Video Art – Art at the Border of Sensitivity and Technology
For approximately two millennia, art was defined by static images that tried to imitate movement. Artists used paint and flat surfaces to create these images, and sculptors looked for dynamism in volumes and spaces. However, the concept that a moving imagery could itself be an object of art, took time, 2000 years or more to be precise. “Video Art” was never considered art in the first place, because it was essentially a small movie, playing repeatedly. No one saw anything even remotely artistic in the fact that Mr. Nam June Paik shot the Pope on his Sony Portaack (a video recorder) in 1965, and tried displaying it as “art.” Neither did the likes of Andy Warhol find much acceptance of his “Video Installations.” However, as the definition of art began to change in the late seventies, a whole gamut of until now “untouchable” art forms gained ground.
Video Art, the display of actual moving images as art pieces, took off parallel to the growth of “Installation Art.” Audio and Video, running on the erstwhile “Video Beta” tapes were extensively used by modern Installation artists. This created a mood and movement that static icons could not achieve. The emphasis was more on evoking an atmosphere, rather than displaying a particular skill of the artist. Videos carried out this role superbly. Early “video artists” were hooked on to TV screens and CRT Monitors because they were the only visual display units. Wolf Vostel was a master in making TV screens a part of his art Installations as early as 1959.
Video Art took a step further in the hands of artists, who used electronic signals, as earlier ones did of color pigments. There was a seemingly weird experimentation of sorts when artists, such as Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Peter Campus, Doris Totten Chase, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, and William Wegman, started using synthesizers to combine two video inputs to get fascinating effects. Multiple screens and the recombination of video feeds gave rise to almost psychedelic effects, whose transience added to its artistic values. In a way, these artists were the seminal “geek meets Picasso” mould pioneers.
The struggle of Video Art to find a language apart from its mother branch, movies, made it a fight that’s being fought even now. There is a fine and blurry line between avant-garde filmmaking & Video Art and one discipline often barges into the other’s space. The classification of Video Art itself is a precarious business. Since it is an art, which has little similarity with the classic Fine Arts, it’s easy to dismiss it as a random experimentation by a few over enthusiastic techno-buffs. Aficionados, however, try to classify it as single channel (use of only one screen as a viewing medium), or as an installation (where it is a part of another larger piece of work). Some also classify it as either monochrome (single color) or chromatic (colorful). Still some others look it as a division between “mixed” feed as opposed to pure and unedited video feeds.
There are as many definitions as there are observers in the world of Video Art. The only thing that can be taken for sure is the fact that such art stand on the threshold of art and technology, a place where being technical wizard is not exclusive to having an artistic flair.
Author: Annette Labedzki
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera Times
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