Coded Characters: Media Art by Jill
Scott
by Marille Hahne, editor
Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany, 2003
240 pp., 400 illus. 200 b/w, 200 col. With DVD. Trade, $29.80
ISBN: 3-7757-1272-0.
Dene Grigar
Texas Womans University
dene@eaze.net
How can one capture for the printed page the rich and varied career
of a media artist whose work is articulated in three distinct art
forms, covering three distinct periods of personal output and taking
place over three different continents? As overwhelming as this task
may seem at the outset, it is easilyand compellinglyachieved
in Coded Characters: Media Art by Jill Scott.
The book opens with introductions by artist-scholar Roy Ascott and
Scott herself, an interview by art historian Robert Atkins and an
essay by critic Anne Marsh and closes with essays by Yvonne Spielmann
and Robert Atkins. Taken together, they acquaint the reader with Scott
and function as teasers for what is to come: 159 pages of her work
presented chronologically and divided into three sections corresponding
to the three periods of time her career covers, the three places she
inhabited during that time, and the three distinct media she spoke
through. It would not be giving the book away to say that the artist
makes good on the promises made earlier, for Scotts in-depth
commentary that accompanies each entry and the images reproduced in
both the book and the DVD satisfy the readers desire to know
her more intimately. One leaves knowing that an exploration of the
body drives her work (14), that her politics leans heavily toward
feminism (22-23) and that her goal is to explore the way in which
both artist and audience are transformed through "the organic, mechanical,
and virtual changes surrounding [them] and their transformed stage"
(8).
Scotts first section is called "Analog Figures" and covers the
earliest period of her work: Having migrated from Melbourne, Australia
to the San Francisco area in 1975 after graduating with a degree in
art, she experiments with performance art for both photo montage and
video and engages in an exploration of the organic aspect of the body.
Produced during this period are "body action" works (49, 52), Taped
(1975), Boxed (1975), and Tied, Strung (1975); performance
pieces that include interactivity, video, or an element of surveillance
like Accidents for One (1976), Extremities (1977), Out,
the Back (1978), Choice (1979), Sand the Stimulant
(1980), The Magnetic Tapes (1981), and Constriction Part
One (1982); and an early installation entitled Constriction
Part Two (1982). As with all three sections of her book, all of
Scotts works created during the period are included and highlighted
by images from her performances.
The second section, "Digital Beings," heralds her shift into video
and television that took place in the 1980s. At this point she had
returned to Australia, became active in the various art and political
communities, and fell under the influence of French Structuralist
theory. Turning, in particular, to Roland Barthes for an understanding
of the "multifaceted, pluralistic rather than dualistic roles for
the observer as well as the observed" (97), she examines the body
as it is "delayed and distorted into bits and bytes" by the mechanics
of the machine (96). The result is a clear transformation of her work
from performance art to art installation. Works produced during this
period include Constriction Part Three (1983), Double Dream
(1984), The Shock of the Still (1985), Double Space
(1986), The Great Attractor (1988), Life Flight (1989),
Continental Drift (1990/1991), and MachineDreams (1991).
The final stage, "Mediated Nomads" of the 1990s, sees Scott moved
to Northern Europe where she is living today. Once again, her work
takes a new directionthis time it expands into the virtual
space of computer environments. From this period come Paradise
Tossed (1993), an interactive computer animation; Frontiers
of Utopia (1995), and A Figurative History (1996), interactive
media installations; Interskin (1997), an experiment into virtual
reality; Immoral Duality (1997), interactive robot and shadow
environment; and Future Bodies (1999) and Beyond Hierarchy
(2000).
Readers wanting a closer look at Scotts art will be pleased
to find a DVD containing videos of several of them included with the
book. Technically speaking, the DVD works with all platforms and is
easy to navigate; the video clips included on it are well-selected
and engaging. In brief, it adds a valuable component to the printed
text.
Scott's book chronicles a fascinating journey in the media arts. It
is a must-read for anyone who is involved in the field, who have followed
Scott's work through these three decades, or who wish to have a better
understanding of various art forms that have emerged from mass media
in the late 20th Century.