Antin - VVVVVVideo

David Antin shares his thoughts of video, artistic video, and television. He begins his writing with talking about the early age of video and also about how "discourse has already arisen to greet [video]." The first of these discourses deals more with a discussion on technology on society (McLuhan) and the second deals with "the issues that pass for 'formalism' in the art world..." This too discourses seemed to be early thoughts on video, and it would be interesting to see what these discourses would evolve into in today's world. With such advances in technology and availability, I wonder if these opinions on video would still be as they are now.

With the "age" of this article other ideas are also brought to mind. Antin talks about how video and television was mainly reserved for those with money. The new technology, as he puts it, "...was priced out of the reach of anything but corporate ownership." This could, at that time, severely limit the artistic value of video. If only corporations and those with a large amount of money were able to have access to this new and budding technology, an artist was more then likely not going to have the opportunity to explore new advances with it. But, once again, the idea of the new age that we live in today comes to mind. Though he talks about artists over coming the short comings of the new video technology at the time, I wonder what he would write about today's culture in regards to art and video.

Video cameras are becoming more and more available to the consumer with every passing day. Cameras can be found in the form of camcorders, tiny devices such as "flip" video recorders, and even on something as small as a person's phone. The option of video is quickly becoming an easy to use resource. Where once people did not have access to even the most simple or video recorders, they now have easy access to cameras that are leagues above those that were hard to get to a couple of years ago. This also means that video is available to artists as well. And that can be seen everywhere. More and more "artistic videos" arise every day and they each bring their own sense of identity with themselves. This technological advancement is something that should be taken into consideration when discussing artistic video.