Russell Milledge

russell@bonemap.com
Tuesday, 26 March 2002
Russell Milledge 26 March 2002

Environmental Art and Moving Image Media

‘Environmental Art’ originates as a contemporary art movement with ‘Land Art’ or

‘Earth Art’ in the nineteen sixties through a breakaway group of artists that created
environmental sculptural works outside the prevailing art systems, often in remote
locations. These works entered the cannon of contemporary art via the reproduction
and exhibition of photographic, film and video artworks. Significantly it introduced
projections as art objects at important international contemporary art exhibitionsi.
What is the relationship between environmental art and moving image media?

The clustering of confused terminology around ‘environmental art’ testifies to the

inability of theorists and researchers to comprehend the paradoxical nature of both
the philosophical and presentational trajectories involved with the micro-
specialisations of human –towards- nature artworks. ‘Land Art’, ‘Earth Art’,
‘Earthworks’, ‘Ecological Art’ and ‘Environmental Art’ are terms that have been
used, often erroneously and interchangeably to describe artists projects in or with the
environment since the nineteen sixties.

Before investigating current practice an excursion into historic ‘film and video’
elements of ‘environmental art’ provides a rough frame of reference. This reading is
limited by the available literature on ‘environmental art’ and its relationship to
moving image technology. It is not to be regarded as an exhaustive account, as it
suffers from being informed almost exclusively by the available literatures Euro-
American bias. The broader understanding of controversies and contradictions
within environmental art projects and ‘environmental awareness’ along with its
significance in current practice is delimited by the above specification.

In 1968 German gallery owner, Gerry Schum - credited as being the first video art
gallery owner – organised a documentary film titled ‘Land Art’. The project was also
conceived as an exhibition called ‘TV I’ and subsequently went on to be broadcast
nationally on German TV in 1969. This curatorial project included a handful of
artists from America and Europe who engaged with “interventions on the territory
and proposals for the environment”. (Vergine. 2001:136) However, it is generally
recognised that the ‘proponents’ and ‘operators’ in these ‘interventions on the
territory’ were colluding by use of the camera image and the emotive power of
natural environments to a telaesthesiaii. The propensity of artists to create distance
through semblance of ‘reality’ mediated by the transposition of medium. Thus the
acceptance and appreciation of ‘Land Art’ relied almost exclusively on the
operations “photographic or cinematographic images of themselves”iii .
(Dorfles.1973)

‘Land Art’ (as one ‘art movement’ came to be known) is most often associated with
a breakaway group of American artists that created environmental sculptural works
outside the prevailing art systems, in remote locations. Michael Heizer’s 1969 work
‘Double Negative’ in the desert of Nevada and Robert Smithson’s 1970 work ‘Spiral
Jetty’ in Great Salt Lake, Utah, are examples. In terms of an environmental
awareness these are rather insensitiveiv works that have entered the cannon of
contemporary art via the reproduction and exhibition of photographic, film and
video media. v Although the ‘Land Art’ movement succumbed to waves of criticism
over its insensitive approach to the earth ecologyvi, some argue that ‘Land Art’ was a
precursor for an artistic practice often called ‘Earthworks’ that now includes some
artworks associated with urban landscaping and regeneration projects. ‘Earthworks’
is possibly the least misleading title that has been given to this type of construction.
Of significance to moving image media is the 1968 introduction of ‘Land Art’ film
and slide projections as art objects at important international contemporary art
exhibitions and the sale of ‘Land Art’ video-tapes through Gerry Schums Berlin
gallery. These videotapes as ‘artworks’ were sold with certificates, numbered and
signed by the artist; in much the same way as an edition of fine art prints would be
marketed and sold. The assumption was that “without the certificate the tape has no
value”vii . The early dissemination of videotapes as art objects became possible
through the proliferation of video presentation technology in more and more art
museums. (Schum, 1971)
It is conceivable that in the early years of ‘video as art’ the comparatively short life
span of video-tape may have conspired with its mass-reproduction ability and
association with popular culture, to make the medium unattractive to traditional
gallery systems seeking ‘durable objects with an aura of the original’.

Video technology has an ability to convey moving image and sound media; it is
temporal, ephemeral and paradoxically easily duplicated and transportable. Its
relationship with ‘Land Arts’ temporal, ephemeral but site specific immobility
converged in a compelling union that transcended cognition of the medium. It is the
time-based quality of the film and video medium that shares perceptions of kinetics
and duration so often integrated into ‘Land Art’ and other environmental artworks
past and present.

