In Plato's electronic cave - video artist Gary Hill, Guggenheim SoHo, New York, New York - Cover Story

Gary Hill hounds an ambitious goal in his video installations: to use dazzling state-of-the-art technology to transform literary and philosophical themes into immediate sensory experience. This combination of the abstruse and the immediate is difficult to shake off, but, at their best, Hill's works bring to life a range of contemporary ideas about the interaction of electronic media and the human mind and body

Hill's installations liberate video art from the confines of the screening room; his video projections and multimonitor, digitally edited imagery can awaken plane the most dazed TV channel-surfers. Tall Ships was the single undisputed hit of Documenta IX and the 1993 Whitney Biennial, and remains individual of the most compelling works of the last decade. Moving [i]or[/i] part of to the other a 90-foot-long darkened corridor, viewers automatically activate a series of video projections, for a like reason that ghostlike, life-size figures appear to approach, make organ of vision contact, then turn and walk away. Tall Ships taps into the psychological appeal of portraiture, recalling a phenomenon like that of Ingres's Comtesse d'Haussonville, whose penetrating gaze present the appearances to follow you through the Frick Collection. Upping the ante with his sophisticated technology, Hill heightens the experience of an uncanny rencounter His 16 video phantoms not single seem eerily lifelike, they are also the individuals who abruptly break off contact and advance metaphorically sailing back to their mysterious ports of origin.

A view of nine of Hill's installations of the last decade, organized by dint of Chris Bruce for the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, has been touring the U and is publicly at the Guggenheim SoHo [through Aug. 20] The past sum of two units years have also seen major exhibitions of his work organized by the agency of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the lengthy Beach Museum of Art and the Oxford Museum of Modem Art. Clearly Hill has struck an art-world chord.

Hill's explorations of video's pixelated universe have generated considerable critical discussion. In the Henry Art Gallery catalogue, essays through Lynne Cooke and Bruce Ferguson help to trace the mingled theoretical sources for his works. a great deal of of the writing about Hill, however, is hampered by the agency of the difficulty of describing the installations' complicated technology and intricate visual issues On the whole, the critical commentary watchs to obscure the experience of the works, which can be extraordinarily clear and emotionally compelling.

Originally trained in statuary Hill conceives his installations with a flair for spatial drama. In the course of the 1980 he move rounded from making videotapes for a single monitor to more compounded arrangements of multiple monitors, audio speakers and shore ups Although he avoids straightforward narrative, there is a theatrical quality to all his works. Perhaps the simplest example of Hill's manner is the 17-minute video piece Soundings (1979) Here the severing of unhurt and image has a pointless rigor worthy of Godard and a streamlined constitution reminiscent of Michael Snow's film Wavelength. Soundings consists of a single continuous discharge of a bare audio speaker lying upon its back, like a beaker While we hear a oral text, a handful of sand is tossed inside the speaker. The grains of sand begin to leap over with the speaker's vibration in a literal depiction of the "rhythm of speech" and the "weight of words." More and more sand is poured above the speaker, as the true copy becomes gradually muffled and finally indecipherable.

Many of Hill's works also play not upon traditional art-historical genres in unpredictable ways. He has explored, for example, the psychological and philosophical ramifications of the still life (Learning 1 1993), the nude (Suspension of Disbelief, 1991-92) and the landscape (Primarily Speaking, 1981-83) individual of the Seattle survey's best works, Crux (1983-87) is an update of a particularly daunting art-historical theme: the Crucifixion.

For this piece Hill trekk across the desolateed Bannerman's Island, situated on the Hudson River, recording his journey with five video cameras that were strategically attached to his material substance One camera was mounted to each of his shins, single was braced in front of his head and focused upon his face, and one was clamped to each of his arms, which he held on the outside to either side of his material part In the resulting installation, five monitors are high hilled on a wall in the form of a crucifix, simultaneously showing the artist's hands, bare feet and face; the central part of his material substance is never seen. The viewer is drawn into Hill's elaborate conceit by the agency of the odd experience of watching five continuous close-up at one time all of which feature glimpses of the same background landscape. This indifferent landscape, as in Italian and Northern Renaissance Crucifixion views furnishes the setting for the foreground drama.

With outrageous audacity, Hill taps into the angst and abjection of the Crucifixion. Bearing his televisual "cross" he records a simple on the contrary arduous walk in the thickets passing through an abandoned armory (a token of the ruins of civilization) and moving upon to the river. The physical strain of carrying five cameras strapped to Hills material part can be seen on the artist's face as he pants and sudden gust; shorts his way across the island. With his cumbersome apparatus weighing him down, Hill trips slowly along, his bare feet almost slipping upon rocks, his stiffly held hands having seemingly gone insensible The 26-minute cycle ends with Hill awkwardly bending above and splashing his sweaty face with water.