REFERENCE: Confinement in Film

Confinement, enclosure and claustrophobia are all extremely common forms of fear and paranoia that most people can unanimously relate to in some way. The use of confined spaces in film is possibly the most frequently utilised method of creating fear, tension and anxiety. It is because many of us can relate to this predicament that they have such an effect on us, it starts very early on in childhood. Our exploration of spaces and the world only leads to more, we are unsure where these spaces and pathways take us. At the basis of all these emotions is our sense of curiosity and fear of the unknown and surprise. These all work together to emphasise the most basic of spatial phobias.

Alice in Wonderland (1999) directed by Nick Willing

Alice in Wonderland directed by Jan Svankmajor

Kill Bill Volume. 2 (2004) directed by Quentin Tarantino

REVIEW: [Yayoi Kusama Retrospective] @ Tate Modern, London

Tate Modern recently revealed its new retrospective for the renowned Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.

"Her art has an almost hallucinatory intensity that reflects her unique vision of the world, whether through a teeming accumulation of detail or the dense patterns of polka dots that have become her signature. The incessant quality of this gesture is both obsessive and meditative.

In the late 1990s, Kusama returned to making room size installations. In her installations, this image of bourgeois stasis is turned into something surreal and uncanny. All the room and furnishing covered with sticker spots which glow. The polka dot can be the visual shorthand signifying her hallucinatory visions. Covering in a room in psychedelic polka dots might be her attempt to visualise and restage the experience of her own hallucinatory episodes, during which she senses the physical world overtaken by endlessly repeated forms. Her representation of her inner world results in an installation that is fantastical and potentially unsettling. Spots are more readily experienced as interruptions of our own field of vision rather than a surface motif.

I'm Here But Nothing (2000) by Yayoi Kusama

I'm Here But Nothing (2000) by Yayoi Kusama

Her piece 'Infinity Mirror Room' is a depiction of infinite space. Reflecting surfaces has become a recurring element in her work. Large scale environments that viewers can walk into and explore. She proposes an experience for the infinite, inviting the viewer to suspend his or her sense of self -accompanying Kusama on her ongoing journey of self-obliteration." -Tate Modern

REFERENCE: Immersing Body & Mind

The TV documentary 'What makes a masterpiece?' (2012) courtesy of Channel 4, features James Turrell's immersive installations as a play between science and art, powering between experience and aesthetics.

 

"His work is often described as explorations in light and space. The artist calls his work 'adventures in perception' and I can't help thinking this is a take on the brave new world of neuro-aesthetics, which studies the impact of art on the brain. By flooding the senses with otherworldly flushes of light, Turrell is creating something of a new reality, born of a fusion of the two disciplines of art and science. In Turrell's case, beauty isn't so much in the eye of the beholder but the brain." -Matthew Cain

With new technology and developing art practices that now frequently combine the two, it is becoming difficult in defining what exactly affects us when we encounter art. Whether there is some key element that engages the viewer's attention, or whether it is the joy of surprise and the new. James Turrell's installations don't only overload the senses with his extreme colour and light, but they seem to transport the viewer to a psychological state, an alternate reality of escape.