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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 Woman’s 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 easily––and compellingly––achieved 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 Scott’s in-depth commentary that accompanies each entry and the images reproduced in both the book and the DVD satisfy the reader’s 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).

Scott’s 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 Scott’s 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 direction––this 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 Scott’s 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.

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Updated 1st September 2003


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