Video as Communication or Art? Response to "Video and Intermedia"

Is video an art that communicates, or a form of aestheticized communication? That’s the question raised at the end of Video and Intermedia, and a launch pad for lengthy discussions on the murky nature of art. The implied question within a question is whether the state of “being art” is an innate characteristic or one that can be bestowed. There’s no easy answer, if any at all. Some works are universally considered “art” (The Mona Lisa), while others tend to fall exclusively within “communication” (a telephone call). But what about video? On the one hand, collecting video footage is fundamentally an artistic process. The cameraman chooses where to point the camera, what to capture, and how to edit the footage. Shrewd videographers will take into account lighting, framing, sound quality, and a whole host of audiovisual components before recording. This element of selection introduces creativity into the video-making process, and thus an element of art.

That said, it’s important to note that Foster distinguishes video from film and TV. He seems to be deemphasizing cinematic devices to focus on the idea that video's main purpose is to capture something candidly and share it with an audience. This leads to the idea of video as predominantly a form of communication and could explain one of the key differences between video and past artistic tools. A brush, if not picked up, is useless and inanimate. It requires the artist's guidance every step of the way. Video, on the other hand, requires only that the apparatus be turned on. From there, the process is the same for any and every person who uses a camcorder. The discrepancies lie in the subjects of the video and not the video itself, and in this way video is not unlike a telephone or a wiretap. Video arguably separates artist from subject more than any previous forms of art, effectively "communicating" its subject relatively free of the artist's creative influences.

With video, it’s hard to distinguish between “art” and “communication.” The two are, after all, not mutually exclusive categories, and while it’s interesting to ponder their relationship, I don’t believe we need a definite answer. It’s precisely this tension between personal statement and indexical truth that makes the medium so dynamic and compelling.  

The following is an interesting sound clip I found on Ubuweb: http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/electronic_panorama/Electronic-Panorama_01-101_Malec_Spot.mp3

Jonah Jeng