Thursday, November 1, 2012

Video as a language


Video is constantly viewed in relationship to other media. How we understand the medium of video is vital in today's digital world.


I think video is one electronic medium’s formal language. What we can do about the different use of video in other art format or in the interaction with other media are based on the standard usage of this language. As human language will develop and produce something new in linguistic field, this electronic language will expand and bring more possibilities when we make use of it. So in this understanding of the medium of video, I think video is an open field for new experiments. These experiments are exploring the potentials of technically application of “synthesizers, processors, and keyers, and, in term of media aesthetics, the connection to music and language”.

-----  “pluralization and optionality”?

What are the aesthetic and technical effects or consequence of experimental video on technologies on what we see, experience or even expect from the media that we are exposed to in our everyday. 

The abstract forms of imagery in experimental video challenge the expectation from audience all the time. And the surprises or unfamiliarity brings “coolness” to these experimental videos. Then the coolness from art expression is adapted and modified in commercials and music video everyday. Like “the modulated frequency and voltage in the signal processes displayed and overload sight and hearing”, those techniques and effects are used a lot in today’s music videos.

I think the works of Ed Emschwiller are very interesting. 
Been active in the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, he created multimedia performance pieces and did cine-dance and experimental films, such as the 38-minute Relativity (1966). He also was a cinematographer on documentaries, such as Emile de Antonio's Painters Painting (1972), and feature films, such as Time of the Heathen (1964).
I think his role as a notable visual artist working for his science fiction illustrations influenced his topic choice on his later pioneering experimental films greatly. His films of the 1960s were mostly shot in 16mm color, and some of these included double exposures created simply by rewinding the cameras. He was one of the earliest video artists, combining computer animation with live-action. In 1979, he produced “Sunstone”, a groundbreaking three-minute 3-D computer-generated video. It is a very early piece of his computer animation. This out space topic imaginary work is very interesting and demonstrated his technical approaches at that time period.  Thanatopsis, a strange b&w short film, which is remarkably similar in tone to some of the films which William Burroughs and Antony Balch were making at around the same time. 

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