Exhibiting Video
Conference, University of Westminster 23 to 25 March 2012
In March and April 2012 Ambika P3, the flagship exhibition space at the University of Westminster, will present a major solo exhibition of the influential pioneer of video art, David Hall in association with REWIND. The new commission '1001 TV Sets (End Piece)' (1972 - 2012) will involve a spectacular sculpture of 1,001 cathode ray tube TV sets. Each will be tuned to a different analogue station playing randomly until, between April 4 and April 18, the last analogue signals are broadcast from London‟s Crystal Palace. To mark the occasion the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) of the University of Westminster is convening Exhibiting Video, a three-day event that brings together notable artists, curators and writers to consider issues central to the display of video art.

Welcome to the Treasuredome: immersive experience, or on the threshold?
Joint paper with Stuart Moore, for Session 6: Expanded Video
Abstract
This paper examines spectatorship within the space of surround cinema, through critical reflection on three case studies, our recent practice-as-research into 360 aesthetics and sense of place, undertaken with ICCI, Innovation for the Creative and Cultural Industries, for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad programme in the South West.

Surround cinema is created by five HD video projections onto a continuous screen wrapped around a circular space. The spectator enters the darkened hemisphere through a tunnel, and is then surrounded by a seamless cinema. It is a ‘beyond panoramic’ format, unbounded - you have mobility, the freedom to follow what is glimpsed at the periphery of vision.

Our first case study, Verge 360 is direct animation of small plants in ultra close-up. Nectar (2010) explored the spatial affects of Burrator Arboretum, experienced through the foraging of solitary bees, contrasted with the intense activity around the hive. Finally, Teign Spirit 360 combines HD video and digital photography with 8mm home movie footage, screened in a twenty one metre dome on Weymouth Beach.

Digital technologies allow us to synthesise material from an array of sources, and then present these mediations in a space that is similar to the immersive environments of expanded cinema. Surround cinema seems to offer video art a poetic place for the corporeal body that goes beyond what is possible in other exhibition spaces. Physically positioned as an active inhabitant in a filmic space, the ‘seeing everything’ spectator is autonomous, yet surrounded, always looking towards somewhere, on the threshold…