Summary of Final Show

After having done more research on the topic of Video art I’ve been able to narrow in on some important aspects that I had not previously thought through. The primary pieces that I have investigated more closely are footage, audio, and installation.

After creating two music videos I learned a lot about what I was actually interested in. Previously I wanted to capture everyday mundane scenes, this is still so but I decided to refine the qualifications for which shots to use. The shots that were most prevalent from my first collection of footage were shots that focused on objects in transport. This was interesting to me because the majority of the subjects I focused on were moving somewhere. I think these shots look aesthetically the best. An example of this would be planes passing by, trains moving by, people going by and also shots from moving objects like being on/in a plane, train, car, foot etc.

I had to confront this pattern of objects in motion by investigating what it was about it that interested me the most. The conclusion that I came to is that when in transit our view of the world around us becomes extremely shifted. People on public transportation have headphones in and they close their eyes. On planes conversation is usually kept to a minimum to allow passengers to enter a bubble, and a film is played to keep our attention on something. Our patience, our attention to details, and the bubble many of us place ourselves inside to deal with the discomforts connected to transit is what my project will focus on by highlighting the everyday things around us in those scenarios.

My project zooms in on the beauty that can exist in any locale whether urban, suburban, or country. These are the types of places people find themselves traveling through during commutes. To make the piece consistent I decided that I would only capture footage when I was on my way somewhere. This places me on the same level as any other commuter, and the shots I will/have attained will look familiar to people in several similar locales.

In order to maximize my efforts I’ve been trying to frame each shot to look considerably formal and well framed. The shots need to be beautiful themselves in order to not take away from the subject being filmed. This idea is something I feel is related to minimalist photography. By framing something as mundane as a garage door incredibly well, will in effect make that garage door appear more interesting. This is important to me because I want my footage to look quality and help send my message to the viewer.

Audio is another aspect of my project that wasn’t previously acknowledged. For this piece of the project I want to leave the original ambient noise of the shots alone. The natural ambient noise that couples my shots are important because they can tell a lot such as if the scene was crowded, empty, or serene.

Ambient noise will not be the only audio track in my piece. I want to take samplings of conversation, exclamations, shouting that I encounter while I’m working and then place those bits throughout the piece. I think that this will set up a more interesting dialogue between the footage and the audio. I also believe that these everyday sounds will ring true to anyone who has ever been in a similar environment.

For the installation set up I want to have a stack of televisions. Seeing a lot of early video artists use this technique inspired me, considerably Nam June Paik’s Electronic Super Highway. In that piece his has perhaps a hundred televisions all stacked in the shape of the U.S. I think this stacking looks really interesting and it adds a whole new dynamic to my concept.

I had to start researching television as a medium as well as a medium for art to understand the context I would be placing my work. This opened me up to the dialogue many earlier video artists were interested in. The television deals with the idea of consumer culture, corporate control, and what advertisers want us to look at. The television is also a tool for gazing, watching, observing and even mindless staring. I want my presentation to work this way. I feel like the television is such a loaded object in our society that it will not only increase the viewers’ interest but will deliver my message from juxtaposition.

I will place a couch in front of the television stack to increase my message. I think that if they have the provided headphones on, while on a couch in front of multiple screens they may understand what I’m getting at better. They will be transported into my world from the world I’ve physically set up for them. I think this duality will strengthen my message as well as providing a place for them to hopefully make a connection with the intent of my project.

I want people to be reminded to look and absorb their surroundings. People go on vacations to escape their own reality, but I believe simple shifts in the way we look at our current surroundings can improve your day-to-day activities. Their so much beauty in our urban environments that goes unnoticed. Power lines, flashing lights, gutter drains, etc are all man made things, but this does need to make them bad. I want people to look at the world with a sharper eye and zoom in on the intricacies of our man made surroundings and embrace them.

Video Art Chapter 4

Chapter 4- Extensions

The last chapter of this book focuses on the 4th and 5th decades of video art. This chapter looks at artists who create installation works as well as artists who whose styles are associated/ related to film. Rush describes the latter as 'Filmic' art.

Excerpts & Response

"...With digital technologies, the proper qualities of video itself that were so attractive to artists of the 1970s were no longer considered as crucial."

