How is video an art form? Or rather how is video its own art form? When I use the word video, I am referring to motion pictures, including film, video, still frame animation, all forms of visual medium which require the passing of time to convey their content. Of course video was immediately adopted for and has exponentially matured in its ability to intensify literature through linier story telling. It is obviously an outstanding medium for that application, but video is much more than just a tool for enhancing artistic characteristics that I feel are primarily the property of other art forms. Video alone has the unique ability of delivering changing or evolving composition.
Several years ago, I was involved in a local production at KACV-TV called “Roundings: Texas Sounds and Symbols.” The project involved the Amarillo Symphony performing an original score based on 5 public New Deal-era murals focusing on 5 regional icons, the windmill, oil well, locomotive, lariat and plow. Each of these was a literal display of the circular shape or motion and could also be used to symbolize the cycle of life. Back to my point, the project was done and promotion began. The print people preparing the package art for the video came to me for still frames of the 5 elements to be composited into one piece for the box label. No problem, until I got to the lariat. And although the video sequence I used in the open to represent the lariat was probably my favorite of the 5, I couldn’t isolate one particular frame of the cowboy rotating the rope at his side that was better than any other at capturing the feel entire sequence.
(use the slider to move through the video one frame at a time)
After 3 of us finally settled on a still, we all agreed it was the circular movement or changing composition of the rope that made the video so aesthetically pleasing. In my humble opinion whether it is a rotating lasso, a butterfly opening its wings, or a dividing chromosomes sequence, it‘s that changing composition or the constant of change itself, that only video can claim ownership to in its ability to convey the expression of true art.
–But this is nothing new. Check out the Muybridge galloping horse photos that were taken between 1878 and 1887 also on Life’s 100 photos that change the world. His pictures were used to create the very first motion photography sequence and could not illustrate any clearer video’s unique ability to display changing or evolving composition.
No comments:
Post a Comment