It could be argued that the process of transposing ‘Land Art’ projects onto film and
video is a form of documentation (along with photography and drawing) of artworks
that by their nature are unable to be transported into the gallery or museum context.
The site-specificity of remote ‘Land Art’ and ‘earthworks’ created the necessity to
‘capture’ or ‘reprocess’ the work for shared appreciation. Conversely it is more
likely that creative potential of the available imaging technology allowed the
conceptual extension by the ‘Land Art’ proponents and artists for remote works to
be imagined, executed and brought to collective consciousness through film and
video mediums.

These ‘Land Art’ films or videos were not documentation of sculptural

manifestations in remote places of the world, but rather exploitations of the
environment and available imaging media as the ‘final’ artwork sold as films,
videos, drawings and photographs. This position was controversial at the time as
artists insisted on the artifactuality of the reprocessed image as the final artwork:
conceived in terms of its reproduction (Dorfles.1973). As evidence of this some of
the early ‘Land Art’ artists in Gerry Schums videos created ‘earthworks’ in precise
relationship to the camera lens. The Dutch artist Jan Dibbets created earthworks that
exploited the ‘foreshortening’ effect of the fixed point of view camera through
‘perspective correction’. This technique created two-dimensional shapes in the
vertical plane of the screen image, through the distorting of lines in the depth plane
on the real-time surface of the environment. One description is of a ‘screen image’
square created by a bulldozer within a seaside environment; as the bulldozer gauged
a ‘gigantic’ trapezoid shape into the sand beach a square is described onto the
vertical plane of the screen image through ‘perspective correction’. The film records
the process of creating the ‘illusion’ with the bulldozer and also the oceans
encounter with the ‘illusion’ as the tide rises. (Schum.1972)viii

There is an argument for Land Arts’ relationship with moving image media to claim
an historical precedent in non-linear film and video as ‘art object’. Particularly
through its projection in more institutional and traditional contexts for art
appreciation, the art gallery and museum along with the broadcast of ‘Land Art’ on
German national TV. More pertinent to contemporary society, is the speciousness
through which the ‘Land Art’ movement exploited the natural environment and the
widespread negative criticism through the ‘environmental awareness’ of
commentatorsix which has left the ‘Land Art’ project as a warning against further
anthropocentricism between art and the natural environment.

As far as Gerry Schum knew “it was the first TV art exhibition that consisted solely
of works created expressively for the film medium.” This places the whole ‘TV I’
project in sharp contrast to the early video art projects begun in 1963 America.

During the 1960’s a group of artists in New York including Nam June Paik began to
use the ‘video technology’ as iconography; the TV monitor as object became site for
intervention, disruption and iconoclasm rather than the ephemeral ‘immateriality’ of
the recorded image. (Birringer. 1998:53)x
In 1968, Boston public television commissioned broadcast quality iconoclastic video
image processing for a show called The Medium is the Medium building media
theorist Marshall McLuhan's dissertation that ‘the medium is the message’. In 1969
The Howard Wise Gallery curated an exhibition called TV As A Creative Medium.
(Ryan. 1993: 315)

Environmental issues phrased as; “biotopological resensitization” appearing as a

sub-issue along with other social and political concerns in a 1970 video subculture
manifesto Radical Software. The Sony video portapak became a primary tool for
alternative social communication through alternative media centres, peoples theatres
and public cable TV. (Ryan. 1993: 315)

The concept of observing video art as ‘witness’ to environmental issues arises

through an artist from this period. Paul Ryan asserts that “the appropriate way to
watch television is through monitoring” and conceives a video art that is
“reinhabitory”. This “downplays” the value of video art in the museum context,
advocating for networks of “videographers who could interpret the natural world and
present it to the community at large on an ongoing basis”. Ryan argues that watching
“reinhabitory” television focuses community perception on aspects that may be
overlooked in their own environments and dealings with nature. (Ryan. 1993) This
‘overlooking’ has been described by psychologists as “inattentional blindness”
suggesting that there is no conscious perception of the visual world without paying
attention to it (Mack and Rock. 1998).

