Movies: Gary Hill

  • 1966
    Skaterdater

    Skaterdater (1966)

    Skaterdater

    5.81966HD

    The film tells a story with no dialogue. The group of boy skaters are suddenly at a point when one of the boys sees a young girl, and becomes interested in her. This causes a rift with the other boys, who challenges him to a skating duel that goes do...

    Skaterdater
  • 1981
    Primarily Speaking

    Primarily Speaking (1981)

    Primarily Speaking

    01981HD

    This work is the single-channel version of a multi-channel installation of the same name. The picture plane is divided into a left and a right half. A changing background is formed by colorful, highly graphic patterns reminiscent of TV test signals...

    Primarily Speaking
  • 1984
    Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come On Petunia)

    Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come On Petunia) (1984)

    Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come On Petunia)

    01984HD

    This tape is the first of Hill’s works for which he deliberately wrote a screenplay. The title defines the piece’s starting point: Alice in Wonderland asks her omniscient father why things get in a muddle. They then talk on a metalinguistic level. A ...

    Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come On Petunia)
  • 1979
    Picture Story

    Picture Story (1979)

    Picture Story

    01979HD

    “A structural work (with humor) that uses indeterminacy to forge an abstract landscape upon which the ‘vision’ of an ox appears. A sequence of words—hierarchically ordered from the utilitarian (functions and processes of the tools being used to make ...

    Picture Story
  • 2000
    Performative images. My skin its skin (per)forming another skin where I voice from

    Performative images. My skin its skin (per)forming another skin where I voice from (2000)

    Performative images. My skin its skin (per)forming another skin where I voice from

    02000HD

    DVD insert of monograph Gary Hill: Around & About: A Performative View containing a compilation of Hill's performance art....

    Performative images. My skin its skin (per)forming another skin where I voice from
  • 1986
    URA ARU

    URA ARU (1986)

    URA ARU

    01986HD

    Recorded on location in Japan, this work was inspired by the notion of “acoustic palindromes,” aural versions of written palindromes, located in the Japanese language. Hill creates this palindromic world as a site for excavation, uncovering new meani...

    URA ARU
  • 1977
    Bits

    Bits (1977)

    Bits

    01977HD

    Our visual field is dominated by gossamer layers that become distorted in fluid motion, break off, begin anew and continually change color. As we continue looking, they break down into seemingly amorphous constructions. We see details, textures and p...

    Bits
  • 1979
    Equal Time

    Equal Time (1979)

    Equal Time

    01979HD

    In this work, the field of Hill’s experimentation is the synchronization of visual and linguistic elements. For Equal Time, he sets up a minimalist arrangement, whereby two identical panels with grid patterns, starting respectively on the left and ri...

    Equal Time
  • 1976
    Mesh

    Mesh (1976)

    Mesh

    01976HD

    A fixed color camera is slightly defocused on the wire mesh of a window screen. Outside the window the leaves of trees are moving with the wind. The images, about one-half second each, are edited directly to the master tape at intervals based on the ...

    Mesh
  • 1985
    Tale Enclosure

    Tale Enclosure (1985)

    Tale Enclosure

    81985HD

    Returning to the primal source of language, Hill explores the physical and subconscious origins of speech. In a continuous shot of a rhythmic, linguistically inspired chant-performance by George Quasha and George Stein, the camera wanders from mouth ...

    Tale Enclosure
  • 1975
    Earth Pulse

    Earth Pulse (1975)

    Earth Pulse

    01975HD

    A humanoid form strikes its body while making primal guttural sounds. At times the form is “stopped” and “started” using the pause of a reel-to-reel video player—a frozen line of noise (an asynchronous frame) cuts through the image reinforcing the se...

    Earth Pulse
  • 2003
    Blind Spot

    Blind Spot (2003)

    Blind Spot

    02003HD

    Blind Spot constructs a space of living portraiture by “focusing time” on an exchange between the artist (the camera) and a man on the street in the small Algerian neighborhood of Belsunce in Marseille, France. As the camera zooms in slowly on its su...

    Blind Spot
  • 1976
    Mirror Road

    Mirror Road (1976)

    Mirror Road

    01976HD

    In Mirror Road, Hill uses the camera and image processing devices to explore the malleability of electronic colors and image density. Amorphous structures move across the monitor like drifting clouds, changing color and direction. From time to time s...

    Mirror Road
  • 1978
    Mouthpiece

    Mouthpiece (1978)

    Mouthpiece

    01978HD

    Dave Jones prototype modules (keyers, color field generators, output amplifier), black-and-white camera, microphone and Serge audio modules (voltage controlled oscillators, filters, sequencer)...

    Mouthpiece
  • 1981
    Videograms

    Videograms (1981)

    Videograms

    81981HD

    1980-81, 13:27 min, b&w, sound Videograms is an ongoing series of text/image constructs or syntaxes using the Rutt/Etra Scan Processor, a device that enables Hill to sculpt electronic forms on the screen. Each "videogram" relates literally or concep...

    Videograms
  • 2004
    Gary Hill: I Believe It Is an Image

    Gary Hill: I Believe It Is an Image (2004)

    Gary Hill: I Believe It Is an Image

    02004HD

    In this program video artist Gary Hill uses a number of his pieces to investigate otherness and ambiguity, dislocation of the senses, the boundary between words and comprehension, the physicality of text, and figurative interactivity....

    Gary Hill: I Believe It Is an Image
  • 1974
    Air Raid

    Air Raid (1974)

    Air Raid

    01974HD

    The strategy for recording and composing Air Raid was derived from sound rather than image. This produced some unusual juxtapositions between images found in the everyday: a lawnmower, the wrapping of fruit with tin foil, a cement mixer, record playe...

    Air Raid
  • 2008
    Figuring Grounds

    Figuring Grounds (2008)

    Figuring Grounds

    02008HD

    Figuring Grounds – like Tale Enclosure, 1985 – was edited from three hours of recordings made at the Stained Glass Studio in Barrytown, New York, where Hill’s Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come On Petunia), 1984, was also taped. Facing one another,...

    Figuring Grounds
  • 1977
    Bits

    Bits (1977)

    Bits

    01977HD

    Our visual field is dominated by gossamer layers that become distorted in fluid motion, break off, begin anew and continually change color. As we continue looking, they break down into seemingly amorphous constructions. We see details, textures and p...

    Bits
  • 2008
    Observaciones Sobre los Colores

    Observaciones Sobre los Colores (2008)

    Observaciones Sobre los Colores

    02008HD

    Observaciones Sobre los Colores consists of a single video projection in which a boy reads a Spanish translation of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Color, Part 1 (1951), consisting of 88 segments, in real time over a period of 78 minutes. Hill provided a m...

    Observaciones Sobre los Colores