video art

Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as video tapes, or on 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 for the original analog video tape, which was the most commonly used recording technology in much of the form's history into the 1990s. With the advent of digital recording equipment, many artists began to explore digital technology as a new way of expression. Video art does not necessarily rely on the conventions that define theatrical cinema. It may not use actors, may contain no dialogue, and may have no discernible narrative or plot. Video art also differs from cinema subcategories such as avant garde cinema, short films, and experimental film.

Early history

Nam June Paik, a Korean-American artist who studied in Germany, is widely regarded as a pioneer in video art. In March 1963 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 created 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.

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, Frank Gillette, Dan Graham, Gary Hill, Joan Jonas, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Shigeko Kubota, Martha Rosler, William Wegman, 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. Kate Craig, Vera Frenkel and Michael Snow were important to the development of video art in Canada.

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