Artist Char Davies is attempting to "heal the estrangement between ourselves and
"nature"xi. Through the 'immersive' Virtual reality artwork that uses nature as a
metaphor displayed in 1996. "It becomes interactive on a much more subtle level."
The combination of visual stimulation, subtle use of spatialized sound and the
immersant's constant awareness of their own breath, provokes something of a
spiritual journey, a religious experience or a trance-like state in some users. The
unconventional method of navigating by means of ones own breath also attains a
particular state-of-being within the virtual world. In this state, usually achieved
within ten minutes of immersion, most immersants experience a shift of awareness
in which the urge for action is replaced by contemplative free-fall. Being supercedes
doing…Osmose looks at immersive space as a place where we can explore what it
means to be embodied conscious beings. That's not New Age. It's not necessarily
spiritual. It's about human experience."

Reality is perceived via senses, through synapse in the brains sensorium. This actual
process of perceiving and the sensation of the real can become disembodied and
objectified. Our natural environment is not the only cognitive true reality, as “true;
being or indicating the essential reality of something”xii, colludes with “reality;
resemblance to what is real”xiii to create perceptions of the semblance of the real and
the ‘suspension of disbelief’ used in the allusions of contemporary cultural media.
According to the dictionaries definition, ‘reality’ can be essentially a resemblance of
something that is real. A teleologyxiv that is exposed as an analogy of creative media
and technology backgrounding our biological environment. ‘Reality TV’ and ‘virtual
reality’ as ‘new habitations’ are popular examples of this pseudo-taxonomy.

Through the events in the 1970’s video technology became part of the tool-set for
performance artists, who also found a necessity for the use of time-based video
media. Performance and dance artists were engaging with site-specific environments
and installation environments as an extension of sculpture; video equipment became
live feedback loops within the performative site. Prompting artist Vitto Acconci to
argue paradoxically that video “is a rehearsal for the time when human beings no
longer need to have bodies.” (Birringer, 1998:157) Sounding the idea that a screen
mediated environment could be inhabited by virtual doubles. A central concept in
much computor and other screen based sculpture and performance work today.
A number of computor-mediated virtual art environments are now being developed
for über-marionettes whose artificial personas are controlled by movement capture
suits worn by ‘immersants’ who play out through ‘habitats’ set within screen space
or visualised via virtual reality headsets. The assimilation of perceptions and
terminologies associated with natural and biological environments as metaphor in art
and technology projects is most often a repetition the dualities of subject and ground
(foreground/background, disembodied/objectified). The appropriateness of this view
is being contested as it fails to acknowledge a holistic perception of human towards
Earth. It could be argued that maintaining a disembodied and objectified relationship
undermines any serious consideration of the evolutionary development of
environmental consciousness in these works.xv Moreover the overt
anthropocentricism signals a warning which is largely ignored by current art and
technology projects which attempt to assimilate bio-ecology metaphors into virtual
reality and digital habitats. As with the stark realisation associated with some ‘Land
Art’ so too, bio-ecology metaphors in virtual habitations as art are open to
significant criticism. Even though there is an argument that they are semblances of
reality, some theorists would argue that these artworks still constitute an affront to
bio-ecological environments through perpetuating inappropriate perceptions that
place the natural world in the background in favour of mechanistic practices.xvi

Contemporary ‘video art’ is not ‘medium specific’ it is inevitably interdisciplinary, it

has been assimilated into institutional and domestic practices, it informs and is the
repository for collective and individual fragments of memory and becomingxvii .
(Birringer. 1998:145)

The first ‘Earth Situation Room’ with monitors and the ‘Global Visual Library’ is
the life work of artist Tom Van Sant, whose GeoSphere Project is the convergence
of earth and environmental sciences into a visualisation environment. The
GeoSphere object is the first visually accurate three-dimensional representation of
the earth made up of a mosaic of ‘clear sky’ satellite images applied to a sphere of
translucent fibreglass. The globe uses computor technology to control rotation,
lighting, projection, and informational programming. The GeoSphere is the central
visualisation object in the ‘Earth Situation Room’ where interactive displays allow
many different kinds of information to be projected onto the sphere. Information
such as live weather, seismic activity, population clocks, shuttle flights, and other
biological mappings and imaging.xviii The project is conceived as an educational and
research facility duplicated in many parts of the world and connected through
databases that allow the projected visualisations of both past and future. Users are
able to select and layer information onto the sphere and generate video specific to
their own research enquiry. The first ‘Earth Situation Room’ was established at the
Brazilian National Centre for Space Research in 1993. (Van Sant. 1995) The
GeoSphere project is participatory and networked; acknowledging that“ the
evolution of aesthetic appreciation of nature has been intertwined with both the
objectification of nature achieved by science and the subjectification of it rendered
by art.” (Carlson, 2000, p3)

