October 11 - VIDEO SHOR SGD) ‘10809 0q2W eAcN HHAOLLLM AN — COLLEGE ART GALLERY IDS eI Seta Gi Experiments in Art & Technology CURATORS’ STATEMENTS Video is a medium similar to skin. It has a certain invisibility, almost transparency in our daily lives. Our attention is brought to the fact of its existance with new developments in the technology or when the surface gets scarred (interrupted) and then often, like our largest organ, we forget its materiality. This exhibit is a type of material remembering both of the origins of video as an art medium and as an exploration of present investigations. Black Box Video Shorts(+) brings together multiple forms of video with diverse, formal and conceptual concerns. This exhibit does not aim at a comprehensive overview of the medium (that would require many more years of collecting artists’ work and securing a space similar to a stadium in scale!) This exhibit does aim towards building a framework with which to begin asking questions about the history of the medium and it’s current formations. There are consistancies in artists’ investigations throughout the history of video art whether it is single channel, video installation, video performance or quicktime: 1) Decentering video’s relationship to television 2) exploring new forms of narrative, sound- scapes, documentary, and the performative 3) creating new relationships of time and space. These consistencies are framed by a distinctive feature of the medium: IMMEDIACY. Videos’ immediate feedback qualities have compelled artists to inquire in ways no other technological time-based has allowed. Black Box Video Shorts(+) also highlights current stu- dent work created in the Art Department at TCNJ. Students have been working with Adobe Premiere in the Computer Graphics department in a course aimed at multi- media production (Computer Graphics III). This last semester, students experienced a class soley devoted to digital video production (Digital Media). Embracing this medium enthusiastically, they exlpored aesthetic, polit- jcal and personal questions. Their finesse with the medium demonstrates how easily video becomes their sec- ond skin. My thanks to all the artists in the show with special appreciation to Sherry Miller Hocking from the Experimental Television Center (ETC), Billy Kluver from Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) and George Fifield from The DeCordova Museum. Anita Allyn Assistant Professor of Art Sue Wrbi This show originated with the idea that we would inves- tigate, research, discover, demonstrate, display, explore, and celebrate the range of art and artists called video art. This has proved to be a larger under- taking than we had anticipated; everywhere we turned, another artist or aspect of video art popped up. There is so much video, that in assembling this show, intended to be a representative sampling of the state of video art, we were unable to exhibit even the tip of the iceberg. The range in the video arts is so vast that it has been difficult to include representative samples of all areas. At the College Art Association conference in New York last February, as we were getting into the swing of organizing this show, several panels addressed the his- tory of video and alternative art forms, attempting to assess their ranges and impact. One of these panels asked if black box video (an expression used to refer to linear video shown on a monitor) was at a dead end. It seems clear to us, in bringing together the artists and works in this show, that it is not over, but rather in the complex and chaotic process of reinventing itself. At the core of this show is black box video, yet along with it we have included a constellation of other approaches to video. Video art started when the technologies of television and video recording intersected the creative needs of artists. Even as the technology was being developed, artists were inextricably involved in experimentation and formation of its standards. This process predated the Paik/Abe video synthesizers of the 60's and 70's and continues into the present with the collaboration of artistic and technological developments in digital video, interactivity, and streaming media. Engineers and computers have had a major influence on what video and its artists have been able to accomplish, but at the same time, video artists and their work have shaped the evolution of the technology. Video art can be linear, narrative, interactive, abstract, poetic, comic, harsh, fragmented, modular and immersive. It can be distributed via broadcast, cable cast, narrow cast, point to point, local networks, the Internet, video tape, laser disc, CD-ROM, DVD, or any of a myriad digital and analog media. Video art has been shown in theaters and auditoriums, living rooms, muse- ums, on the street, in store fronts, and galleries. It has been crazily experimental and calmly classical, stubbornly individual and carefully corporate. The range of artistic interest, approach, and intent is vast - a catalog of human curiosity and expression with corre- sponding social pressures and cultural constructs. One major polarity has been the use of video as a documen- tary medium; another is the impulse to tell stories or to explore and create along visual and aural themes. The tension between these two poles created an axis along which the show has been formed. I hope you enjoy it; I would be surprised if you don't find something thought provoking. Philip Sanders Assistant Professor of Art BLANK GENERATION Amos Poe INSTALLATIONS: Pipilotti Rist, Sip My Ocean Bonnie Mitchell, interactive installation ANTI-CREDD1 Monty Cantsin COMPUTER BASED VIDEO Wolfgang Staehle TCNJS Students WwW. sites Douglas Davis Rebecca Ross, Boarding Experimental Television Center