TV and Video, A. C. Danto Column

Danto, Arthur C. "TV and Video." The Nation 261.7 (11 Sept. 1996): 248-53.

On video art in two senses: (1) "a flourishing branch in the visual arts that consists in [sic] the modification of tapes and discs, transduced into images on the television monitor through the mediation of the VCR"; and (2) "a collection of objects on the order of sculptures and installations in which video images are focal." In the second sense "The television set itself can be regarded as a kind of sculpture . . .—a three-dimensional cube with a flickering face—but in a great many examples of video sculpture the television set has largely disappeared, and the images, liberated from the cube, attach themselves to objects that convey meanings other than those associated with the familiar purveyor of home entertainment" (248). Essay handles among other artists and works, Nam June Paik, esp. his Electronic Superhighway; "the Swiss artists Fischli and Weiss"; Bill Viola's Stations (249-50) and Slowly Turning Narrative; and Gary Hill's Inasmuch as It Is Always Already Taking Place (252).