Conclusion
Reprocessed and resited
The extraordinary injustices to fragile ecological environments that we now
recognise in some manifestations of ‘Land Art’ are an exploitation of film/video
media and the bio-ecology by the modernist heroics and creative egocentrism of art.
It is no longer possible to assume that extraordinary artificiality in the form of ‘artist
as spectacle’ is morally or ethically independent of our relationship to the bio-
sphere. It may be that the screen space absorbs the ironic visualisations of the Earths'
supposed inevitable destruction through metaphors that are more and more
transgressive and liminal. Out of sight – out of mind, is no longer the veil of
industrial greed and aggression towards natural resources as artists projects are
monitoring every move and transgression. If we are rehearsing for the ultimate
contestation where at risk is the body and its foundation; it can not be a complacent
transition. The natural environment and the remnant ‘hard’ energy resources are the
physical sites over which potential conflict may be raised for humans and the Earth.
Participation and engagement are the foundations for disseminating the power of
knowledge as relevant models of artistic practice within the ‘Environmental Art and
Moving Image Media’ paradigm. . Anthropocentricism and biospheric catastrophes
are very real threats, of which we need to remain conscious.
“We have just begun the adventure into visualization of Earth systems. We are
visual beings. Who better to help us become aware of the reality of the Earth than a
artist.” (Van Sant. 1995. 234)

