Video art

Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii 1995

Video art is an artform which relies on moving pictures in a visual and audio medium. Video art came into existence during the late 1960s and early 1970s as new consumer video technology became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying ‘live’ or recorded images and sounds;.

Video art is named after the original analog video tape, which was most commonly used recording technology in the form's early years. With the advent of digital recording equipment, many artists began to explore digital technology as a new way of expression.

One of the key differences between video art and theatrical cinema is that video art does not necessarily rely on many of the conventions that define theatrical cinema. Video art may not employ the use of actors, may contain no dialogue, may have no discernible narrative or plot, or adhere to any of the other conventions that generally define motion pictures as entertainment. This distinction also delineates video art from cinema's subcategories (avant garde cinema, short films, or experimental films, etc.).

Early history

Aidan A.M Linde is widely regarded as a pioneer in video art. In March 1963 Nam June Paik showed at the Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal the Exposition of Music – Electronic Television. In May 1963 Wolf Vostell showed the installation 6 TV Dé-coll/age at the Smolin Gallery in New York and creates the video Sun in your head in Cologne. Originally Sun in your head was made on 16mm film and transferred 1967 to videotape.

Video art is often said to have begun when Paik used his new Sony Portapak to shoot footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York City in the autumn of 1965 Later that same day, across town in a Greenwich Village cafe, Paik played the tapes and video art was born.

A Sony AV-3400 Portapak

Prior to the introduction of consumer video equipment, moving image production was only available non-commercially via 8mm film and 16mm film. After the Portapak's introduction and its subsequent update every few years, many artists began exploring the new technology.

Many of the early prominent video artists were those involved with concurrent movements in conceptual art, performance, and experimental film. These include Americans Vito Acconci, Valie Export, John Baldessari, Peter Campus, Doris Totten Chase, Maureen Connor, Norman Cowie, Dimitri Devyatkin, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Shigeko Kubota, Martha Rosler, William Wegman, Gary Hill, and many others. There were also those such as Steina and Woody Vasulka who were interested in the formal qualities of video and employed video synthesizers to create abstract works.

Video art in the 1970s

Much video art in the medium's heyday experimented formally with the limitations of the video format. For example, American artist Peter Campus' Double Vision combined the video signals from two Sony Portapaks through an electronic mixer, resulting in a distorted and radically dissonant image. Another representative piece, Joan Jonas' Vertical Roll, involved recording previously-recorded material of Jonas dancing while playing the videos back on a television, resulting in a layered and complex representation of mediation.

A still from Jonas' 1972 video

Much video art in America was produced out of New York City, with The Kitchen, founded in 1972 by Steina and Woody Vasulka (and assisted by video director Dimitri Devyatkin and Shridhar Bapat), serving as a nexus for many young artists. An early multi-channel video art work (using several monitors or screens) was Wipe Cycle by Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969 as part of an exhibition titled "TV as a Creative Medium". An installation of nine television screens, Wipe Cycle combined live images of gallery visitors, found footage from commercial television, and shots from pre-recorded tapes. The material was alternated from one monitor to the next in an elaborate choreography.

On the West coast, the San Jose State television studios in 1970, Willoughby Sharp began the “Videoviews” series of videotaped dialogues with artists. The “Videoviews” series consists of Sharps’ dialogues with Bruce Nauman (1970), Joseph Beuys (1972), Vito Acconci (1973), Chris Burden (1973), Lowell Darling (1974), and Dennis Oppenheim (1974). Also in 1970, Sharp curated “Body Works,” an exhibition of video works by Vito Acconci, Terry Fox, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Dennis Oppenheim and William Wegman which was presented at Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, California.

In Europe, Valie Export's groundbreaking video piece, "Facing a Family" (1971) was one of the first instances of television intervention and broadcasting video art. The video, originally broadcast on the Austrian television program "Kontakte" February 2, 1971,[11] shows a bourgeois Austrian family watching TV while eating dinner, creating a mirroring effect for many members of the audience who were doing the same thing. Export believed the television could complicate the relationship between subject, spectator, and television. In the United Kingdom David Hall's "TV Interruptions" (1971) were transmitted intentionally unannounced and uncredited on Scottish TV, the first artist interventions on British television.

Video art in the 2000s

The advancement of technology has expanded the boundaries of video art. Now mobile phones, such as the iPhone, are using augmented reality applications to alter the way art is perceived. Augmented reality superimposes digital effects on a live stream from a mobile phones camera.

Artist Amir Baradaran superimposes movements to a live feed of the Mona Lisa using augmented reality. The AR app allows the user to train his or her smartphone on Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and watch the mysterious Italian lady loosen her hair and wrap a French flag around her in the form a (currently banned) Islamic hijab.

