This text is from the publication Permanence Through Change: The Variable Media Approach, published in 2003 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology.

The following are excerpts from "Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media," which took place at  the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on March 30-31, 2001. The discussion between Ken Jacobs, Jon Gartenberg, and Bill Brand is preceded by an introductory text by Jon Gartenberg.

Ken Jacobs is one of the great contemporary avant-garde filmmakers. His creative enterprise now spans almost a half century of active work, incorporating such diverse projects as shadow plays, motion-picture films (Tom Tom the Piper's Son, 1969-71), Nervous System performances (Bitemporal Vision: The Sea, 1994), and digital videopieces (Flo Rounds the Corner, 2001). Coursing throughout many of these creations are visual strategies in which the artist plays the flat surface of the two-dimensional image against the perception of depth. He thereby explores the "life" inherent in each individual still frame of the moving image.

Ken Jacobs's Nervous System performances most vibrantly express both the reproducible and the performative aspects of the variable media paradigm. In these works, he overlaps the projection from two side-by-side projectors of virtually identical frames of film onto a single screen. The resulting, slightly asynchronous images appear to move over and under one another, and back and forth in depth. This unique process, controlled manually by Jacobs's hand, exploits the perceptual space between the flat surface of the screen and volumetric space, a kind of "212-D," as noted by the artist. Thus, beginning with the concrete materiality of the film stock, which he then manipulates through mechanical means, Jacobs moves the spectator's experience into an ephemeral, immaterial world.
 

The following are excerpts from "Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media," which took place at  the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, on
March 30-31, 2001.

Jon Gartenberg: Ken, you've recently approved a PAL version of this Tom Tom the Pipers Son being released in video by Pip Chodorov in Europe and created a new work in digital format, Flo Rounds a Corner. What are your reflections about working in film, video, and digital, and what are your thoughts about these mediums for presentation and preservation?

Ken Jacobs: Well, the idea of putting Tom Tom the Pipers Son on tape never occurred to me. It's totally unkosher. This is all about film. How could it be video? And Pip came over from Paris and began working on me. I finally said, "We'll try it, we'll look at it." I wasn't going to commit to it. And it looked good. I really liked it on the screen. It really took some reshaping of my receptivity of what to expect. But there it was—he did a very, very good job—and I became accepting of it. It was strange to watch it in complete silence, spooky. So, I added sound to the videotaped version. At the beginning and the end of the work, you hear the projector. At the end of the work, you hear the projector grinding and then "click" the light appears.

This film ends with the instructions to the projectionist of all these works: Let the film go completely through the projector, and let the pure, uninterrupted light of the projector be on the screen for 20 seconds longer. Then, the light goes out, and the audience hears the projector still going with the film flapping on the reel. And then, the projector turns off and the audience waits in the dark until the lights come on. This was followed, to some extent, with the tape. But I actually had to go back and add the sound of the projector and the film going through the gate. The claws are no longer engaging the sprocket holes. You see white. In this case, the white light of the video screen. And then, finally it stops.

JG: But that seems rather extraordinary, because it's as though you want us not to forget the environment, the projection environment.

KJ: Yes, I wanted people to be reminded of the machine. Video, it's strange. It's otherworldly. It departs from a physical source. Especially with the new screens that are coming about. I imagine at some point, we're going to have floating rectangles of light, or floating everything. It's becoming immaterial, right? There is something of a non-groundedness in physical substance about video. It's engaging; it's very attractive; but I love the machines. Understand, the machine is being taken away. The motor's being taken away. [Sighs] Of course, we have a restaurant-exhaust motor near our room; we're on the top floor. I would like that to be taken away. [Laughter] I'd rather have a video display up there than that motor. But physical things are really being taken away. It's going to be a very strange planet. You don't have to go to Mars; the planet you're on changes under your feet and becomes the other. You find yourself the alien.
 
JG: The last question had to do with your work, the issue about creating in digital form with Flo Rounds a Corner. Can you talk about the move from film to video, analog to digital?

KJ: Well, analog never engaged me. Because you have to be determined to make transient works. And it's kind of sloppy. I actually have a penchant for precision, so digital excites me. I want to investigate what the computer makes possible. Flo Rounds a Corner is a first venture working with digital means.

John Hanhardt: Ken could you speak a bit about the experience last evening of your projected, film performance Bitemporal Vision: The Sea, which we videotaped and then played back. While we're talking about it, we could project it. I'd like to hear your reaction after having slept on it?

KJ: Who slept? [Video begins] We're watching some of my tuning up, the setting up. But here, we've got these two frames being held in the projector. How do I feel about it?

Bill Brand: Yeah, the difference—

KJ: I'm pained. [Laughs] It seems coarse to me.

BB: What's removed in the video image?

KJ: Acuity. Detail. I'm crazy about detail. My details are all mooshed over here. They don't seem. . . . They seem lost in these kind of overall shapes. You don't see these little, tiny dots struggling for their momentary existence, much of the drama is gone.
 
BB: But I thought that a lot of the spatial effects, to my surprise, were reconstituted especially with the filter.
 
KJ: Yeah, the reconstituted spatial effects, I saw that too. But new effects were coming in that I hadn't seen in the live, film performance. I didn't know if I was seeing different kinds of spatial events take place in the video projection, or the video projection was introducing other things.

BB: Well, the video recording increased the contrast, so you lost a lot of your middle values. The black levels are much higher in the video, but the black isn't as deep, which increased my ability to see some of the spatial effects.

KJ: Hm. Hm.

BB: Surprised.

KJ: Yeah.

Stephen Vitiello: One thing that we haven't mentioned is the way that film is transmitted to screen, versus the way that video is transmitted. When projecting film, you're either consciously, unconsciously, or subconsciously aware of light moving across a theater. Video, if rear projected, transmits a very different light.

KJ: Oh, definitely. As I watch this, I'm frustrated, because I see all of the things I should be doing, and my hands are reaching—my poor, little hands don't know that the machine is not around. I'm used to seeing this when I have the opportunity to change the performance. It's frustrating to see moments when connections are not taking place, and I am unable to do anything about it.