I pulled this excerpt out because I thought it was interesting how the view of the medium shifted from an aesthetic quality, to simply a means of conveying a message. In the 70s when technology was less advanced artists were using the medium itself as a chunk of the overall art piece solely because it was new and different and changed they way people looked at art in general. As the art world adjusted and got comfortable with the medium, the actual medium had to become less important, and the idea and conceptual value of the works increased.

"As Video art enters its fifth, and perhaps final, decade (from 1960s to the present), video, as a medium, is unimportant to artists. They are using whatever means of moving-image technology is available to them and often this means a combination of technologies."

This excerpt is partially related to the previous. Now that technology has improved artists can enhance their message through the production process they go through. By adding more elements to the process, more elements and more styles can be created to express a particular idea.

"[Rodney] Graham's strategies, familiar with the experiments of John Cage in music and Warhol and Brakhage in film, still cast their spell; altering perceptions and placing the viewing experience closer to the realm of dreams than waking life."

This excerpt is describing Grahams' piece Vexation Island. In this video he uses cinemascope, a very expensive branch of 35-mm film. He shoots his film with dolly's and close ups. It is interesting because the subject is asleep on the shore when it starts, he wakes up, shakes a palm tree and a coconut hits him on the head causing him to become unconscious again. It is interesting to use this narrative because it puts a hazy, confused, twist on it without using much effects. By using a high end movie style mixed in with his own intentions creates a very interesting piece.

"Installation art, by its very nature, suggests interactivity. Installation artists make environments for viewers to enter literally, thus creating a physical participation with the work. This in turn expands the perceptual and optical impact of the work. Installations, whether in museums, galleries, storefronts, or on street walls, video-walls, or any other possible surface, extend the experience of the moving image beyond not only the monitor, but also the darkened room."

"...[Doug Aitken]'s work retains a strong American preoccupation with landscape as well as a very contemporary interest in personal identity and time. 'I am constantly piecing things together, finding fragments of information, splicing them, collaging them to create a network of perceptions,' he has said."

"Shadows from candles, snow kicked up by puppies at play, flickering images of running horses on a television set - all add up to a very satisfying viewing experience. According to critic Ulrike Matazer, Consolation Service, 'like all of Ahtila's films, touches upon a fund of shared human experience. the events could take place anywhere. they are both personally and universally applicable. She draws upon styles and effects from such conventional genres of film as the shore feature, the commercial, the documentary, the music video, and the Hollywood fiction, weaving these elements together to form new worlds of images that defy clear categorization'"

This excerpt stood out because I liked the phrases 'the events could take place anywhere' and 'universally applicable.' I watched a clip of this piece and from it I got a sense that my work doesn't look or work like hers but I feel that description above does hold a similarity. I think that the content of my project, since it focuses on daily transport, is one of those universally understood things. My project will be understandable on a wide scale due to the familiarity that most people will have with the subject. I too hope that my shots of daily transport will provide a 'very satisfying viewing experience.'

"Video technology is now in hybrid stage, combining all manner of digital technologies in the creation of what is likely to be a new medium. It is time for video to assume its place as simply a 'filmic' medium, now that the word 'filming' refers to the many ways in which the moving or animated image is created. The golden age for video art took place in the 1990s, when every festival, biennial, contemporary gallery, and alternative space projected videos on to walls, screens, chairs, cathedral ceiling, and everywhere else. it has been done, and, as with cinema, the next phase is to come.

This book was published in 2003, and I feel that he ends it with a sense of, "video is over", and this new cluster- mash up method is the new video. I wont argue that Video art wont evolve, but I feel like Video art will only evolve into more technical means of producing a moving image. This new evolution will take on a new name, like it already has as new media art. Video, in its basic sense will always be a viable option to create art, and when he says it peaked in the 90s I get the sense he is saying the best of times are over. I don't agree with this because video is captivating that no matter how you use it, there will always be evolution branching of the different stages that technology has presented whether it's digging up an old functional porta pak to get that style of video, or shooting hi 8. Just because the medium isn't on the cutting edge of technology does not mean that no more ideas can be filtered through it.

Music Video #2

For this video I decided to work mostly with my at night footage. This gave me a chance to look at a lot of footage I had to skip past during the first video, mainly because that was a day video. This video pushed my experimentation with video, especially in the editing stage, and I think it came out well.

