The technology for capturing and recording a moving image and sound on tape was first introduced in the 1950s. The development was mainly used for television broadcasting purposes allowing a video camera to encode and transmit pictures electronically directly onto monitors without any time delay. Because this method required no laboratory processing, such images could be simultaneously captured and played back.
In the 1960s the technology became more widely available and was the method favourably used by television companies; however, it was only in the mid-1960s, when the half-inch helical scan equipment was developed, that video started to make its way towards the domestic market. When the first portable video recorder was released in the late 1960s, Sony’s "Portapak," video also started to become an important new tool of expression for artists in performance.
The development of video art
The early video arts were largely excluded from the traditional art galleries and theatres of the time and could only be shown in small specialised exhibitions and film festivals. In the 1970s with the development of the "media art" genre, video was finally accepted as "high art" and was categorised and displayed within five principle set-ups:
- Video tapes that explored the technical potentials and weaknesses of the medium.
- Real-time, closed-circuit situations, where the artist engaged in an interactive dialogue with the video camera and recorded this onto tape for future distribution.
- Video performance, where during performance the artist confronts physical presence with mediated presence, encouraging the audience to reflect on the images presented by the electronic medium.
- Interactive or participatory events, where the electronic media of video and television were manipulated and transformed by the audience, following scores or instructions provided by the artist.
- Video sculptures, single or multi-monitor installations and environments where gallery visitors viewed an assembly of monitors playing pre-recorded tapes.
Categories of video art and trends
Most early video art can be placed into one of two categories. Tapes and recordings that continued the Modernist tradition of formal experimentations and works that focused on the production and performance process as a social means. Most of the recordings created in the early stages of video art depict self-reflective exercises of the artist’s exploration into the nature of a new electronic medium.
Avant-garde video, like modernist painting, sculpture and theatre had very little to do with reality but focused on the properties of the medium and explored the potential properties of the medium and its genre. As the medium required very little crew it offered a strong feeling of intimacy for the artist and became particularly attractive to artists working in an expressionist environment. Such environments and spur-of-the-movement creativity were thought of highly at the time.
The beginnings of video art relied on the introduction to new technology; however, such art developments shifted during the late 1970s and 1980s due to the development of new editing techniques, more television channels and the invention of MTV (Music Television). Such developments allowed artists to move away from art galleries and theatres and experiment in more commercial environments.
Sources
- Berghaus, Günter (2005) "Avant-Garde Performance: Live events and electronic technologies," Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan
- Jones, Caroline (2006) "Sensorium, Embodied Experience, Technology and Contemporary Art" London, MT Press
Amy Watson - Amy-Louise is Artistic Director of the dance theatre company 90 Degree Rotations and has a PGCE in Dance Teaching.
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