i
Vergine, Lea
Art on the Cutting Edge – A Guide to Contemporary Movements 1996 Skira Italy p.136.
Land Art – Interventions on the territory and proposals for the environment.
A European from Berlin also became involved, Gerry Schum – the first video gallery owner – who
filmed a short documentary, Land Art (showing the nature of works of De Maria, Smithson, Heizer,
Richard Long, Flanagan, Oppenheim, Boezem, and Dibbets), which he then sold to german
television. This was the introduction of film and slide projections as art objects at important
international exhibitions.
ii
The Concise Macquarie Dictionary. 1982:1331
telaesthesia: sensation or perception received at a distance without the normal operation of the
recognised organs.
iii
Dorfles, Gillo.
Arte ecologica ‘Land Art e Earth Art’, in Ultime tendenze dell’arte oggi, Feltrinelli, Milan
1973
“To trace a furrow on a frozen river or to dig a ditch in the ground and then fill it with earth taken
from somewhere else does not lead to an ‘aesthetic’ result; it leads to one that is almost exclusively
intellectual and conscious of the ‘telos that has been reached.
Here too, however, a distinction must be made between those ‘operators’ whose aim was to create
true artefacts of more or less permanent nature and of some aesthetic importance, and those instead
whose only aim was to materialise an abstract concept from theirs. Therefore, more often than not,
these operations must rely exclusively on photographic or cinematographic images of themselves and
a description of the same that is catalogued by means of tracings, topographical maps, and the written
word, and so a great deal of their effect is lost. Moreover, there has been a new commercialisation of
these works which is something that was not intended at all originally.” (.)
iv
Gablik, Suzi
The Reenchantment of Art 1991 Thames and Hudson p.140.
In 1969, the same year that he poured a truckload of asphalt down a hill, Robert Smithson was
prevented from dropping broken glass on an island in Vancouver by environmentalists fearful that it
would harm the birdlife of the area. ”The ecology thing,” Smithson stated in his Collected Writings,
“has a kind of religious ethical undertone to it…There’s no need to refer to nature any more. I’m
totally concerned with making art.” Michael Heizer, whose sculpture Double negative in the Nevada
desert consists of two enormous cuts in the desert floor that displaced 249,000 tons of earth, once
said, “I don’t care about landscape. I’m a sculptor. Real estate is dirt, and dirt is material.” Being an
“earth” artist does not automatically imply ecological consciousness.
v
Beardsley, John.
Earthworks and beyond. 1989 Aberville Press p.16.
.., dealer Virgina Dwan was taking an interest in Heizer’s work. He had shown her a portfolio of
photographs of his Western works in 1968, and she included him along with Smithson and Robert
Morris, in her Earthworks exhibition that fall.
vi
Gablik, Suzi
The Reenchantment of Art 1991 Thames and Hudson p.89.
Lynn Hull…..“I’ve had a long-standing interest in earth or site-specific art,” Hull states, “but too
often it seemed so egocentric – on a grand scale, to go out and abuse the land in the name of art –
which, as much as I love some of these pieces and enjoy hunting them down, did not seem enough.
vii
Schum, Gerry
(“Videogalerie Gerry Schum”, in Flash Art, no.28-29, December 1971 – January 1972).
 “Each tape comes supplied with a numbered certificate signed by the artist. This guarantees that the
tape was authorised by the artist, and that the latter will receive the percentage due him for the sale of
each work.[…] Without the certificate the tape has no value.”
viii
Schum, Gerry
(“Video tappa Gerry Schum”, interview with Gerry Schum, in Data, no. 4, 1972)
“Jan Dibbets’[Holland] work is still the best example of the use of the TV medium. Dibbets’ basic
idea is perspective correction. An idea that can only be achieved with film or photography. Dibbets
drew a gigantic trapezium on the sand beach with the help of a bulldozer. It is a known fact that if
you look at two parrallels in perspective, they seem to touch at the farthermost point. This was the
phenomenon that Dibbets used in his perspective correction. The angle of the trapezium was chosen
in relation to the angle of the focal length of the camera. The result was that the trapezoid seemed a
perfect square when seen in film or on TV. This square existed only in the film. Similar works had
already been made by Dibbets using photography. Film added a new possibility. Dibbets could show
a process – the trapezium was made by a bulldozer and then distributed and cancelled by the arrival
of high tide.”
ix
Carlson, Alan
Aesthetics and the Environment. 2000, pp150-151
“American artist Christo, who’s site specific work Running Fence (1972-76) involved the artist filing
a 450 page environmental impact report and was required to work closely with local environmental
authorities. A more recent and ambitious work by the same artist, Surrounded Islands (1983), caused
greater controversy. Since the work involved surrounding eleven islands with 5.5 million square feet
of pink plastic, environmentalists were concerned about its consequences for the ecology of the
islands and attempted to prevent its construction by legal action.”
x
Birringer, Johannes
Media & Performance, Along the Border. 1998, p153
“representing the first stage in the history of video, […] by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell to use
the medium creatively against itself, against the institutions of art, and against commercial
culture,[…]these early attempts did not focus on the immateriality of the medium but rather on the
physical and iconic function of the TV monitor.”
xi
.Jones, Mark. J. CyberStage 2.1, "Char Davies: VR Through Osmosis". Internet article, November 6th, 199
xii
The Concise Macquarie Dictionary. 1982:1393
xiii
The Concise Macquarie Dictionary. 1982:1053
xiv
The Concise Macquarie Dictionary. 1982:1331
teleology: 1.the doctrine of final causes or purposes. 2. The belief that the purpose and design are a
part of, or apparent in, nature. 3. The doctrine in vitalism that phenomena are guided not only by
mechanical forces but also by the ends towards which they move.
xv
Dyson, Frances
Thomas, Martin Ed. Uncertain Ground 1999. Art Gallery of NSW. P 86. Dyson, Frances
sites Darren Toffs,Mesh,11 (Spring 1997) 13.
“Tofts sees the progress of (artificial) evolution along similar lines to those to those proffered as
characteristic of western civilisation: ‘The entities in memespace seem to learn about concepts such
as territoriality, survival of the fittest and power’. Indeed, memespace so closely resembles real life in
the real world that it represents a fundamental shift. The ‘tide has turned’, argues Tofts, the ‘map
covers the territory’ and the difference between the two ‘is unnoticebale’.”
xvi
See Carlson, Allen
Aesthetics and the Environment. Routledge.2000
xvii
Birringer, Johannes
Media & Performance, Along the Border. 1998, p145
“Video as a creative medium is not ‘medium specific’ but always and inevitably interdisciplinary, a
production mode that interfaces with all image and sound media-especially film and broadcast
television- and communications systems, while gradually being assimilated into the widest range of
institutional and domestic practices, and ultimately into the constructions of our collective
memory/history.”
xviii
Van Sant, Tom
 Oakes, Baile Ed. Sculpting the Environment. Van Nostrand Reinhold. 1995 p. 232
“ We have developed a ‘living Earth’ visualisation featuring the migration of the vegitation band and
the seasonal migration of ice down into the oceans and back to the poles. If we project six to eight of
these systems onto GeoSphere, overlaying one on top of the other and compressing an entire season’s
visualisation down to twelve seconds per cycle, we will be able to see Earth as a living and breathing
entity, as opposed to the rather mechanical model we were brought up with in school.”