Video Art Chapter 3

Chapter 3- Video and the New Narrative

In this chapter Rush focuses on a handful of artists who work with video in new ways sense the early adoption of the medium. The growth of technology since the 60s has allowed artists to experiment further with their works. Editing practices and manipulations drastically increased on into the 80s and 90s and this chapter focuses on the works of many artists utilizing the possibilities of Video art.

Excerpts & Responses

"Matisse encouraged young artists to discover what story it was they, and they alone, could tell, and to tell it."

This excerpt caught my attention because it is very simple and true. Good work will emerge from an artists own personal ideals, values, interests, and experiences. By sorting through all these items an artist can come to a conclusion to what it is they would like to say, and have a good idea that people will be interested enough to engage. This advice also reaffirmed the direction I have gone in with my own work because I chose my current project for very similar reasons.

"For her, [Mary Lucier] the personal, the political, and the poetic are one. Light and landscape (both internal and external) are metaphors of the essential connection between human beings and their environments. They are also fragile components in cautionary narratives that reveal the destructive underbelly of both nature and the creatures who inhabit this earth."

I liked this passage because a lot my work deals with the human environment. She talks about light and landscape as metaphors but I see them more as blatant truths. A daily interaction with an environment is everyday and commonplace and just is an example of our destructive and, more importantly for me, the beauty that exists in the dark and dingy all the way to the bright and sunny in all different types of landscapes.

"Given [Michal] Rovner's nationality[Israli], associations with images of Holocaust prisoners and other victims of war come easily to mind. Rovner, however, refuses to be specific about the meaning of her work, preferring to allow her seamless mixture of realism and abstraction to address universal emotions."

I thought this passage was interesting because she does not want to explain her work. I can appreciate that stance, while at the same time feel at odds with it. I think that it would be nice to create a piece of work and not give an explanation for it, to just let the viewer interpret it as they wish and take and what they will from it. In a way it becomes accessible to anyone. Conversely though, I think it is important to give a viewer an insight to your intentions. This way, your intent is made clear and gives the viewer a vague guide as how to take it in. This seems more important to me when dealing with conceptual art because the focus is primarily on the idea, and if the viewer isn't guided enough, they might not take what you intended them to take. This could be a good or bad thing depending on your stance.

"'Post-production,' 'digital manipulations,' high-definition volumetric display,' 'film to video transfers,' these are not phrases associated with the early years of Video art. For artists like Rovner and virtually all other contemporary artists working with video, the medium is definitely not the message. There is nothing of particular interest about the flatness of video or even the real-time aspect of video as there had been in the last 1960s. Video, along with music and basic communication (the telephone, the computer) has gone digital. ...Video art, as constituent part of the history (albeit recent history) of art, is slipping away from the grasp of art history as it has been known. It will not disappear from galleries and international exhibitions in the near future, but it will not be long before it will be beyond the grasp of current art-historical languages. Already Video art has become a subsection of Filmic art, a term better suited to the actual practice of most media artists today."

I thought this final paragraph of the chapter summarized the landscape of Video art well. The explanation of how Video art is becoming more distanced from art history was satisfying to read because I agree. It is very difficult to compare video works and installations to the early masters and it gives me the sense that Video art has tumbled into its own little bubble in the art world. Here the rules can be drastically different from other mediums because of its uniqueness and broad applications.

Video Art (Chapter 2. Part 2)

Video Art and the Conceptual Body pt. 2

Key notes from chapter

The second half of this chapter focuses primarily on female performance/ video artists as well as a few male artists working in similar fashions.

As artists further explored the possibilities of video, many found it quite useful for documenting performance pieces. The video camera also began to interact with performances such is the case with the work of Charles Atlas who created "mediadance." This type of dance takes advantage of the camera and integrates it into the work in order to change the standard perception of the recorded performance.

The amount of artists working with installation based video art increased at this time. This media gave them the opportunity to further develop ideas and present them in more controlled situations.

Excerpts

"Rist juxtaposes the narrative of a smartly dressed young woman walking down the street holding a peculiar looking flower-tipped stick on one screen with fluidly filmed shots of a country garden on the other. The two videos, blending into one another across the corner of two walls, are only four minutes long, but Rist puts them on a continuously running loop that suggests a seamless repetition of her compelling (and funny) central image: the woman, in her blue chiffon dress and red shoes, suddenly wielding that strange looking flower, now revealed to be a metal club, and smashing car windows as she skips (in slow motion) down the street with a delighted grin on her face." on Pipilotti Rist's Ever is over All '97

"The pervasive emphasis on Performance in contemporary video is undeniable. The 2001 Venice Biennale, heralded by some, deplored by others, as 'the Video Biennale,' contained a plethora of video installations, most of them performative by nature. ...Performative influences will only grow stronger as artists of our era continue to concentrate on ideas more than materials. Materials are in service to ideas, which... makes materials, even video, secondary concerns in the practice of art."

