The art of multimedia: the stunning facets of video art

Media art is a technically and methodologically extremely hybrid form of art that is intensively developing along with the evolution of technology.

Media art includes several genres that differ depending on the type of technology used and the form of works presentation: video art, sound art, media installation (sometimes also media sculpture), media performance and many others.

Video artworks, thanks to video technology development, continue its attempts to leave the image out of the frame. In contrast to film, the video combines image and sound, connects them, shows reality more holistic than a movie camera.

Artists have always wanted to push the boundaries. In the 1960s, a portable video camera appeared, and Sony provided it free of charge to Andy Warhol and Nam June Pike for experimentation. This event inspired artists incredibly, starting a new era in video art.

 In America in the 1960s, Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, Steina and Woody Vasulka filmed alternative culture in the street or in the studio. Later, the same trend appeared in Central and Eastern Europe. A wonderful project “100 best works of video art of Central and Eastern Europe” clearly demonstrated that the development of video art was a phasic process that began with escaping from reality with the help of avant-garde alternative culture. The video allowed preserving the experiments of that time, which took place both in the theater and in music. When the alternative part faded into the background, video art went a different way, showing the world around sometimes as dissonant, sometimes harmonic.

Video art is a great opportunity to express in different ways how a person sees and perceives the world around. Video art gives you the possibility to show it at 360 degrees. We can see through space and the video camera makes it possible to convey this. Video as technology allows you to get closer to a person, deepening the knowledge of the psychology of human relationships. Filmmakers were carried away by video technology, trying, probing, and experimenting, shooting movies in unusual locations or showing complex psychological states. Lars von Trier shot the film "Idiot" on a video camera because simply shooting it with a movie camera was not enough for the director.

One of the most fascinating video artists working today is Gillian Wearing whose videos investigate dynamics and voyeurism in everyday life. Douglas Gordon covers dualities such as good and evil, confession and deception in his video works. Pipilotti Rist creates video installations and one of his best is Worry Will Vanish Horizon, a kaleidoscopic and disorienting journey inside the human body.

In video art, artists treat technology not only as a means of expression, but they are also actively using it as opposed to those, who simply create effects with it. The video is not just a technology for effects, it is a new art language that expresses the thoughts of the artist and decodes our space. Thus, a poetization of language and space and expansion in different directions are the main concepts in video art.

“Everything is cross-platform now. That's part of the reality that we live in - a multifaceted, multimedia world - and I'm delighted to be a part of that.” Robert J. Sawyer