"Television, Furniture, and Sculpture: The Room with an American View" by Vitto Acconci AND "Phototropic" by Tony Ourselor

This reading starts off with an analogy relating the television to a fishbowl, pointing out how they are a world within a world. The TV makes faces on screen roughly the same size as the viewer in real life which is contrary to a movie in the theater which is roughly 15 times life-sized. It also connects the entire country by having the same programs broadcasted in one location as another. It relates furniture to sculpture and in turn television to furniture. The television viewers are like producers, deciding what should be on at any given time.

Television is a working sculpture that nearly every household in the country possesses. They are microcosms that exist in our homes that are windows into other worlds and other parts of our world. It connects us as a people and is one of the most high tech devices that is in the home.

Q: How has the field of sculpture advanced since the television has been introduced into it?

“Video in Relation to Architecture” by Dan Graham

The writing starts off discussing the impact that television had on the family unit in the 1950s and how they saw it as a form of escapism from their daily lives. TV also held an unrealistic mirror to the family, showing them a group of people similar to themselves but with very different lives. Programs began showing up on the television that demonstrated themes of the nuclear family being pulled apart. As they began to build lavish public places they decided to keep them under surveillance. Video was used as signs, mirrors, and windows.

TV was promoted as a commodity for every need. It began popping up in every aspect of life. Every family had one and their purpose began evolving. They were used as a way of escape, for surveillance, advertisement, and as a mirror to the public.

Q: Where would the field of video art be if the TV had never blown up in popularity the way that it had?

"The Cultural Logic of Video" by Maureen Turim

The essay starts out questioning the relationship of cultural forms and their "logic" or functioning and goes on to ask what cultural logic does an artistic practice embody today. The logic can be presented as an active figure or passively, they can both be equally seductive but formalists often deny either an active or passive relationship with artwork. It discusses postmodernism and Lyotard who defined the ideas of legitimation and delegitmation. Lyotard strategically updates and reworks an analysis of avant-gardes and of the sublime. The reading moves on to David Antin and his views on video. He was discussing it in its early stages and said that it was in a "pleasantly shabby technical state" although later it has become much more refined. It mentions that in terms of video the singular element of psychoanalysis has been narcissism, citing Krauss and her idea of the camera and monitor as electronic mirrors. The essay states justifications for both sides of the question it introduced at the beginning.

Yet again we are introduced to this view of video being a narcissistic medium and again I'd be inclined to agree. Video is very much an exploration of self, either through the viewing of another individual or yourself through a live feed. With cameras and monitors acting as mirrors it is easy to see the connection.


A question that might come about from this reading might be how do you feel your personal video work fits into the active or passive logic debate introduced by Turim?

"Performance, Video, and Trouble in the Home" by Kathy O'Dell

The article starts by describing the popular 1950s television show "The Honeymooners"as performance art. It goes on to justify the statement by referencing the steps it made in redefining gender roles within the bounds of marriage. The show was also very performative in that it was it dealt heavily with the idea of the body, from the home structure to the actual physical qualities of the main character. The body later became one of the main focal points in not only performance but also video art. It says that identification is a multilevel process that involves both the viewer and the viewed. It mentions that "I" is very subjective and differs from person to person and cites artists such as Dan Graham who used this ideology in their works. O'Dell argues that performance art often links us to our home environments due to its importance on the human body which referenced the domestic site.

The idea of a mask is brought up and its significance to the idea of self identification. The types of masks have changed over time, from the medieval caricature masks to the modern day masks that are primarily to disguise identity, specifically recalling Joan Jonas's "Vertical Roll" where she wears a translucent mask at times in order to hide her real appearance only to reveal it later pointing out the unrealistic qualities of the mask.

Obviously the idea of the mask is very fascinating to me. The presence of this object that both reflects the features of the human face as well as augmenting it at the same time is a very powerful tool. It can disguise identity, highlight a quality, be a caricature to emphasize uniqueness, etc. I think that it is a relatively untapped area of video art. With the exception of a few famous artists like Jonas, masks have not staked a big claim in video art which is very surprising to me since it is a medium that is so heavy on the self and identity.

