Inputs and Outputs

After talking about Guerilla Television and Artistic Video, Spielmann introduced the third group of video art, the Experimental Video in the second chapter of her book, Video: A Reflexive Medium. 

In explaining the concept of Experimental Video, the author said, “it understands the new medium dialogically in the interrelation of technology and aesthetics and undertakes experiments in images technology as a possibility of reaching a new language of imagery by talking issue with the form of the medium.” In exploring the dialogs between aesthetical expression and developed technology, the experimental video artists, or say image technicians, focused on inventing a new language to translate their artistic ideas into images. The experiments they’re doing were discovering and deconstructing the relationship between images and messages, and more importantly, the ways of generating ideas by imagery. They experimented the various possibilities to connect thoughts with visual/audiovisual imagery by investigating the forms of video medium. The “new” approaches here are brought by their avant-garde ideas to speak a new digital language in an image world. The new language is constructed differently from the traditional preceding camera-obscura perspective. The conventional methods of producing a visual/audiovisual expression is replaced and expanded through the experimental video medium. The new art approaches are trying to innovate a genuinely electronic vocabulary based on their new discoveries of technical devises to generate and output images.

A video synthesizer generates signals to produce imagery. As a more complex device than audio synthesizer, the video synthesizer covers a much larger amount of digital signals in multiply dimensions. A video synthesizer is like the paint and palette of a video artist. It translates the ideas and concepts into different signals and then generates images and transformations, and makes it possible to achieve numerous effects and distortions by controlling the waveforms. The additive synthesis is the most common technique for generating waveforms. It mixes the output waveforms of oscillators to generate a new waveform that is the sum of their combined outputs. It makes it possible for artists to duplicate any natural waveform by summing sine waves of different frequency and produce unexpected output imagery. The Scan Processor Studies by Woody Vasulka and Brian O’Reilly is a good example for video synthesizer and its product. The No.18 might be the coolest video I’ve ever seen. In the nonstop powerful digital flows, the forever transforming imagery suggests the audience the uncertainty of electronic aesthetics in a very beautiful way. In the vague forms of mountains, oceans, deserts, especially with a screaming woman’s face inside, those mysterious and energetic visuals combined with immortal electronic sound and beats demonstrated the infinite imagination and artistic expressions generated by the imagery and audiovisual world produced by a synthesizer.

Then, the development of image producing devices leads to the two different ways that a video can be generated.

One way is to generate signals by a video synthesizer and an audio synthesizer based on modular processors. Like the video synthesizer built by Eric Siegel, it can manipulate the size, form, and color of the waveforms and then generate a video. The modular designed synthesizer allows parallel and simultaneous prepossessing of high frequency signals.

The other way of creating video changed the control of processing steps, allowing artists to control several different video sources in a sequence simultaneously and separately. The sequencer can depict the structure of an electronic image in the waveform; and the programmer can monitor the arrays from the video sequence digitally and it can store operation sequences in its memory and activate them at any chosen moment. Both of these developments in controlling the processing steps expanded the possibility to visualize the electronic signals and manipulate the information in real-time and deviate the signal from the usual linear sequence. Analog scan processor can present the scan lines in waveforms, and then enable artists to use this reflexive procession to visualize a video’s generic natural processes. Just like how it works in video feedbacks, this way of generating video imagery allows the video to present the circulation of the audio and video signals without external inputs. The method is workable in both externally and internally generated signal processes. In this way, the concept of “images” in video art is replaced by the concept of “image field”, or  “pictoriality”, because of the breakdown of the structure incoherent in imagery and the layers of imagery become so multiply that it is no longer to depend on a bounded surface of imagery.

Image Technician

Spielmann describes the video artist as an “image technician”. 

How or is the content/concept of these videos connected to their process of their making? 

The image technicians are the group of video artists who explore their experiment videos concentrating on their conceptual, structural, and technical standpoint including the equipment they're using. I believe many great video artists can be grouped together under this definition. However, I doubt the point that every video artist is an image technician or should they. 

My reason is that the video artist as an image technician experiment their use of video media and the creation of digital signal are a big part of their art content; but it is not necessary for every video artist. There's no doubt that image technicians made great significance in the development of video history. A wide variety of electronic instruments  have been constructed by those engineers and visual artists over the past years. Their discoveries on operating television technologies created new and dynamic forms of digital imagery. From layers mixing, video feedback, colourisers, chroma key, analogue effects are invented to modify the visual world to better convey the ideas of video artists. It is true that those image technicians did great efforts in artistic and imaginative explorations to expand the visual dimension and the horizon of the human imagination. Just as the points from El Arte Del Video Video Synthesis, with the development of techniques, modern TV images do not need to be generated from a camera. It is a fundamental changing point for video art, meaning the coming of new tools, new effects, and new languages to break and transfer reality into art making. 

