Video art: Creativity and Technology

Gilles Charalambos: It is art by, with and through video. It is the electronic art par excellence. It is the one that has synthesized all the electronic arts, and these converge in the video because it is integrative, expansive, it is audiovisual plastically and rhythmically and can be interactive as open art.

TV&V: How has technology influenced the development of this artistic proposal?

G.CH.: Technology has been key, but at the same time it has been somewhat negative because of its obsolescence. At no time in history has an art suffered from so many changes in the formal treatments of the image and what was done a few years ago is now different. That is, it is made different or better done, in such a way that the above becomes obsolete. So there is a rather strange progression that produces an effect of eternal return, of eternal youth and that, finally, is positive because it is mainly young people who usually work in Video Art and they are just amazed, they just discover it.

G.CH.: Of course, at the formal level; but Video Art, as a practice of technology has also helped it to feed back and progress. For example, video artists in the 70's were the creators of video synthesizers. Today they are still experimenters because there is an open field for artists that allows them to discover and explore with technology, and those fields are taken up and assimilated by technologies to recreate other formal possibilities.

G.CH.: In the digital it was the video artists who as pioneers with their exploration made possible the discovery of certain effects and video treatments. I refer, to give a few examples, to morphing, that progressive change of images through the computer or the slice cam, those simultaneous shots with cameras that are then recomposed multi-angularly; many special treatments of image and sound were also explored, created or invented for the first time by video artists. But this has always happened in the history of art with different techniques or materials.

TV&V: How does this creative dimension of man relate to the development of a technology like video?

G.CH.: At this time, the development tends to a new communicative art, although much of the Video art remains since the sixties an avant-garde art, that is, experimental and strongly personal, it has always tended in front of the television to a practice of intercommunicative type that can become massive, so video has had every possibility for it, perhaps like no art before.

G.CH.: In the beginning, Video Art was fed by artists who came from different areas, for example experimental music, artistic cinema and, of course, the plastic arts. At the moment many video artists are dedicated practitioners or come from specialized video trainings. They know much more than previous generations, so that allows better and greater possibilities especially in terms of complex technological management.

The development of Video Art, conceptually clear, has gone through constant changes. What was once anti-television, very politicized or utopian, as it was in the sixties, at this time is very common and much more open. Nowadays many people can access a simple video equipment to be able to make their own works, so today it can be more personal, multiple and is more directed towards the intercommunicative.

G.CH.: The interactive is reaching a dimension that is no longer only that of the simple selection of functions or navigations in the programs; Thepossible changes or participatory creations are very important to understand the interactive and these types of changes also occur at the physical level, when they are provoked in these instances is when performance can appear, when actions happen as changes.

G.CH.: In full bloom, since although it suffered for a long time from isolation and ignorance by the plastic artistic context mainly, by museums, galleries and others, today it already has greater reception and recognition. On the other hand, Video Art is not commercial, anyone can make copies, it is immaterial, it has never enjoyed economic exchange and that in the end has been a possibility of independenceas well; but I want to say that right now you may be going through a period of supremacy in contemporary Latin American arts. Artists are also coming together through the internet and festivals, Latin American artists themselves produce collectivizing works, works that are much more in contact with Latin American cultures, so this manifestation is not presented only in quantity but in qualities; since there are many young artists with a more precise training, Video Art has entered the academy; It dominates, in addition, in the interests and intentions of the new artists, at this moment it is common to find it with this strong international presence.

TV&V: How do other countries see Latin America in the field of Video Art?

G.CH.: Very well, there is a renewed interest since exoticism, the difference in looks and a certain fatigue of European-North American centralization have caused another consideration towards Latin America, so there are many festivals everywhere that dedicate their programs to the exhibition of similar works. There is a very strong reception, there are even satellite TV channels that dedicate spaces to Latin American works.

G.CH.: Yes, for several years like the famous Van Gogh TV and so many other pirate television. But recently ARS TV broadcasts via satellite by Eutelsat, global, produced from Italy (www.biennaleartetv.net).

TV&V: How does Video Art participate in the new rise of the internet?