Artist to further investigate

Pipilotti Rist

Video Art (Chapter 2. Part 1)

Chapter 2- Video and the Conceptual Body

Keynotes from chapter

Robert Raushenberg was one of the earlier artists to guide art towards new frontiers. He did a piece with John Cage entitled Automobile Tire Print. This piece helped introduce the idea of the "everyday" as being art. The print from this project was created by covering the tire of Cage's Ford Model A tire with paint. They then drove over a row of papers laid out to make the print.

This idea of the "everyday" is also exemplified in Cage's 4:33 piece. In this work an audience awaits to hear the performance. A pianists sits down, opens the piano, and sits for 4 minutes 33 seconds. The piece becomes the sound of the environment all the persons in the room are sharing. Coughs, laughs, shuffling, all become part of the work which is about highlighting this concept of the everyday.

The Actionists were also important for video art in that they took their videos in a more dangerous direction with the intention to outrage the viewer. To give a better sense of dangerous, many their films involved the slaughtering of animals, or images of animals and people drenched in blood. Their movement helped push video art into more experimental realms and increased the boundaries of the movement.

Excerpts from the chapter

"In the early days of video 3 types of artist/ practitioners emerged: those who used video to create alternatives to television; activists drawn to the community and mass appeal of video technology; and artist who saw video as an extension of their artistic practice."

"...Intra-art issues began to dominate early on. They included ideas important to all artists of the mid 1960's and beyond: the dematerialized art object; time as a medium in art; use of industrial materials and technology in making art; the abandonment of traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture; the introduction of everyday objects into the work of art; the intermingling of several artistic disciplines, including painting, dance, sculpture, music, theater, photography and video."

"..What is essential to the practice of art is the motivating idea possessed by the artist that questions existing codes or expressions, both in the world of art and in the culture at large."

Artists to further investigate

Carolee Schneemann, Adrian Piper, Sophie Calle, VALIE EXPORT, Ulay, Robert Wilson, Martha Roser, Steve McQueen, Beryl Korot, Juan Downey, [FluxFilm]-Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, Dick Higgins, Wolf Vostell, [Actionists]- Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl, Kurt Kren.

Video Art (a book by Michael Rush, 2003)

Keynotes from chapter one "Shaping a History"

Video art embraces all significant art ideas- abstract, conceptual, minimal, performance, pop art, photography, and digital art.

It is an art of time. Time can be manipulated and used as a medium in and of itself.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti stated in his manifesto 'La Radia' that the radio based technology (television) would replace film and abolish time and space.

Bruce Kurtz stated "Newness, intimacy, immediacy, involvement and a sense of the present tense, are all characteristics of the television medium."

McLuhan- The Media is the Message (I will expand on this in a later post)

Excerpts from the chapter-

"At the birth of Video art, artist turned the camera on themselves (another crucial distinction from television) or on others to investigate new meanings of time and identity or to create new definitions of space and perception in a gallery setting."

"Television is a medium of desire: it creates dreams, answers dreams, sells dreams. It promises to reflect viewers back to themselves, but it ends up bouncing back what they long to see."

Artists to further investigate-

Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, William Anastasi, Woody & Steina Vasulka, Ed Emshwiller, Dan Sandin, Keith Sonnier, Shuya Abe, Robert Zagone, Eric Siegel, Ture Sjolander, Lars Weck, Bengt Modin, Lynn Hershman, Granular Synthesis, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Jeffery Shaw, Matthew Barney, & Jean Luc Godard.

Music Video

After researching music videos I decided it would be a good idea to make one myself. I used footage that I have been collecting over the semester in order to better familiarize myself with the footage. I noticed that the majority of my footage was focusing on transport. The footage that was being captured from a moving vantage point, or of something in transport, seemed to work the best as far as being visually captivating. This is something I want to further investigate and have it play an important part in the finished project.