Video synthesis gives the visual artist the power to realise that which is subject to the creative faculties, allowing a freedom of expression and dynamism using form, shape, colour, texture and motion generated by electronic means. Then artists can change the appearance and behaviors of the imagery to work for their decided concepts. For those video artists working as image technicians, their technical capabilities fundamentally influenced their art content and then impacted dramatically on their art making processes.   

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.

A Critique of Modern Art

Baldessari's video art work concerns video as a medium. "The live character, the directness and simultaneity of recording, and reproduction" of the medium function well in connect with audience, and that brings more meanings to the artistic video action and video performance.

In particular, Baldenssari always performing before the camera, and let the film record everything he does. Without any editing, cutting and refining to the footages, Baldenssari used his video action as an ironic critique of the genre of conceptual art and Fluxus art. 

In Baldenssari Sings Lewitt, (1972), he put arcane theoretical discourse and popular music together by singing Sol Lewitt's comments on conceptual art in selected popular melodies. This "art aria" functions as a meta-conceptual exercise to comment on the arrive of mass media in all communication formats. 
The critique of "an art-immanent illustrative typology of art" became more obvious in his work, Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, (1972). The uncut videotape of his live performance was so boring and dead to watch and that challenged the audience's view about the protected realm traditional concept of video art. He investigated the situation of those protected realms of art, and demonstrated the influence from pop cultural and mass media, which constructed the modern art in a large extant. However, Baldenssari also critiqued his own idea in his earlier work I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art (1971). In this really really boring video, the artist used the medium itself to address his give-up on pursuing the immanent nature of fine art in today's media world.

Boundaries: establish and destroy

Vito Acconci investigated the space for presentation and real action through video recording and transmission onto screens in his video art work “Claim” and “Pryings”. When exploring the notion of space in video media and its exhibition, the artist played with an idea of boundaries.

When watching these two videos, I find myself physically uncomfortable with the content and it's really hard to finish them. 

In "Claim", Acconci was blindfolded and yelling aggressive words with a crowbar in hands. He's using his sayings and body movements to build a boundary between himself and the rest of his world. The performance was held inside a small cell under the gallery space, making the boundary between the live performance and the exhibition space was real and physical. The physical boundary can be the gallery floor or walking stairs. However, even after understood the fact that the performance was live and live-recorded and projected into the gallery space, the audience would not notice the physical boundary when they watching the monitor. Instead, the phycological boundary was established and became much stronger.
As we know, even though all the audience knew that they can go downstairs to interrupt the performance, no one ever did that. Maybe because the audience were afraid of the performer, or they felt it's strange to go out of the gallery space to watch an art. Anyway, the phycological boundary worked. I imagined myself watching this art piece personally in a gallery, and I would not go to the cell neither. Simply because I felt the performance was so real and it broke the boundary between performance and reality, therefore I saw clearly the boundary between normal (me and gallery) and abnormal (Acconci and the cell), and I rejected to go across such a boundary. 

Such phycological boundary also appeared when I watching "Pryings". I felt physically uncomfortable and no longer want to go further. In the video, Acconci was trying to open the woman's eyes by force. He wanted to go across the physical boundary in a human body. Keep your eyes open is a metaphor, which can mean let someone see and understand and accept. The woman resisted to open her eyes, even when her eyelids were opened the woman hided her iris. She was trying to stay inside her body boundary and rejected to accept the masculinity force.  Since eyes are very fragile parts in human bodies, audience would feel spontaneously uncomfortable and attacked by viewing the video. Therefore, the audience outside the space of live performance/action would easily feel the violation. The physical and physiological violation breaks down the boundary between performance and reality, and then makes the boundary of performed action and displayed action uncertain.

 

Swimming in Your Age

Janice Tanaka's video Swimming in Air

I'm not sure whether men care about the fact of being older everyday or not, but apparently, women care. In fact, women's awareness about their age and social reflection can really affect their psychical bodies and psychologic world. 

From an innocent little girl to a mature adult, from a young girl to a sexy lady, women's roles and self-responses are changing all the time, within the changing process of their bodies. Self, career, marriage, children, family vs. business, this is a timeline as well as a struggle-line for every female. Especially to the females whom living in an Asian culture environment, the pressures they received from social definition, from men's "controlling" system, from traditional family responsibility are much higher than living in a Western culture. 

