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.