Tony Oursler

Oursler's work has a general focus on the 'face', and he is most well known for the array of surfaces he creates to project his videos onto (especially his disembodied head puppets). The face is important to him because ''...it's the way we communicate...It's really the way into our identity and empathy''(Oursler T.). So if I am talking about my anxieties, the face, the sounds and the body language all help to relay and communicate these feelings.

He uses sound scores of overlapping words. that are then coupled with filmed images that are projected onto interesting objects. The source material is often taken from popular culture, in particular television. Oursler's most recent work works on the notion of how people take the technology and the culture of mass media and personalise it and make it a part of their lives.

If a person is talking in a video, the audience interacts with it, as they feel that the speaker is talking to them as an individual. This is the sort of thing I have chosen to, as I have made several audio recordings of myself speaking about the external and internal aspects of meditation.

He also uses harsh lighting on his subjects when filming. This creates shadows and highlights on the subject allowing the viewer to see different aesthetics of the same thing. Having used projections in this project, I can begin to understand the effects that can be obtained from this method of working; i.e. adding emphasis to facial expressions and body gestures.

'ASL' (2008) film installation at Lisson gallery

http://vimeo.com/7928811