Janice Tanaka's video Swimming In Air is exploring such pressures brought by psychical aging and social definition. Being old and cannot been loved anymore are the ultimate nightmare for every woman. Besides, the desire to being yourself, to do whatever the heart wants always falling in conflicts with the social expectations or traditional women responsibilities. The sufferings of a self-expeacting ego consistently struggles inside a "nonfunctional" body can hardly be stopped in a woman's life. The very real possibility of becoming too old to realize a dream nor fulfill a desire is intimidating.  So the fears of being old is infinite in a women's everyday life. 

As females, we always unconsciously question ourselves "when does our awareness of youth begin. . . after it has passed?" in so many different ways and various occasions. However, how does the awareness ever change our experience or the way we act is something we might not do everyday. The answer to the question is hard to say, but we all know the answer reflects a true but very sad reality. 

Hitchcock & Montage

Video as a medium of expressing and representing has change the way of creating audiovisual dialog.  And the technique of montage specifically has caused the ordinarily invisible to become visible. 

Different from traditional film, video is a new medium that has the possibility of putting several different scenes together in one frame. Especially by using montage, the artist can condense information, spaces, emotions in a less amount of time. It is a great way to increase the tension of a flow. 

In a montage sequence, by showing details of the subjects, or a close shot of a person's face, or a quick transition between different scenes, the video can inform audience something they may not notice in their real life. In other words, that sequence provide a change to the audience to notice some invisible things in our ordinary lives. For example, in Willard Mass's work, the Geography of the Body, by putting various close shots of different parts in human body together, the artist allows the viewers to see something we may not notice or be aware of in everyday life. Sometimes, the human body landscapes are really beautiful and romantic, however sometimes they are really scary or even gross for looking in a close distance. In a slow and smooth flow, the artist created a mysterious and somehow holly atmosphere in the video. These effects achieved by montage technique can hardly be transformed by other art medium.

As a master of cooperating montage in his films, Hitchcock established a notable personal/artistic style. In the film Psycho, montage was used thoughtfully in creating tensions in this horror movie. 

The most famous montage part in this film is the Shower Killing Scene. When the movie describing the murder of the main actress, the director put hundreds of short shots of the actress's hands, eyes, feet, bloods, and the killing knife together in a very quick sequence. Audience do not see the knife into the actress's body, but viewers can see that happening in their minds. By the different angles of shooting various body pieces, director increases the interaction or feeling for the audience when they're watching that part. Besides, the music did a great job in creating tensions and putting horrify emotions into this scene.

Digital Relations

When thinking about the relationship between the camera and the monitor, the camera and the screen, the screen and the projection, the performance and the camera, the performance and the screen. Videos like the one by Peter Campus where he reaches behind his back and goes through the screen or Joan Jonas with the mirror saying left side/right side.

From one day, video not being video or different from video as we know it when placed in an immersive environment such as a game. Video, the role of movement?  Think about my experience of games or animated feature films, we see video in either of these genre’s, how is it used? Is it different than the video we watch as an art form?

The author of the book "Video, a reflexive medium", Yvonne Spielmann believes that video games and animations are some format of video but not being video. I think the reason is that she thinks the main purpose of video art is expressing an idea/opinion/understanding through the use of audiovisual language rather than providing an immersive environment for viewers to get entertained. As my experience of playing video games or watching an animated feature movie, it always uses the first-personal perspective to describe/represent the movement. Especially with the 3D techniques, it’s easy to forget the fact that I’m watching a video made by someone else. However, the videos we watch on a television or in the classroom are not purposely made for us to get into the scenarios. We still feel the position or the role of the artist who made it, even if he/she is not on the screen. We do not feel we are in the control of the story going on, which is the biggest difference from playing a video game.

----- “In contrast to references to video by other media in interconnections between media, this application of video technology is accompanied by the interest in investigating the forms of presenting pictorial progress in the electronic medium itself and in analyzing them in the context of how analog-digital media formats are configuring themselves as they develop in parallel with each other.”

My understanding is that, compared to the use of video art as a format to assist another art expression with visual/audio or audiovisual enhancements. The “not video” videos are trying to explore the potentials happen within the video format itself. Like by doing multiple angle/perspective recording, the visual medium can expand the possibility of video to accomplish a “live” picture. Along with the development of multiple levels of recording sounds, the context of analog-digital media format will be practiced by different aims. Images and sounds are in parallel position in real life. The possibility of technical controls of those parallel elements can produce new options in configuring the media format itself.

Nam June Paik's Screen Park

1. Megatron/Matrix *(1995) 

Eight channel computer driven video installation with 215 monitors, color, sound. 

Megaton: 126x270x24 inches. 

Matrix: 128x128x24

2.The More the Better, (1988) 

Three channel video installation with 1,003 monitors and steel structure; 

color, sound; 

approx. 60 ft. high.

These two pieces all formally very related. They are all made by large number of monitors and include motion and sounds to visualize a bigger picture. 

Megatron/Matrix is roughly the size of a billboard and holds 215 monitors. The mixes images are from the Korean folk rituals and some are from modern dance.In these two pieces, the artist presents his creation and ideas by two different dimensions. By the smaller clips playing simultaneously on multiple monitors, some larger animated images flow across the boundaries between screens. The timeless moment are suggesting a world without borders in the electronic age under forever-going pop culture.

Today, the fusion of pop music, commercial culture, and nationalist symbols are taking the world. Paik's video installation works just express his awareness of this overwhelming power of television.

Video has the potential to be “a new technology, experimental sphere of production, and an alternative form of television.” 

As the video works arising in the visual world, the three categories, documentary video, artistic video, and technical-aesthetic video, have expanded their context and format in different ways. The numerous potentials video art brings to this world is shaping and varying the electronic culture and the core medium, television. I think in this way, video and television are developing and arising alongside with the technical improvement and conceptual updating.

Old vs. New.

Why the olds matter?

Compared with digital camera devises, magnetic tapes and Porto Pac camera feel more “real” to me. I can see them, touch them, and that give me a feeling that the film I’m making is real too. I guess I will be more confident and believe the real tapes in hands are more save rather than the digital data in a flash drive or a computer, which can be easily ruined by a bottle of water. 

------ “TV Bra for Living Sculpture”, Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman.

I think this “Living Sculpture” video performance/installation is very bizarre but interesting and genius.  Charlotte was playing a cello while wearing a bra with small TV screens made by Paik over her breasts.

Bar is a very intimate thing to all female, and Paik made it into something cold and new, two TV screens. It is a very sharp example to express the intrusion of technology and humanize electronics. However, the female cello player seemed very comfortable with the TV bra and she’s performing beautiful music. That demonstrates the harmonious relationship between people and human use of technology.

Video as an Art

Video the Reflexive Medium

------ analog vs digital vs HD

What does that development do to how we use and understand video? Not literally, but how would these distinction effect how we create content? How is the content of what we make or see in film affected by the media itself?

In my mind, some of the most important elements when we talk about the videotape format are: developed technology in this medium, the topic/content of the video imagery, the presentation/performance of video art (like video installation and video sculpture), and finally the audience’s reflection/response to the video art.

We all understand the differences between analog film and digital video in their technical aspects. And the improvement in imagery quality from SD to HD is obvious. That brings more options and possibilities when we create some audiovisual pictures under a certain purpose. We can enlarge a detail and slow-down a movement. However, it is not the technical possibility that define the art content we’re making, it is the content or the “soul” of the video decides the certain format we will choose. The audience’s physical and psychological responses to one certain visual/audiovisual format is the vital part of the art we’re making, by the use of the reflexive medium. That impacts the effects of expression of video media in a great way. On the other hand, that also affects the artist’s decision on applying or modifying one certain art form.

Dispositive: adj. (in US law) producing a final settlement or determination.

1). Relating to or bringing about the settlement of an issue or the disposition of property.

2). Dealing with the disposition of property by deed or will.

3). Dealing with the settling of international conflicts by an agreed disposition of disputed territories: a peace settlement in the nature of a dispositive treaty

---   “open, dispositive structure of camera and monitor image”

When I am making a piece of video art, the first question come to my mind would be “how my audience will response to this?” Should the content of my video raise a question for the audience or give them an answer? The place I’m going to show my video will let my audience feel welcomed and comfortable or will they feel nervous and terrified? And the way I’m going to present my video should be more interactive with the viewers or should it be totally in charged by myself? All of these aspects will influence my audience’s physical and psychological reflection on my video. And I will consider all of those effects when I make my video art.

When we are making a video, we are trying to express some thoughts through the use of certain standard audiovisual language of the media. Audience will response to that piece of work dependent on the “open, dispositive structure of camera and monitor image” we provided. We choose the perspective, direction, and the timeline when we start the storytelling process. The video our audience will see is something that can be only decided by us, by the artists, by the use of certain angle of the camera and the size/feature/surroundings of the monitor we used to present the work. Surely, imagination works as one important affecter when audience’s trying to understand the artwork. But that imagination and the power of resonation are relied on the audiovisual expression we already designed at the first place.