Video sculpture

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Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii by Nam June Paik is composed of over 300 television sets, neon tubing, and 50 DVD players, to form a map of the United States.

A video sculpture is a type of video installation that integrates video into an object, environment, site or performance. The nature of video sculpture is that it utilizes the material of video in an innovative way in space and time, different from the standard traditional narrative screening where the video has a beginning and end. [1]

Contents

In one definition video sculpture involves one or more monitors or projections that spectators move among or stand in front of. Video sculptures formed of more than one screen or projection may broadcast a single program or may simultaneously broadcast different interconnected sequences on several channels. The screens used in the sculpture can be arranged in many different ways. For example, they can be suspended from a ceiling, aligned and stacked to make a video wall or even randomly stacked on top of each other. Video sculpture is a medium that offers performing artists a chance to have a more permanent artistic forum. [2]

Video sculpture includes projection mapping on objects and environments. This has become more accessible and popular due to software advancements in the last five years. [3]

History

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, artists Wolf Vostell and Edward Kienholz began experimenting with televisions by using them in their happenings and assemblages respectively. In March 1963, Nam June Paik's debuted his video sculpture entitled Music/Electronic Television at the Parnass Gallery in Wupertal, which used 13 altered televisions. In May 1963 Wolf Vostell shows his installation 6 TV-Dé-coll/age [4] at the Smolin Gallery in New York utilized six televisions, each with an anomaly. [5] Shigeko Kubota was also an innovator in the use of video in sculptural form. Her Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase was the first video sculpture acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. This work is a reference to Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) [2] Video sculpturist are becoming influential among early 21st century artists. [6] One of Paik's video sculptures in which the six windows of a 1936 Chrysler Airstream were replaced with video monitors sold for $75,000 in 2002. [7]

Charlotte Moorman was a notable subject of video sculptures as a renowned topless cellist. [8]

Current developments

There are several developments in current video sculptures. The proliferation of powerful projectors and pixel-bending technology has enabled large-scale works often created for specific events and locations. Other artists like make use of multiple LCD screens or video walls and incorporate computer generated images. A different approach is used by artists like Madeleine Altmann, who creates sculptures with recycled cathode ray tube monitors.

Notable video sculptors

See also

Related Research Articles

Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolf Vostell</span> German artist (1932–1998)

Wolf Vostell was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are characteristic of his work, as is embedding objects in concrete and the use of television sets in his works. Wolf Vostell was married to the Spanish writer Mercedes Vostell and has two sons, David Vostell and Rafael Vostell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Installation art</span> Three-dimensional work of art

Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called public art, land art or art intervention; however, the boundaries between these terms overlap.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Performance art</span> Artwork created through actions of an artist or other participants

Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nam June Paik</span> Korean video artist (1932–2006)

Nam June Paik was a Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.

Madeline Charlotte Moorman was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York and a frequent collaborator with Korean American artist Nam June Paik.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodi (art collective)</span> Internet artist collective (1994–)

Jodi, is a collective of two internet artists, Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, created in 1994. They were some of the first artists to create Web art and later started to create software art and artistic computer game modification. Their most well-known art piece is their website wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, which is a landscape of intricate designs made in basic HTML. JODI is represented by Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam.

Video installation is a contemporary art form that combines video technology with installation art, making use of all aspects of the surrounding environment to affect the audience. Tracing its origins to the birth of video art in the 1970s, it has increased in popularity as digital video production technology has become more readily accessible. Today, video installation is ubiquitous and visible in a range of environments—from galleries and museums to an expanded field that includes site-specific work in urban or industrial landscapes. Popular formats include monitor work, projection, and performance. The only requirements are electricity and darkness.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marco Brambilla</span> Italian-Canadian director

Marco Brambilla is an Italian-born Canadian contemporary artist and film director, known for re-contextualizations of popular and found imagery, and use of 3D imaging technologies in public installations and video art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shigeko Kubota</span> Japanese artist (1937–2015)

Shigeko Kubota was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Doug Aitken</span> American artist (born 1968)

Doug Aitken is an American multidisciplinary artist. Aitken's body of work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live performance. He currently lives in Venice, California, and New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video wall</span> Technique used for creating large video displays, without a video projector

A video wall is a special multi-monitor setup that consists of multiple computer monitors, video projectors, or television sets tiled together contiguously or overlapped in order to form one large screen. Typical display technologies include LCD panels, Direct View LED arrays, blended projection screens, Laser Phosphor Displays, and rear projection cubes. Jumbotron technology was also previously used. Diamond Vision was historically similar to Jumbotron in that they both used cathode-ray tube (CRT) technology, but with slight differences between the two. Early Diamond vision displays used separate flood gun CRTs, one per subpixel. Later Diamond vision displays and all Jumbotrons used field-replaceable modules containing several flood gun CRTs each, one per subpixel, that had common connections shared across all CRTs in a module; the module was connected through a single weather-sealed connector.

Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood (1970), the first book to consider video as an art form, was influential in establishing the field of media arts. In the book he argues that a new, expanded cinema is required for a new consciousness. He describes various types of filmmaking utilizing new technology, including film special effects, computer art, video art, multi-media environments and holography.

Sharon Grace is an American artist, currently a Professor Emeritus at the San Francisco Art Institute, who is known for initiating the use of many forms of electronic media based in audiovisual technology. Since 1970, Grace has worked with telecommunications as art, embedding interactive video and speech recognition in her work including video installation, electronic synthesis, interactive digital systems, and sculpture in stone and steel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Projection mapping</span> Using software to guide the placement of light displays on objects

Projection mapping, similar to video mapping and spatial augmented reality, is a projection technique used to turn objects, often irregularly shaped, into display surfaces for video projection. The objects may be complex industrial landscapes, such as buildings, small indoor objects, or theatrical stages. Using specialized software, a two- or three-dimensional object is spatially mapped on the virtual program which mimics the real environment it is to be projected on. The software can then interact with a projector to fit any desired image onto the surface of that object. The technique is used by artists and advertisers who can add extra dimensions, optical illusions, and notions of movement onto previously static objects. The video is commonly combined with or triggered by audio to create an audiovisual narrative. In recent years the technique has also been widely used in the context of cultural heritage, as it has proved to be an excellent edutainment tool.

The Smolin Gallery was an avant-garde art venue and gallery on 57th Street in New York City, at its peak in the 1960s. It was known for its involvement with installation art, performance art and experimental art, and was best known for the Allan Kaprow assemblage performance of September 11–12, 1962 entitled "Words", believed to be the first allowing the audience to participate in an art gallery context. Kaprow "used two continual rolls of cloth with words from poems, newspapers, comic and telephone books" during which the audience were asked to "tear off the words, staple them together, write notes, even attack and hack them". Verbal fragments were pasted on the walls from floor to ceiling. In April 1963, Lima and Tony Towle gave their first public recital at the gallery.

Gabriel Barcia-Colombo,, is an American video artist, filmmaker best known for his innovative video sculpture installations. He explores themes of memory, identity, and human connection through a unique combination of video, photography, and video sculpture..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Museo Vostell Malpartida</span> Art museum in Malpartida de Cáceres, Spain

The Museo Vostell Malpartida in the Spanish village Malpartida de Cáceres west of the provincial capital Cáceres in the Autonomous Community of Extremadura is dedicated to the work of the German painter, sculptor, Fluxus and Happening artist Wolf Vostell. The museum is under the artistic direction of Mercedes Vostell and under the general direction of José Antonio Agúndez García. The Museo Vostell Malpartida was founded by Wolf Vostell and Mercedes Vostell in 1976.

Kim Haemin is a media artist currently living and working in Seoul, South Korea. One of the only Korean artists who has remained active in media art from the late 1980s to the present, Kim has consistently pursued video installations that bridge experience of virtuality and physical reality, often in ways that, according to the art theorist Min Huijeong, stood outside contemporaneous conceptions of video as a purely imaginary or cognitive realm.

<i>The More, The Better</i> Video sculpture

The More, the Better, alternatively referred to as Dadaikseon (Korean: 다다익선), is a video sculpture created by Nam June Paik for the purpose of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art during the 1988 Summer Olympics. The sculpture consists of a tower measuring 8.5 meters in height and 11 meters in diameter, adorned entirely with an impressive arrangement of 1,003 cathode ray tube (CRT) television monitors. The work still stands in the rotunda of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

References

  1. "video sculpture - Google Search". Google.com. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  2. 1 2 Yoshimoto, Midori (2005). Into Performance. pp. 191–3. ISBN   9780813535210 . Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  3. Jones, Brett (15 November 2012). "What is projection mapping?". Projection-mapping.org. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  4. "Media Art Net - Vostell, Wolf: Television Décollage". Medienkunstnetz.de. 2 January 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  5. "Dictionary Terms—Part II: Video". Project Muse. Retrieved 2008-08-06.
  6. Vogel, Carol (2008-01-04). "Finalists Named for Hugo Boss Prize". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  7. Ivry, Sara (2008-01-04). "ACQUISITIONS; Whether Turtle or Motherwell, There's More Than Meets the Eye". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-08-11.
  8. Hughes, Robert (1972-12-18). "The Decline and Fall of the Avant-Garde (page 3)". Time . Time, Inc. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012.