Video Art Timeline

1939

• Invention of Cathode Tube; Government sponsored technology

1941

• NTSC formed (standards/licensing; also set up public broadcasting)

1958

• 40 million t.v. sets in the US 1960
• Nam June Paik emigrates to US

1963

• JFK assassination pre-empts programming

1965

• Sony portapak (could replay but not rebroadcast)
• Bell labs uses computer generated imagery

1967

• CPB formed

1969

• PBS formed
• WGBH (Boston) - unites scientists (MIT) and artists
• KQED (San Francisco)
• NEA funding

1970

• 1st exhibition of video art (London)

1972

• Satellite & Cable T.V. developed
• WNET & Rockefeller fund
• Time-base corrector available
• could broadcast with greater quality

1973

• Whitney biennial shows video art

1974

• MOMA establishes 1st video department

1980s

• Loss of funding to PBS & NEA
• development of cable alternatives
• MTV

1996

• HDTV (Digital TV)

Initial Goals of Video Artists:

• How does T.V. appear visually and how can this be disrupted?
• Time has become shorter and more expensive. Now tell images in quick images/symbols.
• Alternatively, can work on idea of elongating time (either in reality or by suggestion)
• Also can insist on **low** production value (difference b/w cable/digital, mainstream t.v.)
• Big question is: "will viewers follow this?"
• Artists work with public access vs. mainstream t.v. and values
• Use Sony portapak to record performance art and to record conceptual methods of creation.
• Strong connection of video art to Feminist art (and some other traditionally "disadvantaged" groups) because they didn't have any rules yet and could experiment more freely.

Bruce Nauman, Stamping in the Studio (60:00)

Paul McCarthy, Black & White Tapes, 1970-75 (33:00)

Vito Acconci, Undertone, 1972 (30:00)

Bill Viola, Sweet Light (9:00)

Joan Jonas, Vertical Roll, 1972 (19:38)

• use of time/vision/sound
• awareness of each individual frame with image and sound
• obscure images and angles slows awareness (also in and out of focus)
• sound sometimes connected to image (i.e. foot stomping) sometimes not related
• relationship between screen frames (ex. Clapping)
• this video disrupts sense of reality
• focus on individual parts of body not whole (back/face/hands/feet/legs)
• never see whole body
• face in front of vertical roll
• idea: broadcast through a signal; de-objectification of art
• frame vs. television --- traditional focus of framed art as a window to world
• challenges notion of time passing (t.v. wants you to forget about time or only in reference to what shows are on)
• slows doesn sense of movement frame by frame
• actually watching a tape of a monitor -focus on touch and feel but a **visual** medium.. see fabrics and patterns repeated designed to be frustrating and difficult -idea that the t.v. looks back at you (eerie)
• 1972 conceptual exercise with a vertical hold problem, looked at in very formal terms
• t.v. repetition of violence/sex; about the female body; disrupts our access to this image
• video art tries to disrupt our viewing patterns. Ask how revolutionary effects are managed and/or mitigated
• consider forms of display in/with video art. Work with ideas of exhibition and representation.
  

John Baldessari, Baldessari sings Lewitt, 1972 (12:35)

Richard Serra/Carlotta Fay Schoolman, Television Delivers People, 1973 (6:00)

Dara Birnbaum, Technology Transformation, 1978-79 (7:00)

Matthew Barney

• Cremaster 4 (1994)

• Cremaster 1 (1995)

• Cremaster 5 (1997)

• Cremaster 2 (1999)

• Cremaster 3 (2002)

VIDEO ART (AS SCULPTURE AND/OR INSTALLATION)

PAIK

• Graffiti announcing Fluxus festival of totat art and comportment, New York & Nice, 1963-64
• Simple, Weisbaden, Fluxus International Festival of New Music, 1962
• Performing "Zen for the Head" in Weisbaden, West Germany, 1962
• TV Cello, 1971
• TV Bra for Living Sculpture, 1970 (several different versions/performances) to 1975
• TV Penis, 1972
• TV Buddha
• Moon is oldest Television Set (early 1970s)
• Fin de Siecle II, 300 tv sets,
• TV Garden, 1974
• Global Encounter, 1994
• Captain Ahab Hamlet Robot

OURSLER

• Guilty, 1995
• Escort, 1997
• Molecule Melies, 1997
• Organ Play, 1994
• Bulls Balls

HAMILTON

• Aelph
• Volumen, 1995
• Salic, 1995

WODICZKO

• Martin Luther Kirche, 1987
• The Border Project: San Diego/Tijuana, 1988