The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184150663X ISBN 13: 9781841506630

Verlag: Intellect Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The Emergence of Video Processing Tools presents stories of the  development of early video tools and systems designed and built by  artists and technologists during the late 1960s and ’70s. Split over two volumes, the contributors examine the intersection of art and science and look at collaborations among inventors, designers, and artists trying to create new tools to  capture and manipulate images in revolutionary ways. The contributors  include “video pioneers,” who have been active  since the  emergence of the aesthetic, and technologists, who continue to design,  build, and hack media tools. The book also looks at contemporary toolmakers and the relationship between  these new tools and the past. Video and media production is a growing  area of interest in art and this collection will be an indispensable  guide to its origins and its  future.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kathy High is associate professor in the Department of Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an interdisciplinary artist working with science- and time-based arts. Sherry Miller Hocking is assistant director at the Experimental Television Center. Mona Jimenez is an associate professor and associate director in the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University.

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The Emergence of Video Processing Tools Volume 1

Television Becoming Unglued

By Kathy High, Sherry Miller Hocking, Mona Jimenez

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84150-663-0

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, xi, 
PREFACE, xiii, 
SECTION 1: HISTORIES, 
Introduction Kathy High, 1, 
Beginnings (with Artist Manifestos) Kathy High, 7, 
Mapping Video Art as Category, or an Archaeology of the Conceptualizations of Video Jeremy Culler, 33, 
Impulses – Tools Christiane Paul and Jack Toolin, 53, 
The Art-Style Computer-Processing System, 1974 Tom Sherman, 83, 
Machine Aesthetics Are Always Modern Tom Sherman, 89, 
Electronic Video Instruments and Public Sector Funding Mona Jimenez, 103, 
TV Lab: Image-making Tools Howard Weinberg, 131, 
The New Television workshop at wGBH, Boston John Minkowsky, 145, 
The National Center for Experiments in Television at KQED-TV, San Francisco John Minkowsky, 151, 
The Experimental Television Center: Advancing Alternative Production Resources, Artist Collectives and Electronic Video-Imaging Systems Jeremy Culler, 159, 
Interstitial Images: Histories, 167, 
SECTION 2: PEOPLE AND NETWORKS, 
Introduction Sherry Miller Hocking, 177, 
From Component Level: Interview with LoVid Michael Connor, 181, 
Memory Series – Phosphography in CRT 5", Mexico, 2005 Carolina Esparragoza, 195, 
The Rhetoric of Soft Tools Marisa Olson, 199, 
Jeremy Bailey and His 'Total Symbiotic Art System' Carolyn Tennant, 213, 
De-commodification of Artworks: Networked Fantasy of the open Timothy Murray, 223, 
Virtuosity as Creative Freedom Michael Century, 249, 
Distribution Religion Dan Sandin and Phil Morton, 263, 
A Toy for a Toy Ralph Hocking, 269, 
Woody Vasulka: Dialogue with the (Demons in the) Tool Lenka Dolanova with Woody Vasulka, 273, 
A Demo Tape on How to Play Video on a Violin Jean Gagnon, 309, 
Application to the Guggenheim Foundation, 1980 Ralph Hocking, 323, 
Thoughts on Collaboration: Art and Technology Sherry Miller Hocking, 329, 
Interstitial Images: People and Networks, 337, 
INDEX, Index: 1, 
COLOR PLATES, Color Section: 1, 

CHAPTER 1

SECTION 1

HISTORIES

Introduction

Kathy High

This first section of The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued offers a context for the historical moment when the building of custom tools began, and looks at concepts that were critical in the formative years of video art and remain resonant in twenty-first-century digital culture. The writings trace the social impacts, funding changes, and art-historical influences that contributed to the evolution of tool making, and the art produced by these machines. The section documents the history of a set of electronic art-making tools developed in the United States from the 1960s through the mid 1980s and looks at their effect on contemporary new media artists who today make machines and systems a crucial part of their art process – from analog-to-digital to signal-to-code. What aspects of a historical moment encourage this kind of inventiveness? What drives artists to seek custom-built instruments, and how are they used? What are the influences of cultural policy, technological innovation, and the sociopolitical environment on tool development and use?

The section opens with 'Beginnings (With Artist Manifestos)', an essay by Kathy High that looks at the lineage of radical concepts linking early twentieth-century art movements and those of the 1960s and 1970s: 'From what disciplines or movements did the artists come to this form of practice in the first few decades of video and tool development? How did the discourse develop about the aesthetic and conceptual qualities of artist works using electronic tools, in particular the association of custom tools to image processing?' Her essay is accompanied by a selection of artist manifestos describing working methods and an enthusiasm for the medium of video.

Jeremy Culler's essay, 'Mapping Video Art as Category, or an Archaeology of the Conceptualizations of Video', examines four areas of activity that characterized the context within which tool development occurred: alternative media centers and video collectives, galleries and museums, the published record, and academic institutions and conferences. How do early electronic tools or 'instruments' fit into the changing discourse about video art during its first few decades, as technology-dependent artists' works became part of institutional and gallery and museum systems?

In their essay, 'Impulses – Tools', curator Christiane Paul and artist/critic Jack Tool in place 1970s tool development in a broad continuum of impulses present within contemporary art practices. This essay offers comparisons of conceptual and structural frameworks within art from the 1970s to the current period, considering shifts in technology and other media processes: i.e., how artists use systems in addition to single tools, as instruments; develop custom interfaces and forms of interactivity; use real time media performance to process image/sound; trigger moving images and effects through external devices or signals; interrupt signal transmission and networks; and reverse engineer or 'hack'.

Tom Sherman's original text 'The Art-Style Computer-Processing System, 1974' lays out a clever conceptual and art-historical approach to tool use, equating synthesizer effects to various painterly art styles, such as Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, Impressionism, Photorealism, Action Painting and more. Following this is another article, 'Machine Aesthetics Are Always Modern', where Sherman offers comparisons of conceptual and structural artistic frameworks and philosophies, from early modernism to the current period, considering shifts in technology and other art and media processes as to how machines 'assist in codetermining and implementing aesthetic choices'. Looking at the different machine functions (and video functions), Sherman parses the ways the usage of machines affects aesthetic outcomes, building a vocabulary of aesthetic choices based on amplitude, parallelism, random elements, juxtaposition, distortion and more.

In her essay, 'Electronic Video Instruments and Public Sector Funding', Mona Jimenez finds that despite the antiestablishment and anti-television impulses of many tool designers and users, they relied heavily upon resources made possible by educational and public television. This essay reveals the institutional and funding structures that supported custom tool development and artist access to electronic tools in the 1970s and 1980s: arts organizations, public television labs, universities, arts councils and foundations. In addition, the chapter explores the relationship between tool development and the ideals prevalent in the first decades of media arts, such as the decentralization and 'democratization' of access, production and distribution, and the oppositional stance of many video experimenters to telecommunications and broadcast television.

The focus is on organizations in the northeastern United States, but the essay also includes activities occurring in the Midwest and the San Francisco Bay Area. Early groups include public television TV Labs, the University of Chicago – Circle Campus and the Art Institute of Chicago; the Electron Movers in Rhode Island; and in New York State, the Center for Media Study/Buffalo and the Experimental...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Intellect Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 184150663X
• ISBN 13: 9781841506630
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 638
• Herausgeber: High Kathy, Hocking Sherry Miller, Jimenez Mona
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar