I think the most important reason video has a high potential for intermedia is because it brings the concept of time to art. From what I read, it seems like intermedia is a medium to a reaction or an emotion that people feel, and thus it can be best presented in a medium that is most like us: video. As humans, life is not fixed or static like most art mediums such as photography or fine art. It is filled with sounds, smells, textures, tastes and most importantly, motion. We judge many things as "living" through the concept of motion, and we feel closer with things that move. Thus, video utilizes that real-life feeling and is more effective in transporting the viewer into the world the artist conceptualized.
Foster talks about Duchamp's "Fountain", a urinal that was signed "R.Mutt".
If I am reading the text correctly, I think Foster is saying the art piece ("Fountain") is not intermedia, but the urinal that sparked the intention to make this art piece is intermedia. Duchamp was part of an anti-art movement where artists questioned old definitions of art, and when he saw the urinal, it gave him the concept of making the "Fountain."
I feel like Forster never pinpoints the exact reason why video serves as intermedia; he just mentions the existence of such a relationship. Junne's comment about the temporality of video I believe more accurately does so. Foster mentions "motorizing ideas" and having a "vehicle through which a variety of 'generic intentions' can be processed, either consecutively, serially, or simultaneously," and, I'm forced to ask: why then, did Foster not emphasize the temporality of video as the crux/ the means of intermedia? For a medium to serve as a vehicle, there is absolutely no way to do so without the presence of time. Why not talk about how no other medium posseses this intrinsic aspect, instead of writing bias on Duchamp's fountain or relating video to the human being's nervous system-an example which I still don't fully understand. Foster "hates" on Duchamps fountain by confining it to a realm between art and plumbing, but he concludes by praising advanced video for being able to ask the age old question "is it art?" Without Duchamp, Foster possibly wouldn't even be able to ask such a question, or question new mediums, period.
ReplyDelete