Video and Intermedia Response, Ruairi

Wading through this particularly conceptual response of Fosters, I found myself neck deep in uncharted territory. However one thing that crossed my mind was his comparison to the human nervous system. The idea that we can appreciate the function of something without needing to know how it works internally. I mean we've all driven a car but aside from one pedal for go and another for stop, very few know how internal combustion helps us drive along. It's an interesting concept seeing as we're a curious species at heart. Surely we would love to know how everything works, that when we watch video we would try to pick apart each scene to understand it more. How did this happen and where did that come from? etc. But later in the article Foster leaps to "What is art?". Now I'm not going to blow everyone away with a well researched answer, but the link I have come up with from this article is as follows. It wouldn't be art if we knew how it worked. (sticking with my driving idea) For those who see driving as an art, the scene of a race car caressing each apex and accelerating through to the chicane ahead at the Monaco Grand Prix, the thrill of the speed, the roar of the crowd, the thunder of the engines all creating this fanatical atmosphere. If we knew the calculation of every dip and turn, the mathematics behind each acceleration and brake, it surely would not be as much of a spectacle. I think once you know how it works, the passion or imagination behind it vanishes. So applying this idea to video as art for every angle and each frame. Surely diagnosing and planning should be artistic suicide? I think that's what sets video apart. It's not suicide it's necessary. It's a medium where flair and feel alone are not enough to create something worthwhile. You need that structure and precision to create whatever "art" it may be.

As for the link between Multimedia and Intermedia, would it be wrong for me to think that it was simply a distinction? That multimedia has different levels at different mediums, while intermedia involves an overlap and interaction between different mediums on more than just a physical level? I suppose it is sort of like daydreaming. We don't daydream in just one medium. We dream in sound and sight and touch, sometimes so vividly that we can taste and smell. All of which happens organically, we don't need to take the image and then layer the sound on, it just happens. So with some ambient sound and a touch of nostalgia I've found a group of sounds created by David Greenberger that resembles the path of a daydream and inner musings.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/duplex.html