The High Window

‘The High Window’ is an artist’s book object (comprising a film and set of pamphlets) exploring correspondences and discontinuities amongst diverse readings of the same fictional text. Drawing on reader response theory, it is also influenced by contemporary visual art with a multi-vocal narrative focus, particularly Susan Hiller’s ‘Witness’, and also Emma Kay’s work, which explores effects of the fragmentary nature of memory on visual imagination.

Twenty-five readers were given a short fictional text I wrote based on video footage of a street scene and were asked to describe their imaginative constructions of that scene. The film component of ‘The High Window’ presents the original footage alongside a selection of the reader interviews. The accompanying pamphlets present full interview transcripts. The work as a whole investigates ways we make cognitive sense out of an absence – by filling in information and creating meaning in the gap between reader and author.

'The High Window’ also explores the relationship between the artist’s book and film, a topic that is developed in my exhibition catalogue essay

Emily Artinian

Subject Area: Artists' books and text-based art

Current Research

1. Participating in http://www.underconstructionhome.net/, a visual dialogue amongst Diasporan Armenian artists spread around the globe, exploring issues of identity and transnationality. This culminates in a group show - the Alternative Armenian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007.
2. Participation in the collaborative project REGENERATOR, organised by the Centre for Fine Print Research, Bristol. 60 participating artists are 'regenerating' books that have been withdrawn from the University of the West of England Library.
3. Founded http://www.thestreamingbook.com/, video interviews with artists working with the book form - the first, and as yet only, research project dedicated to giving book artists a platform online to clearly display and talk through their work in this time based, 3D medium, for which still imagery provides inadequate documentation.
4.Current studio practice is focussed on a new series of works investigating the neurobiology of visualising narrative.

• http://www.emilyartinian.com/
• http://www.underconstructionhome.net/
• http://www.faction.org.uk/