Response to "Video and Intermedia..."

The definition of intermedia, as described by Stephen Foster in this reading is a bit hazy to me, but I think Junne summed it up pretty neatly in her response. She says "we judge many things as 'living' through the concept of motion, and we feel closer with things that move." I think that is really interesting, and probably really true. The reason video is named as a primary example of intermedia. Foster writes that "video fluctuates because it hasn't stabilized... into cinematic conventions" (p. 64), the word "stabilized" pointing out, I think, the most notable aspect of video. Unlike, say paintings or photography, a video is always moving and the things within it are kind of "alive," living a life through their recorded images. Movements and prolonged moments (as opposed to photographic instants) are captured in video, so it isn't much of a surprise that, compared to other art forms, we consider it "living." 

Foster notes an artist, Hans Breder, who worked with "intermedia." Looking up some of his art, I found he worked a lot with mirrored surfaces. For instance, in Breder's Body/Sculpture (Ana), La Ventosa (1973), he attempts to combines photography, sculpture, and movement. Before the photograph was taken the "sculpture" (the legs that are seemingly unattached to the rest of a body) lie still in the moving water, reflected around it and in the mirror. The mirror also produces an illusion of a different shape, a sort of many-legged creature, through it's reflection of the "real' legs. Like video and other intermedia, Breder's work employs a combination of "reality" with something beyond, something unreal to create an artistic piece. Body/Sculpture (Ana), La Ventosa [the photo embed thing wasn't working]

When looking up more information about the term "intermedia" I found a quote by artist Dick Higgins who explained that "part of the reason that Duchamp's objects are fascinating while Picasso's voice is fading is that the Duchamp pieces are truly between media, between sculpture and something else, while a Picasso is readily classifiable as a painted ornament." Foster notes Duchamp's "The Fountain" possibly because of this, it's unique place between being a sculpture and - not. Duchamp didn't make it, but he took it from the real world and is now calling it art. In a similar way one could say that video does a similar thing, and so therefore isn't as easily categorized like a painting. When you film something it is real, and it's actually happening - it's "part of the real world." Then when you name it art, or performance, it takes on another quality that is slightly unreal. It is not a "video" or "painting" or "sculpture," but rather just "media" made from anything in the world around us.