Yvonne Spielmann. "Video: From Technology to Medium." Art Journal fall 2006, 65, 3: 55- 70.

Video: From Technology to Medium
Yvonne Spielmann. "Video: From Technology to Medium." Art Journal fall 2006, 65, 3: 55- 70.

In this text the author tried to make the position of video as independent medium in the media art, not a part of other medium,
so to get this point first she has explained the characters of video as technology, and has pointed differences between video and other medium such as film, photography and tv.

As I mentioned previous page,
in this chapter “Technologies of the electronic medium”,
she has wrote general starting point to understand position of video’s specifics,
so she mentioned first common characters of electronic media and relationship with tv.
And next for video as a electronic medium, she mention the specifics of video itself. She proposes to regard video historically with other media, to emphasize technological requirement that often neglected in debates from art historical perspective. To explain that point, she wrote, the emergence of video could be better understood on the ground of audiovisual process. From her viewpoint, it seems that the discussion about video has tended to stop, because people think, the old medium (video) was replaced (substituted) by digital computer.
But she insists in this text that video has not substituted with development of computer but has incorporated analogue computer applications since early 1970 and has enriched an electronic media culture and has oriented toward signal processing and digital images.
Examples, early 1970 Dan Sandin, more recent David Stout to show the intersection of video and computer as common source for analoge image processing (sandin) and audiovisual feedback process in the computer. So in this relationship she said, video and the computer are more closely than film.
To emphasis this point, she took the differences from other media technologies. As signal form audio signal can change by video signal, and video signal can change by audio signal. This visual changes and acoustic changes can display at the same time. And These modulation could take place inside of the machine or by tools through the exchange of video and audio signals each other.
From this signal form of video, / process in real-time, and visual effects can presented in external monitor, not recorded on magnetic tape. All the point of camera, monitor, synthesizers, keyers and analogue computer can be connected and modulated.
And at the end of this chapter, with this video’s signal specific she has compare with film,
As electronic medium video has electronic signal transfer, and this signal transfer is constant flow, so
this flow video can be manipulated, but film is not the constant signal but picture strips with separated visual and audio element.
And also she pointed that, normally visual image can capture by optical device (camera), but with video in the means of signal process,
it can create by oscillators, or the signal output of other device can be used as input signal.

In this second chapter she has explained historically the development of video with other related medium such as tv, film, and photography.
As we know, video has also specifies in immediate presence and transmission, for example nam june paik has performed at kassel dokumenta 1977 first art work with satellite.
But as electronic transmission video differ from tv, the goal of tv’s transmission is stabilizations signal processes, tv make transmisson something has been recorded,
but video is more experimental, modulated and manipulated in all possible ways. (paik, vasulka, hill)
video’s immediacy and image processing differ from other time-bases media (photography and film)
Because in film and photography image is the individual frame or a sequence,
but as signal flow of video, the status of image changes :electronically recorded, transferred to another device, finally transmitted to a monitor.
For example positions between projection (film) or transmission (TV) and the positioning of the viewer are fixed,
this came from renaissance perspective, it means there is space for spectator and space for actor (stage) in theater.
but video the positioning is not fixed, so with this not- fixed apparatus structure,
it’s really free to plug in with other device and then everywhere can be presented.
So video has with this open structure the potential to produce imagery in any direction and dimension.
For example in the late 1960 video pioneers vasulkas, hill, paik, they made synthesizers and many tools (plug in) to expand range of possibility video.
And 1973 george brown has invented Multikeyer so he mixed 6 video source in one output.
She mentioned also, due to this open apparatus structure of video, as an analogue medium video could shares features of the digital.
Most of experimentation in video techniques was carried by artist (music, performance, film, fine art)
There were 3 major directios of aesthetic-technical work in video practices.

First, videotapes and installations that contrast the institution and format of tv and video with art,
For the most part, these artists are interested in the visual critique of media and art institutions.
-vito acconci, dara birnbaum, joan jonas, les Levine

Second direction is taken in video works that explore the relationships of video, sound, text and music and develop passages to hypermedia and interactive applications.
-Robert hahen, peter callas, bill seaman

The last one was focuses on the modulation of electronic image-sound expressions and seek to expand technological imagery to the limits of the possible
-paik, hill, vasulka

There are two ways to understand video as picture media.
First, video has entered a large area of media production and is represented in many media applications as mixed-media form,
Such as video-film, video installation and video clip on web sites.
Because of its flexible, nonfixed and unstable structure, video is an easy tool to adapt to all different kinds of media, so it cannot get much specificity and many features of its own.
And due to the wide range of interrelationships and increase in technical development, at the end, there is no need to distinguish video and film.
It does not become a real medium, but rather have the position of an intermediary state.
And it has spread into many media practices and art, so it has not created its own culture forum.
She said, this view misunderstands the direction of media development and reverse the history of the use of video, reducing its status as a medium back to the level of technology.

