Nam June Paik, Rhapsody in Video
Usually the visual projects shown in Europe and
What do the words ‘video’ and ‘art’ mean? Does the ‘video’ just mean mechanical device for copying images, or does it embrace all the processes of images such as recording, editing, and broadcasting? Can any project that includes a moving image be classified as the video art? Or as long as monitor is used, regardless of video, television, or computer, can it be called the video art? If so, media art may sound more appropriate than video art. Also does the word ‘art’ mean the same as the modern ‘fine art,’ or is it bearing in mind a completely new art genre or new aesthetic-artistic function and effect?
Let’s go back to the origin of word ‘video art’ instead of keep stumbling at difficult questions. The word video art is a compound word comprised of a Latin word ‘Video; meaning I watch’ and ‘Art; meaning technology or artistic piece of work.’ Of course the word ‘video’ here means moving picture recording device developed at the end of the 1950s. Still the origin of ‘I watch’ is significant in various ways. First of all, attention must be paid to the fact that an act of watching had been used as decisive standard categorizing arts. Granted, the most of the art formats such as painting, sculpting, dance, play, architect, and films are based on the possibility of watching and put a lot of effort trying to deliver visual stimulation and interest to the audience. However, video art is connected to the act of watching on a more fundamental and substantial levels. While the act of watching is limited to the ‘means and method’ to the existing art formats, it completes the ultimate purpose of the art work’s identity in video art. Video art is conceptualized, recorded, and composed through the act of watching (artist). At the same time, video art is eventually created, understood, and evaluated through the act of watching (audience).
Nam June Paik, Rhapsody in Video
The third point following ‘watch’ (act of watching) and ‘I’ (matter of subject) are the characteristics of the sentence, ‘I watch’ that it lacks an object word. Could the word ‘art’ used as an object word as the object of act? No. We must understand the sentence ‘I watch’ without having an object word. Namely, act of watching must be accepted as the act itself in general and abstract meaning, free from concrete object. Therefore video art is an art form which the act of watching itself is an object of art and by showing the act of watching, audiences are asked to examine about it. Questions come up naturally at this point. Why has the act of watching become the object of artistic practice? How does the video art visualize the matter of vision and lead to doubt and reflection about it? The answer lies in the fundamental change of social and cultural conditions and method of act of watching, which is the environment surrounding human’s vision. Let’s consider the importance of photograph, motion pictures, and television which were epochal turning points in the history of civilization.
Nam June Paik, Rhapsody in Video
In the middle of the 19th century, the introduction of photograph brought revolutionary changes in the thought of vision and images of objects. For the first time in the history, human was able to recognize an object not through his eyes and hands but through a camera, and also was able to create images of an object produced by mechanical device. Also photograph expanded exponentially for the ownership and consumption of images by combining itself with materialism and popular mediums. Furthermore, it caused significant changes in the traditional cultures such as fine arts, literature, and play. The appearance of motion picture, following the photograph, also caused quite a shock and change socially and culturally.
Motion picture was successor of the photograph technically, but it was a different medium for it created the realistic and fantastic movements perfectly. Therefore, the matters of producing images and perception through mechanical device entered into a new and more complicated level. Walter Benjamin emphasized the training of adjusting to the mechanical speed and rhythm which rule the capitalism world with motion picture’s distinctive possibilities, and its ability to visualize area of visual unconsciousness. Finally television emerged rapidly as the leading medium for the communication of images and information since the mid-1950s. Television is based on much more complicated technology than photograph or motion picture and plays the role of observing, remembering, transmitting, and reporting the countless slices of day-to-day lives on the worldwide networks of communication technology, economy, and politics. Also television processes chaotic realities into easy to digest images and delivers to the home everyday. Creating a ‘virtual feeling’ for viewers where they feel they can participate in the scene of an event at anytime, and they can monopolize the whole world through the mosaic of fragmental images.
In the rapidly changing world of technologies and socio-cultural conditions, the act of watching became much more flowing and complex situation almost incomparable to the early period of time. And this brought deeper anxiety and uncertainty to the speculation and vision about reality. Video art is an art form started at this point. Video art attempts to reflect and criticize about the various matters related to the act of watching in the medium environment of the modern society. Especially, it enables to have a hunch the unseen premise and compulsion of seeable lives such as technology, sign, time, space, memory, history, body-subject, and ideological effect with this meaning. Video art can be called a self-reflective and self-explanatory practice about perception, subject, technology, and art.
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1) M. Rush, New Media in Late 20th-Century Art, 2003 ; F. de Mèredieu, Arts et Nouvelles Technologies, 2005
By Ha, Seon-Gyu (
