CORPORATE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE VIDEOWALK FORMAT
1.1 Background and Context
1.2 Research Question
1.3 Objectives and Scope
1.4 Structure of the Thesis
2. Corporate Unconscious 2.1 Credits
2.2 Description
2.3 Video Documentation
2.4 Synopsis
2.5 Full Text
3. Theoretical framework 3.1 Videowalk: Exploring the Format
3.1.1. Walking as a type of art.3.1.2 Audiowalks
3.1.3 The emergence of Videowalk
3.1.4 Choosing the format3.2 Site-Specific Art and Spatial Narratives
3.3 Engaging Audiences in a Constructed Reality
3.3.1 Illusion and Engagement: The Rubber Hand Effect in Theater
3.3.2 We should invent reality before filming it
3.3.3 Simul Entertainment GmbH3.4 Meta-Score
4. Creative process 4.1 Concept Development
4.1.1 Synchronicity and simultaneity.
4.1.2 Corporate Language as a Narrative Tool4.2 Space research
4.3 Development of visual, auditory and performative identity
4.3.1 Corporate Identity
4.3.2 Art Direction and Stage Design
4.3.3 Performativity
4.3.4 Costumes
4.3.5 Music composition
4.3.6 Cinematography4.4 Dramaturgy and Script Development
4.4.1 Narrative Layers
4.4.2 Storytelling
4.4.3 Dramaturgical arc
4.4.4 Space Score and Timing4.5 Videowalk Production phases
4.5.1 Creation of Fake Historical Footage
4.5.2 Videowalk Filming
4.5.3 3D Modeling and Scanning of the Space
4.5.4 VFX Development and 3D Animated Scenes
4.5.5 Documentary Development4.6 Performance and Participation4.6.1 Installations & self-reflective moments
4.6.2 Leveled performances
4.6.3 Fake participants and recursive participation
4.6.4 Easter eggs4.7 Multimedia Techniques
4.7.1 LiDAR Scanning and As-build modeling
4.7.2 On-site shading and texturing
4.7.3 Character and animations
4.7.4 Camera tracking and VFX compositing
4.7.5 Virtual production and "inverse virtual production"
4.7.6 Video Game development
4.7.7 Spatial audio
4.7.8 AI text models
4.7.9 iOS playback app
5. Conclusion
6. Acknowledgments
7. References
The transformation from audio-based experiences to videowalks marks a significant evolution in the field of interactive art. While audiowalks leverage the listener’s imagination and auditory senses, videowalks incorporate visual stimuli, creating a more comprehensive sensory and narrative engagement. This transition can be largely attributed to the pioneering work of Janet Cardiff, whose approach expanded the potential for audience interaction within real-world settings.
Janet Cardiff's foray into videowalks can be traced back to an experimental moment in her living room, which she describes in her compilation The Walk Book (2015). While casually filming a conversation and then replaying the footage, Cardiff experienced a disorienting alignment between the recorded and real-time environments. This disconnect between visual expectations and reality sparked the idea to transpose this sensation into an art form, leading to the creation of the first videowalk titled In Real Time (1999) for the Carnegie International exhibition. This new format invited viewers to navigate a physical space while simultaneously watching a prerecorded video of that same space, merging boundaries between the present and the recorded, the real and the manipulated.
The essence of Cardiff’s videowalks lies in their ability to immerse participants in a layered narrative that develops within a delicate visual and auditory experience. By holding a screen and following a prerecorded path, participants find themselves at the crossroads of past and present, fiction and reality. This interplay challenges participants to reconcile what they see on the screen with what they encounter in their immediate surroundings, engaging them in a continuous process of interpretation and reevaluation.
In Alter Bahnhof Video Walk (2012), created for dOCUMENTA(13), Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller employ the videowalk format within the setting of the old train station in Kassel, Germany. Participants, provided with an iPod and headphones, navigate the station under the direction of Cardiff and Miller, experiencing a blend of reality and fiction. This merging creates a disorienting yet engaging experience termed by them as "physical cinema", where the boundaries between the recorded and the immediate blur, confusing past and present. The work compels participants to reconsider their perception of time and space as they move through the train station, guided by the narrative and their own movements in sync with the video. The process transforms the participant into an active element of the narrative, redefining their role from passive viewers to active contributors in the storytelling process. Alter Bahnhof Video Walk exemplifies the capacity of videowalks to deepen engagement with physical spaces by intertwining them with layered narratives. Through this piece, Cardiff and Miller offer a reflection on memory, presence, and the human experience, set within the everyday yet symbolically rich environment of a train station. The work stands as a significant example of how videowalks can alter our understanding of and interaction with familiar spaces.
This approach to storytelling and spatial engagement also resonates with broader trends in interactive and immersive media, particularly in the genre of interactive documentaries. Videowalks, like interactive documentaries, dismantle traditional narrative structures and invite the audience to play an active role in the story. They represent a form of "living documentary," where the line between creator and audience, subject and object, becomes increasingly blurred. Participants are not just passive consumers of content; they are co-creators of the narrative experience, navigating through a physical and narrative landscape that requires their active engagement and interpretation.
“I was sitting in the living room with the video camera taping as Georg and I were having a coffee, moving the camera around the room. Then I replayed it and found myself unconsciously following the pan of the recorded shot and being disconcerted when George, having gotten up, wasn’t in the shot where he was supposed to be.
I realized that it was the same kind of strange situation as the telescope pieces we had done where the architecture remains the same but the people and cars change. The viewer becomes like the robotic head of the telescope moving to align the prerecorded video to the physical world.
When Madeleine Grynsytejn invited me to do an audio walk for the Carnegie I suggested that I try a new format, a video walk. It was a complete experiment but it opened up the walks to a whole new discourse and level of experimentation for us. The story became a narrative using the idea of the audience / participant as a “rat” in a maze, testing the limits of reality. “
Janet Cardiff describing her first Videowalk, In Real Time (1999).
In The Walk Book (2005) p.277
dOCUMENTA(13), Kassel.