Artist Research: Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon (born 1966) is a Scottish photographer and video installation artist. According to artnet, his most well-known work is 24 Hour Psycho (1993), which is a video projection of Hitchcock's film slowed down to the length of 24 hrs. For a sound-focused project he did, he played 30 songs that were popular in the months preceding his birth, in a blue room. Also, a lot of his photographs are photos of various public figures, but manipulated so that parts of the image (like the eyes and mouth) had holes burned into it, revealing a black or white void behind it.

I chose to research Douglas Gordon because seeing his work reminded me about Everything is a Remix a little differently than the other artists, particularly because the way in which he remixes them is very minimal (in the sense that he only makes 1-2 major changes to them, or just "reframes" them differently). Additionally, his photo work intrigues me because I'm also very into photo manipulation (compositing, which is similar to remixing in that I'm combining a lot of elements together to form a new image), but the changes I make tend to be very dramatic, which is very different from his approach.

Seeing his work made me realize that the artist's "intent" when remixing is very important. Although Gordon often doesn't make drastic changes to the original work, the message/ meaning/purpose of the work differs completely from the original. For instance, the photographs with eyes, mouths, etc. burned out or destroyed—it's not trying to do what the original was doing, which differentiates it from plagiarism. 24 Hour Psycho, similarly, only features one change of slowing down the film, but the purpose changed from horror movie to exhibition commenting on time, space, and memory. I was somewhat surprised to learn that Gordon never had any copyright or legal issues, but the main reason for this is that he normally draws from works in the public domain, which might also explain why a lot of his works have a vintage feel to them.