Oursler isn’t claiming to be a magus. He’s a child of the Seventies, of the television age, the same age as systems such as cable and satellite and the web. The polyphonic aural universe fascinates Oursler... In his art, he listens in and collects evidence of the senses in the altered conditions of consciousness that now prevail. — Marina Warner, Tony Oursler: The Influence Machine, London and New York, 2000
The Influence Machine is a multi-multimedia work which haunts an urban landscape with spectres, sound and smoke. Picking up on ideas from historical phantasmagoria and son-et-lumiere animations of historic sites, videos of talking heads are projected on to smoke, trees and buildings, their fractured monologues combining to make a dissonant confessional chorus of the mass media age. One of these figures, appearing and disappearing in the smoke, is a longstanding collaborator, Tracy Leipold, who Oursler calls "the medium". Her dialogue makes references to key names from media history such as television pioneer John Logie Baird and Etienne Gaspard Robertson who founded the first moving image theatre in a Paris crypt in 1797. Running through it all is a soundtrack composed by Tony Conrad and performed on a glass harmonica. It is as if the ghosts of the machines of disembodied communication from the telephone to television and the internet have been let out to roam at night.
Image: Tony Oursler, The Influence Machine, 2000 installation at Tate Modern, 2013. Photograph: © Tate, London, 2013
at Birmingham Cathedral
21 - 22 September
Tony Oursler’s phantasmagoric outdoor projection The Influence Machine was shown in the grounds of Birmingham Cathedral. The work was presented in partnership with Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery to coincide with their 'I want, I want Art and Technology' exhibition, which explored the impact technological development has had on the visual arts and human interaction, over the last twenty years.
Image: Tony Oursler, The Influence Machine, 2000 installation at Birmingham Cathedral, 2017. Photograph: Luke Unsworth
at George Square Gardens, The University of Edinburgh
23 - 26 November 2016
The Influence Machine was shown in George Square Gardens in Edinburgh and for the first time in Scotland, the birthplace of many inventors of early ‘influencing machines’ such as Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone and John Logie Baird and the television. It was presented by Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh College of Art and University of Edinburgh Festivals Office over four nights as part of the University's digital arts programme.
Image: Tony Oursler, The Influence Machine, 2000 installation at George Square Gardens, The University of Edinburgh, 2016. Photograph: Stewart Attwood