A question I would pose is what are some other ways that masks could be introduced into the field to further utilize their meaning?

Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism by Krauss

The reading starts out discussing the Vito Acconcio video piece entitled "Centers". In it, Acconci used a video monitor as a mirror and points at it. The viewer is placed inside of the eyes of Acconci pointing back at himself. This brings up the idea of video art being based on narcissism. It relates video to the idea of a spiritual medium; it reasons that there is both simultaneous reception and projection of an image and the human psyche is used as a conduit for this. Since video art has the ability to act as a mirror, the human body has often been used as the subject in the work and many times that human happens to be the artist. Through further examples of work from Acconci and from Holt, we are introduced to the idea of being surrounded by one's self. When the reading asks what is the difference between portraying yourself in a video piece and some other art form like a paint it answers, "Reflection, when it is a case of mirroring, is a move toward an external symmetry; while reflexiveness is a strategy to achieve a radical asymmetry, from within." I took this to mean that the act of reflection is a time-based idea that you can interact with and that reflectiveness is often a one-sided means of achieving a point of view. Three ideas that run counter to the main argument of the article are (1) criticizing the medium by exploiting it, (2) depictions of an assault on video to break out of its hold, and (3) installations that use it as a subspecies of other art forms. It wraps up with discussing Campus's art. It is described as a way for him to break down the world into smaller groups and reassert himself as the object.



This was an interesting reading. It allowed me to realize how the field could be categorized as narcissistic. Prior to reading I thought of narcissism with only a negative connotation in mind but I realized that through the guise of narcissism, self exploration is made possible. Through many of the works described in the article, artists were interacting with their own digital reflections: an exploration that would not have been able to occur had it not been through this relatively young medium.


Question: Reasoning that narcissism can be achieved in most, if not all, fields of art, why does video attract the most attention for it? Is it just the easiest medium to work with your own image or is there another reason?

Steina Reading

The reading starts with a short background on the artist Steina. She was a co-founder of The Kitchen, a place for electronic art in New York, in the 1970s. In her work she often manipulated electronic signal. She used multi-screen installations, videotapes, and computer generated arrangements of machines to prove the difference between video art and other fields.

Then the reading turns to Steina describing her work from her point of view. She discusses how she got her start in the field and the original techniques they had to use to edit film. Steina talked about her and Vasulka's work and installations. She made her audio match up with the images shown on tape and change as the visual content did. She didn't care for teaching but when she did she liked to break the molds the school had instilled in her students. Her art is mostly about communication with oneself. Finally she tells a story of a specific performance where she assigned 5 strings to 5 MIDI channels in order to manipulate an electronic signal.


This reading was a nice change of pace. It seemed to focus more on the history of an artist with first hand experience at the time of video's beginnings. It didn't go into technical language that was difficult to follow and it didn't try to convince us that the accepted history is incorrect. It was interesting and allowed you to relate to her work. There were numerous images that helped me to visualize her style. The most interesting part was at the end where she described the performance she did playing her instrument to create the artwork live in front of an audience.


Q: How did combining the two fields of music and video art compliment each other as in the case of her performative piece? Did having the two elements in the same piece handicap the final outcome or was it a success?

Didactic Video Reading

Didactic Video: Organizational Models of the Electronic Image starts out with a short bio of Woody Vasulka introducing him and giving a little back story. It then moves on to describe and document the Rutt/Etra video synthesizer that the authors of this article used to achieve video effects in their work. It then turns to discussing Vasulka's current work at the time of this publication. A specific work entitled "Time/Energy Structure of the Electronic Image" in the Statement section. The reading then displays images of the work and explains what is happening in each. It then goes on to discuss five lectures that Vasulka held at Media Study/Buffalo in 1976. He speaks about many facets of video art but at the end he comes to the conclusion that everyone uses the tools at their disposal to further learn about themselves.

This writing was rather lengthy and was full of information. At times it became difficult to focus because the of the incredibly detailed explanations and discussions of certain topics. The reading does everything from the giving a bio of the artist, to introducing technology, to details of the work, to the artist's personal beliefs about the field of video art.