I think the immortal Hannibal said it best:
It’s just a warm and fuzzy feeling when things finally start to make some sense. For me, the difference between video art and artful video is clearer. The video we watched, “Video Art” hosted by David Beech, was very helpful in distinguishing the two. It seems that the most important factor is time. In “Video Art”, they refer to time in Video Art as being non-hierarchical. I interpret this as meaning that each moment in time is no more important than one before or after it. What we get is footage that occupies space. In film, time is manipulated and distorted so that it serves to tell a story. A good example of this is the video they showed of a man shooting at an apple on top of a woman’s head. The way it was recorded was from a solitary 3rd person perspective, with no edits. approached from a cinematic perspective, there certainly would have been multiple angles to emphasize the tension building in the murderous act. Think of a showdown in any western and how tense they make it. They certainly have artistic aspects about them, like composition, but there is another fundamental difference.
Film is for entertainment, and that’s not a bad thing, but video art aims to get different reactions. Bill Viola’s videos certainly aren’t entertaining, they’re long and arduous. They invoke the kind of reaction where you start to question the meaningless moments in your life. You may find out that most of the moments in your day are meaningless. If you now recognize and identify these moments, do they suddenly have worth? Another interesting point was made about how home movies only record significant events, which infers that the events in video art are insignificant. Repetition and performing of simple tasks are common themes in video art. If you ever watch tv or movies, you must suspend your disbelief. If you’ve ever seen the tv show HOUSE, it may seem strange that they deal with a life threatening illness every week. But I think we’re supposed to assume that we’re only watching the significant events that are occurring. Again, time is manipulated for our pleasure as most of us would not enjoy watching an episode of HOUSE on week where nothing significant happens (but not all of us).
So is entertainment the difference? I don’t that’s unnecessarily so, because video art can still be entertaining. I found Gary Hill’s pieces to be entertaining because they are intriguing. There are movies out there that are meant to be entertaining that are terrible. Nashat says she uses elements of cinema to lure the viewer in, though video art is far more engaging while cinema is passive. Gary Hill says video is like a kind of thinking out loud. So if someone is engaging you in dialog, you participate. Films can make you think, but will they make you respond?