Video installation is a

contemporary art Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a ...

form that combines

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

technology with

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific art, site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior intervent ...

, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. Tracing its origins to the birth of

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. V ...

in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

production technology has become more readily accessible. Today, video installation is ubiquitous and visible in a range of environments—from galleries and museums to an expanded field that includes site-specific work in urban or industrial landscapes. Popular formats include monitor work, projection, and performance. The only requirements are

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

and

darkness Darkness is the condition resulting from a lack of illumination, or an absence of visible light. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina a ...

. One of the main strategies used by video-installation artists is the incorporation of the space as a key element in the narrative structure. This way, the well-known linear cinematic narrative is spread throughout the space creating an immersive ambient. In this situation, the viewer plays an active role as he/she creates the narrative sequence by evolving in the space. Sometimes, the idea of a participatory audience is stretched further in interactive video installation. Some other times, the video is displayed in such a way that the viewer becomes part of the plot as a character in a film. A pioneer of video installation was Korean/American

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a South Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" ...

whose work from the mid-sixties used multiple television monitors in sculptural arrangements. Paik went on to work with

video wall A video wall is a special multi-monitor setup that consists of multiple computer monitors, video projectors, or television sets tiled together contiguously or overlapped in order to form one large screen. Typical display technologies include ...

s and projectors to create large immersive environments.

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are ...

is another pioneer of video installation. He showed his ''6 TV Dé-coll/age'' in 1963 at the

Smolin Gallery The Smolin Gallery was an avant-garde art venue and gallery on 57th Street (Manhattan), 57th Street in New York City, at its peak in the 1960s. It was known for its involvement with installation art, performance art and experimental art, and was be ...

in New York. Other Americans include

Bill Viola William John Viola Jr. ( , ; January 25, 1951 – July 12, 2024) was an American video artist whose artistic expression depended upon electronic, sound, and image technology in new media. His works focus on the ideas behind fundamental human ...

Gary Hill Gary Hill (born April 4, 1951) is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Often viewed as one of the foundational artists of new media art, based on the single-channel work and video- and sound-based installations of the 1 ...

and

Tony Oursler Tony Oursler (born 1957) is an American multimedia and installation artist married to Jacqueline Humphries. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California, in 1979. His art covers a range of med ...

. Bill Viola is considered a master of the medium. His 1997 Survey at the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in NY, along with the 1994-95 Gary Hill survey created by the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and traveling to Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Kansas City, amounted to a watershed mark in the history of video installation art marking both a period on the sentence of the first generation and a beginning of the next. Gary Hill, another master of the medium, has created quite complex and innovative video installations using combinations of stripped down monitors, projections and a range of technologies (from laser disk to DVD and new digital devices) so that the spectator can interact with the work. For instance in the 1992 piece ''Tall Ships'', commissioned by

Jan Hoet Knight Jan Hoet (; 23 June 1936 – 27 February 2014) was the Belgian founder of SMAK (''Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst'' or Municipal Museum for Contemporary Art) in Ghent, Belgium. Biography Jan Hoet was born in Leuven, Belgium. Throu ...

for

Documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...

9, the audience enters a dark hall-like space where ghostly images of seated figures are projected onto a wall.George Quasha and Charles Stein. ''Tall Ships: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations''—Number 2. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Arts, 1997. Also: ''Gary Hill''. Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum and Vienna: Kunsthalle, Wien, 1993. The approach of a viewer causes a seated figure to stand up and move forward toward the viewer, creating an eerie effect of the dead in the underworld (rather suggestive of Odysseus' descent into the Underworld in ''The Odyssey''). Tony Oursler's work exploited the technology developed in the early 1990s of very small video projectors that could be built into sculptures and structures as well as improvements in image brightness so that images could be placed on surfaces other than a flat screen. David Hall and Tony Sinden exhibited the first multi-screen installation in Britain, 60 TV Sets, at Gallery House, London in 1972. Subsequently, British video installation developed a distinctive pattern following the seminal international Video Show at the Serpentine Gallery, London in 1975, and later thanks in part to the existence of regular festivals in Liverpool and Hull and public galleries such as the

Museum of Modern Art, Oxford Modern Art Oxford is an art gallery established in 1965 in Oxford, England. From 1965 to 2002, it was called The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. The gallery presents exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. It has a national and international ...

that routinely showcased the work.

Sam Taylor-Wood Samantha Louise Taylor-Johnson ( Taylor-Wood; born 1967) is a British filmmaker. Her directorial feature film debut was 2009's '' Nowhere Boy'', a film based on the childhood experiences of the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock ...

's early installation pieces are good examples where specially filmed elements are shown as a series of serial projections.

Artists working with video installation

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Video Installation Visual arts media

Artists working with video installation

See also

References