The Medium Is is a collection of works from the 1970’s, which explore the instantaneity of video and its presentations through unique techniques. Lynda Benglis’ Now muddles the ideas of “live recording” and pre-recorded material. In the 12 minute video from 1973 the words “now,” “start recording,” “do you wish to direct me?” repeat constantly while a woman’s face is visible facing itself in a colored background. It is unclear what is going on or how the scene is shot; it seems as if there is a monitor behind the woman who is showing pre-recorded material of the same woman doing similar actions and saying the same words. The action of the “live” woman right in front of the camera do not match up with the actions on the screen—they are the same but do not occur simultaneously, meaning the live woman is copying what is happening on the screen. So it is unclear what is live and what is pre-recorded.
Richard Serra’s Boomerang was shown in which, as we’ve seen, Nancy Holt has headphones on and can hear her voice after she speaks her words, not simultaneously. It was almost painful to watch her deteriorate again as she begins to slow down and feel like she has lost control over herself. At the end of the video, right as Nancy is at her final breaking point, she reveals her thoughts on the pollution of TV: it “cuts [us] off from reality as we usually experience it.” This reminds me of Verilio’s argument about ecological pollution by video technology and that it causes a hybrid man, a transhuman, to emerge who neither roams the world in a journey or is sedentary in an urban environment; this new man experiences the world, and motion through immobile devices such as TV without having to actually move himself. Thus, our reality, real time is completely different than of the people who existed before TV, and media was invented. Furthermore, just like this video experiment caused Nancy to break down, maybe TV is slowly doing the same thing to our senses and creativity.
Two Faces by Hermine Freed was a really interesting eight minute video from 1972 in which a prerecorded image of the artist was flipped and was courting her own identity. It began with two heads facing each other (it looked very real) and they were moving into each other and back—emerging from within each other. Then they began to do other symmetric movements, and later they began tongue playing and kissing. I had to remind myself that it was all just one person playing with mirrors, images and video, not two identical women. Although the artist has a doubled image in the video, she herself seems very alone because in reality she is touching her mirror image; her actions are between herself—the reality, and the mirrored double. However, I had some trouble figuring out the overall theme or point of the video, I just really enjoyed the artist’s creativity in using and video technology.
Dan Graham presented a 23 minute video called Performer/Audience/Mirror that dealt with just that—a performer, the audience, and the mirror. In it a man walked into a room with a mirror in the back and a group of people sitting on the floor facing the mirror. The man began talking about his position, posture, and balance; he described his movement by describing every specific action of every part of his body. It was interesting to think about if he was acting out what he was saying or if he was describing what he was doing. Nevertheless, he kept switching from facing the audience to facing the mirror and from describing himself to describing the audience. People began looking at themselves in the mirror and began to look like a unit, a collective, not individuals. I think what the video might have been trying to show is people’s fixation with TV. As the audience kept listening to the man speak, they looked into the mirror at themselves so the mirror became the screen and the audience became a unifying image. Also, everything the man was commentating on was happening right there and then, his speech was not premeditated; the people’s reactions, movements, and expressions provided him with ideas as a sort of feedback loop—he spoke, they reacted, and then he spoke again based on their reactions. In turn, this mirrors how TV and the media work showing that the audience (us) is their inspiration and consumer.
The last video by Peter Campus called Three Transitions was my favorite because of its special effects. He creates three self-portraits with technological aspects and then destroys them. In the last scene a hand is holding a piece of paper with the image of Peter on it and then it is set it on fire. As the paper burns the image disappears with it. It raised the question of where do these videos go after they are shown? It is as if the people shown on TV disappear, burn away when their purpose is finished and the video is shot, and shown. Moreover, it reminded me of Verilio who argues that the nomad is dissipating because the journey is no longer necessary for the intake of information; thus, it is needless to go in search of information because it is provided through the transapperant horizon. This video might hint at the fact that as quickly as we gain information, as quickly we can lose it because of our reliance on machines. The video image of Peter was destroyed by nature, by fire; this shows the dominance of nature over technology because in the end, fire can destroy anything. If we continue to rely on optoelectronics we will forget how it is to be in motion on a trajectory and search for information the “old” way.
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