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'an de experimentele film Fifth International Experimental Film Competition
Video Z Peter Weibel
VIDEOLOGY
In the last decade the avantgardefilm, was occupied with structural questions
of the organisation and sequence of signs, the formal syntax of the
calculus film, and how this filmic syntax generates meaning. By investigating
possible interpretations of images the filmmakers have enlarged
the codes of cinematography, but not the calculus . Still they have
introduced some transitions to stills (fotography) and video .
What are now the videologic constants of the calculus video that seems to
be a broader one as film, if any analogy is useful ? I would propose five
features that construct the video system (VT videotapes, TV television,
VTR videotape recording) formally, by which new relations and new
works could be discovered and produced : synthetic, transformation,
selfreference, instant time, box-character .
The synthetic generation of the image by an electronic machine (which
needs not to picture the existing world) and the transformation possibilities
of the signs'are therefore the foremost field of the psychedelic/
surrealistic videofreak, but oleo the field of future rigorous formal
investigation of colour, time, space . For the cool user of the new dope
(tv and vt are drugs as all time machines) is the feedback possibly the
most interesting, which has two sides, the instant time = bimultancity
(that you can see what happens as reality as the same time as picture)
and the selfreference (that,objecto can be selfreferred in time ; selfreference
is a tense form of being) . Because of its selfreforence and
its time element (live or delayed time) video is specially suitnble for
live performances and actions . By box-character I just mean that machinecharacter
of video as time and space switch in a living room .
As time-space-machino video is therefore also very suitable for new concepts
of sculpture video sculptures and video installations .
In the classical representative art time played no role . But with film
and video as non-classical arts tinc started to emerge in the art object
(a classical artform like sculpture even got influenced by time and
became process art etc .) .-. If you see history as a kind of selfrcalisation
of man and art as a kind of selfdemonstration, then you can say that
r
video is the first mean in the history of art that has physicall~ realised
such a basic concept of western culture like selfreference (i .e . the basis
of consciousness) . Video is liko a new organ in the evolution of man,
it is the implementation of a mental structure into technical construct,
a shift of code, an enlargement of the code into its own basis .
Is it allowed to say that the classical cinematography grow to expanded
cinema (with all its now formal actions and projection systems) and
transformed with video etc from a projQction system to a general picture
processing and generating machine ?
.a Cln6rna"Quo Rovale do Belalaue Hot Knninifflik MaInico%h
25.12.1974/2.1.1975
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