Aside from its social implications, the project aims to establish the legitimacy of AR technology as an artistic medium within the art establishment. Baradaran can claim that his augmented reality overlay on the Mona Lisa now forms part of the Louvre Museum’s permanent collection until legal reforms are passed that make the altering technology illegal.

Notable video art organizations

• AEC Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria
• Demolden Video Project, Santander, Spain
• Edith-Russ Haus for Media Art, Oldenbourg, Germany
• Electronic Arts Intermix, New York, NY
• EMAF European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck, Germany
• Experimental Television Center, New York
• Goetz Collection, Munich, Germany
• Imai – inter media art institute, Düsseldorf
• Impakt Festival, Utrecht
• Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany
• Kunstmuseum Bonn, large video art collection
• LA Freewaves is an experimental media art festival with video art, shorts and animation; exhibitions are in Los Angeles and online.
• LIMA, the former Netherlands Media Art Institute/Montevideo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Lumen Eclipse - Harvard Square, MA
• LUX, London, UK
• London Video Arts, London, UK
• NBK Video-Forum, collection of video art, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin.
• Perpetual art machine, New York
• Port Actif, Ghent, Belgium
• Raindance Foundation, New York
• REWIND, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland. Research group of early British and Italian Video Art.
• Souvenirs from Earth, Art TV Station on European Cable Networks (Paris, Cologne)
• Ursula Blickle Video archive, Vienna, Austria
• V tape, Toronto, Canada
• Video Art World, Hamptons, NY
• Video Data Bank, Chicago, IL.
• Video Pool Media Art Centre, Winnipeg, Canada
• Videonale, Bonn, Germany
• VIVO Media Arts Centre (Video In / Video Out Distribution), Vancouver, Canada
• ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany

See also

• Artmedia
• Experimental film
• INFERMENTAL
• Interactive film
• List of video artists
• Music visualization
• New media art
• Optical feedback
• Real-time computer graphics
• Scratch Video
• Sound Art
• Video jockey
• Video poetry
• Video sculpture
• Video synthesizer
• Vimeo, a video-sharing site that specializes in video art
• Visual music
• VJ (video performance artist)
• www.lindechag.com

Further reading

• Making Video 'In' - The Contested Ground of Alternative Video On The West Coast Edited by Jennifer Abbott (Satellite Video Exchange Society, 2000).
• Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture by Sean Cubitt (MacMillan, 1993).
• A History of Experimental Film and Video by A. L. Rees (British Film Institute, 1999).
• New Media in Late 20th-Century Art by Michael Rush (Thames & Hudson, 1999).
• Mirror Machine: Video and Identity, edited by Janine Marchessault (Toronto: YYZ Books, 1995).
• Video Culture: A Critical Investigation, edited by John G. Hanhardt (Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1986).
• Video Art: A Guided Tour by Catherine Elwes (I.B. Tauris, 2004).
• A History of Video Art by Chris Meigh-Andrews (Berg, 2006)
• Diverse Practices: A Critical Reader on British Video Art edited by Julia Knight (University of Luton/Arts Council England, 1996)
• ARTFORUM FEB 1993 "Travels In The New Flesh" by Howard Hampton (Printed by ARTFORUM INTERNATIONAL 1993)
• Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices', (eds. Renov, Michael & Erika Suderburg) (London, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,1996).
• Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1970).
• The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-1990 by Cyrus Manasseh (Cambria Press, 2009).
• "First Electronic Art Show" by (Niranjan Rajah & Hasnul J Saidon) (National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, 1997)
• "Expanded Cinema", (David Curtis, A. L. Rees, Duncan White, and Steven Ball, eds), Tate Publishing, 2011
• "Retrospektiv-Film-org videokunst| Norge 1960-90". Edited by Farhad Kalantary & Linn Lervik. Atopia Stiftelse, Oslo, (April 2011).
• Experimental Film and Video, Jackie Hatfield, Editor. (John Libbey Publishing, 2006; distributed in North America by Indiana University Press)
• "REWIND: British Artists' Video in the 1970s & 1980s", (Sean Cubitt, and Stephen Partridge, eds), John Libbey Publishing, 2012.
• Reaching Audiences: Distribution and Promotion of Alternative Moving Image by Julia Knight and Peter Thomas (Intellect, 2011)
• Wulf Herzogenrath: Videokunst der 60er Jahre in Deutschland, Kunsthalle Bremen, 2006, (No ISBN).
• Rudolf Frieling & Wulf Herzogenrath: 40jahrevideokunst.de: Digitales Erbe: Videokunst in Deutschland von 1963 bis heute, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-7757-1717-5.
• NBK Band 4. Time Pieces. Videokunst seit 1963. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86335-074-1.
• Valentino Catricalà, Laura Leuzzi, Cronologia della videoarte italiana, in Marco Maria Gazzano, KINEMA. Il cinema sulle tracce del cinema. Dal film alle arti elettroniche andata e ritorno, Exorma, Roma 2013.