the structure and filling it with music and visual become rooted fundamental notions in visual culture -- art as phenomenological experience, the disruption of the white cube, and discovering the ways of how we looking at art.
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Stan VanDerBeek's Moviedrome Exterior |
VanDerBeeks was an experimental filmmaker, video artists, and visual theorist who constructed a geodesic dome with interiors filled with a complex display of multiple images in 16mm or on projection slides. VanDerBeeks also wrote a manifesto with the piece entitled, “Culture Intercom, A Proposal and Manifesto”. VanDerBeek states, “it is imperative that we [the world’s artists] invent a new world language, that we invent a non-verbal international picture-language. I propose the following: The establishment of audio-visual research centers, preferably on an international scale. These centers to explore the existing audio-visual hardware. The development of new image-making devices...”. It is this notion that the Mediadrome was based.
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Mediadrome Interior |
The Mediadrome’s heart relied in it disruption of typical looking. The bands, although not an art piece, brought a crowd of typical music listeners. Each band had their fans and they flocked to the drome to see them, but the drome invited the usuals to view their bands differently. The sounds faded into the background and visuals became the star as participants titled their heads back and watched the immersive images. Our drome operated on the same ‘visual velocity’ - a continuous audiovisual flow. By combing the live music, that people flocked to behind the recreation center for, with visuals that aren’t typically associated with music shows, we forced the audience to re-imagine what live music could look like, while simultaneously challenging what arenas art can be viewed in. It also called for the viewers to view the synthesis of elements in two distinction manners, with rapt attention and a solitary gaze. In other words, at times the visuals interacted with the music in a way that called for a connection to be made and more focused attention, while at other times the visual were clearly the central point (during breaks).
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Stan VanDerBeek's Moviedrome Interior |
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Mediadrome |
VanDerBeek imagined his drome as a global village that would be linked with other dromes everywhere. Essentially, he wanted an international system of dromes bound together by the media inside. It is a noble idea for VanDerBeek, but also ambitious. Our drome will have some similar notions of connectedness in that we hope to share our drome plans with other schools and collected video from inside their dromes to become material for ours. In a sense, we become the mother-drome and our offspring are literally reflected inside of us.
The Moviedrome and Mediadrome both share fundamental art making notions. The Moviedrome, while not in mind during our creation, can help us think of ways to understand viewer experience. We can have a historical basis when we destroy the notion of the white cube and rectangular frame. It is as if VanDerBeek is our true ally in creating a new sense of dynamics in art: motion and space. Even though there are principles of VanDerBeek's that differ from our creation, they both seem to be cut from the same idealistic.