Image Field

Spielmann describes video as medium constituted as an image field. What does it mean?

Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, and Hollis Frampton used video medium to investigate the structures of moving images right up to the limits of perceptible changes in movement. Instead of making art of still images, artists can expand the possibilities of artistic expression by exploring the visual/ audiovisual capability of video medium. The concept of image was replaced by the concept of "image field" because the video imagery was no longer just still, static, one layer pictures. 

In Paul Sharits' video work, T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, (1969), the artist made this piece basically based on two different images. However, this 10 minutes video is very powerful to audience and never be boring. The energy of the video comes from the transition and movement between images and the special effects that can only produced by video medium. The image of this video is a image field, which including various layers, and the spaces, power, changes between those layers. Tony Conrad explored the visual effects exclusively happen in digital video imagery in his Flicker (1966). These magical and amazing patterns of lines, dots, white spaces can hardly be reproduced in other art visual medium creation. In this work, the visuals become an universe that can give birth to numerous new images. Just like an image field that can grow thousands of different plants. In Hollis Frampton's work, he used 7 minutes to film a single Lemon in dark without any sounds. The holly-like lemon showed up from dark and disappeared into dark again, just like a hollywood star. Frampton demonstrated the hidden power of the imagery in a video. The minus movements and most unnoticeable changes of the screened image made it so different from a picture. The various zones, different layers, and the multiple surfaces of the image expand all these works.