video is a perceptual prosthetic - Centre for Art Tapes
video is a perceptual prosthetic - Centre for Art Tapes
video is a perceptual prosthetic - Centre for Art Tapes
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understand how we see and hear and it buildsawareness through replay, the review andrepeat per<strong>for</strong>mance of memory. It shapes ourperception of reality through the cyberneticprocess of feedback and the refreshing ofperception through replay. In a way, it <strong>is</strong> thesupreme technology <strong>for</strong> learning how onesees, hears and thinks. It <strong>is</strong> <strong>for</strong>ward looking asit trans<strong>for</strong>ms the past into the present. Instant<strong>video</strong> feedback has flattened our sense of h<strong>is</strong>tory(a <strong>video</strong> document of something that occurredin the 1960s feels like it was recordedthe morning it <strong>is</strong> being viewed, even nearlyfifty years later) and <strong>video</strong> can predict thefuture by ex<strong>is</strong>ting as it does so magnificentlyin the present.I mentioned earlier that <strong>video</strong> was bornduring the 1960s, when conceptual art andpolitical activ<strong>is</strong>m were widespread. Video thenwas the new technology and utopian v<strong>is</strong>ionswere associated with the inevitable collapseof mass media like telev<strong>is</strong>ion, commercialcinema and newspapers. Nearly fifty yearslater we live in a technological culture definedby the internet, where anyone with access tobasic media tools and networks can have theirown ‘telev<strong>is</strong>ion channel’ and publ<strong>is</strong>h theirwriting and digital multimedia through blogs.Video messages and messages in many othermedia are exchanged through mobile phonesand personal digital ‘ass<strong>is</strong>tants.’ Social mediaare essentially photography and <strong>video</strong> fileexchange sites.Today <strong>video</strong> proliferates at phenomenalspeed, affecting perception wherever it <strong>is</strong>employed to cultural advantage. Video <strong>is</strong> nowubiquitous and transparent, some would evensay it <strong>is</strong> common and mundane. People focuson the things that <strong>video</strong> depicts, not on theway it <strong>is</strong> trans<strong>for</strong>ming perception. Content<strong>is</strong> king in an era characterized by the abundanceof <strong>video</strong> data. Form becomes <strong>for</strong>mulaic,especially when the instruments of productionconverge into all-purpose devices like ‘smart’phones. As digital SLRs and point-and-shootcameras and phones record <strong>video</strong>, <strong>video</strong>camcorder sales plummet.Once it was important <strong>for</strong> art<strong>is</strong>ts andindependent media producers to attack themonolith of telev<strong>is</strong>ion and other mass mediaoutlets because they were being used to engineersocial and political con<strong>for</strong>mity. CreativityVIDEO IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR EXAMINING AFIELD OF DATA IN REAL TIME. IT IS A TOOL FORDISCOVERING INFORMATION, NOT MAKING IT.15
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