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September 27, 2004

Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen

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space and time in a global context

After extensive research Slavko Kacunko has published Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen in German. The 1,200 paged book is accompanied by a DVD. It focuses on "the important aspects of the history of media art-"live" video installations. Unlike the few attempts to date to present a survey of the diversity and notably the quantity of international media art, the book is the first to consider the global context in which the sphere of (interactive) media art is developing.

From the historical perspective, links between Europe and the USA, Australia and Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America are highlighted, with focus on regional, national and individual achievements. The book looks in detail at the individual artistic approaches in the context of space and time, and it includes a description and record of 1100 works and 650 artists. This and the notes on further reading and viewing will enable deeper explorations of the material. In recent years, theoretical debate has diagnosed with some precision where the electronic video image stands between analogue and digital codes, or again, between media "representation" and "presentation". This position is subjected to examination against the pertinent examples.

Video technique makes it possible to simultaneously record and reproduce images, sound and sequences of motion; that potential can be seen as a specific characteristic of the medium. The closed-circuit video installations based on it represent the attest field of experiment for the assumptions on art and the theory and history of the medium that it might lead one make."

Table of contents:

Introduction
1. The history of media art: state and competence of research
2. Positioning of current project: visual criticism and cultural criticism
3. Structure and contents
I. Media Art: Category Definitions:
1. "Installation"
2. "Performance"
3. "Input"/"Output"
4. "Feedback"
5. "Immediacy"
6. "Interface"
7. "Interaction"
8. General terminological pairings
a) "Art" and "Medium"
Excursus: "Simulation" and "Metaphor"
b) "Representation" and "Presentation"
c) "Analogue" and "Digital"

II. Closed Circuit Video Installation: A Theoretical Review Prologue: on research specialisms in art and media theory
1. "Subject" - "Object" relationship
2. Constructions of reality
3. System models and behavioural blueprints
4. Game concepts and learning processes
5. Data collation and checking
6. Telecommunication

III. Closed Circuit video Installation: A Geo-historical Overview Towards a Definition: an overview
Suggestion for a Definition
On Structure and Groupings
1. The first decade (1966 - 1976)
2. The second decade (1977 - 1989)
3. The third Decade (1990 - 2002)

Each of these periods is "illustrated" with hundreds of examples of artists and their work from many different countries (In 2. The second decade is from
Denmark mentioned "Golden Boys", Carsten Schmidt-Olsen, Torben Soeborg)

Concluding Remarks
1. The "materiality" of media
2. The "immateriality" of art: the "performative"
3. The "supremacy of appearances": the false mirror
a) "Guardians of the Image"
b) Feedback as pseudo-argument
c) Ecstasy, rationality and reversibility: Apollo and Hermes
d) "Video Spheres" and Irreversibility
4. Closed-circuit as an "open system": target concept - interaction
5. The history of media art: strategies and perspectives

Literature and Correspondence - URLs - Index

The book is accompanied by a DVD-ROM with a catalogue with artists and their works (images, descriptions & URLs).

Posted by jo at September 27, 2004 05:38 PM

Comments

In the same manner an industrial designer wont design a toaster that he doesnít recognize as a toaster, a thinker wont think any thoughts that he doesnít recognize as a thought. Designers start their earliest designs based on what they themselves first knew as such. This is why, sooner or later, past styles will always come back into fashion. Likewise, thinkers think their first thoughts based on questions and answers they already understand. Whole cultures can become stuck in debates that have long become meaningless. To move on from this conceptual cough, one must take that extra step of rejecting all sides of any argument; breaking free and starting from scratch. Only by doing this will the subject be able to successfully design that toaster that wrangles sallow and is gigglamorous when buoy.

Now, if only I knew what "gigglamorous" meant...

Only nothingness has any practicality. A void is pragmatic because, unlike both the mind and matter, it doesnít move at all. Life is no time to be practical, and neither is death!

Around and around we go! Is there any answer to all this? Is there even any real question to begin with? We could just be doomed by fate to live in interesting times, surfing on entropy; trying very hard not to fall in head-first. Nevertheless, let me reiterate the need for the individual to think for themselves and not be duped into mob mentality.

Posted by: GX Jupitter-Larsen at September 27, 2004 07:01 PM