On Video Installation Art

       Video installation art seems to be less about the video and more about the feeling and impact it has on the viewer. It focuses on the personal and physical experience of the viewer at that exact moment they view the art. So it is not only the subject of the video but the atmosphere and environment around it, it is as if the viewer enters another world completely. This is also why installation video art is not something easily found on the internet, and why it is isolated by changing technology. For example, a video installation art piece, if it were to be found on the internet and watched on a phone while the viewer rides a bus it loses all of its impact and the "viewer becomes the performer" aspect. In his Tijuana Projection, Kryzsztof Wodiczko united the video with the physical space and in this interview explains how he merges the skin of the person with the skin of the building.

       Throughout the chapter Rush shows how video installation art arises with the artists and general public's political preoccupations with surveillance and personal privacy. This is interesting because the role of video and television is reversed, and it is used to watch instead of to be watched and the artists tried to incorporate the viewers image into the piece. Video installation art evolved towards the tendency of the artists projecting themselves in their pieces with the ever-recurring themes of perception of the self and of time, the mind, human body, sexuality, and personal identity. One of the few pieces in this genre that is represented semi effectively though a youtube video clip is Pipilotti Rist's "Ever is Over All" because the video of her installation tries to simulate the perspective of the original viewer.
       Lastly, I want to highlight this quote which, I thought I strongly disagreed with, but the more times I read it I am changing my mind. "What separates the media artist, as defined here, from the commercial filmmaker is the intention behind the work and the intensely personal (some might say private) nature of the work which excludes it from mass consumption. In order to remain viable, video artists will have to maintain their unique connection to video as an art of 'real time' and not try to mimic the illusion of cinema." I understand video installation art as an alternative cinema which is not a group experience but a one to one connection with the artist.