Origins of Video Response

In this reading, one of the main ideas being established is that video as an art created a new form of art, obviously. But what’s important is that as a new art form, video had no previous art history. This was one of the main attractions artists had to this new medium was that it allowed artists to achieve things that had never been done before, which, as an artist, one seeks to create new things that haven’t been done before. These new advances in art through video allowed artists’ creations to expand indefinitely. This indefinite expansion is aided by another idea that this reading pointed out, and that is the fact that video is highly dependent on technological advances.

When video was first introduced it was difficult for the average person to take advantage of it due to video equipment being very expensive as well as requiring great knowledge to operate the equipment. As technology advanced, so did the acquirability and usability of the equipment. As mentioned in the reading, Nan June Paik liked to state that “TV as been attacking us all our lives – now we can attack it back”.

Looking at modern day video, we can see that it is even easier to produce video as most everyone has access to video cameras with their phones, as well as the Internet. This has allowed anyone to produce video and share it with the world. With the advent of Youtube and Vine, we see videos everyday that normal people created. Whether you call these videos art or not is subjective, as some of them can be very good while others can be very bad. Which brings me to my final point. The reading pointed out that because video is not necessarily written down, video not considered significant is unlikely to be preserved. However, when looking at today’s storage technology, as well as social media, we can see that video is in fact being stored and will likely remain. Once a video becomes viral on the Internet, people continue referencing it and bringing it back into light.

Watching this video, created by Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini who focuses on documentary and portrait photography, shows us how powerful video ca be, yet at the same time, how subjective video can be. It is likely that the shots shown in this video were set up to capture this young boy, forced into war, in a destroyed city so that the viewer sees only what Sebastiano wanted them to see. The Youtube description seems to say that the boy has little invovement in actually fighting, but rather he is merely their helper. However, when viewing the video, one gets the idea that Ahmed is very active in fighting.