by Stephen Partridge
Presented at CHart Conference, British Academy November 2005
Video: incorporeal, incorporated
‘… video has only a conceptual, and not formal connection to any... more
Video: incorporeal, incorporated
‘… video has only a conceptual, and not formal connection to any previous medium…formalist research into magnetic videotape seems absurd, whereas the development of film’s photographic essence was actually the foundation of experimental film,’
Continual and changing, convergence places us (artists and audience) in a post film and video era, where digital forms (mostly) replace, substitute, or simulate the previous media. It may be worth asking whether this matters and why in the process of convergence, video has been substituted, while film has been simulated by digital technologies. To answer this question, there is a need to re-examine the development of video as a medium and its incorporation into digital form, while making some comparisons with film, and in turn, its simulation within the digital domain.
The convergence or incorporation of video with digital forms could be considered as almost complete. This distinguishes it from the photographic and material-based medium of film – even though both film and video strive to produce one similar effect – a moving image as perceived by the human brain.
Video was from the start a bastard medium – and inherited a collection of conventions and properties from earlier media including radio, theatre, and, to a lesser extent film. Sean Cubitt has further argued that ‘video is neither an autonomous medium, free of all links with other forms of communication, nor entirely dependent on any one of them’ , and that video is not singular but a collection of ‘video media’. Central to this approach was the notion of intervention into a process, manipulation of the video plane in time or space. Some specificities that have disappeared along with their associated words and acronyms include: electrovision , videotaping, VT, VTR, video shooting, video editing, and video switching.
Within the digital domain video is further merged with the adoption of the filmic conventions of picture origination, editing, aspect ratios and cinematic presentation, but remains incorporeal.
It is significant to examine the convergence between film and video by focussing on the video projector, which provides prima facie evidence of the progress of convergence in its technological form and functionality. Furthermore the optical device used for originating the images is just as likely to be a film camera as a video camera - be it digital or analogue.
The idea that the video projector has merged film and video into a new unified electronic cinema isn’t totally exact. It is still relatively easy to distinguish film from video (and especially computer derived text and vector graphics) when they are projected. Other distinctions lie within the cinematographic: the much higher contrast ratio of film stock, and the human perception of the grain of film emulsions and the film weave within the camera. However, the video projector throws light upon a screen, just as a film projector and very unlike the television tube or LCD or plasma panel, all of which are a source of light. Compared to video, film technology (referring to the camera and projector) has remained relatively stable for eighty years, despite continual small refinements and variations of aspect ratio and gauge. Early digital devices produced for the television visual effects industry such as Quantel’s Harry (1986) incorporated effects that would simulate, and impose upon the video-plane; film grain and film weave to make the resultant product (usually a TV-ad or pop video) look as though it had been shot and produced on film. The works produced by the YBAs in the nineties and the explosion in video-based art-pieces since, also point to a lack of distinction of media. Setting aside these artists’ market-led need for separation and distancing from an experimental film or video history, the works directly reflect the process of convergence.
The new approach is non-materialist – in the sense that there is little interest or even recognition in the video media or the digital media employed. The approach is inherently post-film and post-video, and points towards a convergence within a digital time and space, without medium specificity or material condition.
The total history of cinema suggests a much wider suite of technologies than the film camera and projector. Video continues as a proxy within the digital domain, while film is flattered by digital simulation of its material qualities.
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