Second way is better to understand video as medium.
Because video was aesthetically different from film and tv and in spite of its poor quality and limited applications, video was welcomed by experimental artist, such as happening, performance and fluxus,
for the artist who were looking for new expression to pass over the boundary of established institutions. Video was clearly seen as a new medium and not as an applicable technology.

But in the 1970s for filmmaker video was not accepted, because of its low resolution, b/w image and lack of depth of field. So video was rejected at film festival and also at discussion in relation to art.
In the 1980s filmmakers started working with video, but they interested only in shooting in conventional film format on video not in producing for the medium.
And it was considered too poor-quality and difficult to preserve, so video was not acceptable to art market
So In this cultural environment, video developed in the experimental field of art such as live art, and performance art.
And also video used by political groups that were not satisfied with institutionalized television.

Some technicians, engineers has worked together with experimental video artist to explore the aesthetic forms of video.
They invented new devices to manipulation of the electronic image through feedback, delay and layering.

She mentioned, even today, when there is a growing concern with the work the preservation of video art in achieves and collections, video represents a much smaller section than film,
Only on the grounds of media difference will it be possible to discuss specificity and determine the basic characteristics of video.
As early experimentation with feedback demonstrates, specificity lies in the abstractness of transforming waveforms, which results from the susceptibility of electronic signals to processing.
First, there is lack of concern with the articulation of an electronic vocabulary developed in interrelation with existing aesthetic forms.
Second, a narrow perspective on the introduction of video technology fails to differentiate between applications that are specific (like feedback) and those nonspecific to video. (the use of video for documentation)

When the processing aspect of video is not taken into account, video can easily be categorized as a technological step between film and computer,
which not only undermines the existence of the media, but downsizes video in to a “little sister” of TV.
With such viewpoint, video becomes nothing more than a tool that entered the market with the nonprofessional portapak equipment in the mid 60s and disappeared with the development of digital video in 90s.
Such a position gives video only ;limited historical significance and limit its influence to the sectors of alternative tv and the performing and installation arts.

This happens because the discussion of video art is to a large poorly informed about dynamic technologies, but also because video has not built up institutions like cinemas and broadcast stations.
Although the matter of media-specificity need more attention in the video discussions,
nevertheless the recent adaptations of video technologies an aesthetics in multimedia installations and the implementations of video sequences in virtual and interactive media art help video works enter museum and collections. Video is welcomed as a visual techniques of motion and immediacy.

Anyway in digital decade, Technological difference does not matter, so consideration of media-specificity in video becomes anachronistic.
Following the logic of the digital as a universal medium, a new paradigm of sameness and loss of differentiation develops, ahistorical understanding of the historically separate development of film, video, and computers.
Technological difference does not matter in the digital and because video was a technology, never a fully developed medium.
The use of video in contemporary media art is not driven by exploration and further development of videa as an electronic form,
instead, the artists draw on video techniques in film (interactive cinema installations), in multiple screen installation (mainly of narrative sequences)
And in virtual reality settings.

The point she wants to emphasis is that such “video installations” are less concerned with video than with other media forms.
(with painting in bill viola’s works, douglas gordon’s video-films)
The video has become a tools and a techniques in the service of interactive installations in which video sequences are implemented to extend and enrich the other art form.
Clearly, when we discuss such elements of interactive and multimedia installations, we do not recognize video itself.

But the works of bill seaman since late 1980s and computer-noise performaces of david stout demonstrate
that the processing and transformative capacities of the electronic medium continue to works in contemporary media art.

In this last chapter the author try to understanding us that the relationship between video and computer,
So she has searched these relation from 70s to contemporary art.

The possibilities of electronic manipulation mean that the scale, form, directions, and dimensions if an image are all variable elements.
The electronic manipulations are in 70s circulation video signals (feedback), temporal delay, and recursive loop had to be performed live.

First connection video with computer was 1970s and around 1980 the first digital computer used in electronic line processing. (Dan sandin)
Through abstraction and because video can abandon a photographic function of the visual, the electronic medium could present audio and visual characteristics in transformation.
Sandin led the way video from analogue to digital when he described video signals as encode information.
Sandin said “the video information is encoded only in the scanning lines from left to right”