Towards a Definition: an overview

II. CLOSED-CIRCUIT VIDEO INSTALLATION: 

A GEO-HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

 

Towards a Definition: an overview

 

In what follows, the category definitions and points of departure for discussion, as proposed above in general terms, are expanded in an extension of the field of enquiry.  Before I introduce the definition to be employed here for cc-video installation, I outline several related academic standpoints, in which the relevance of this issue as seen from different perspectives is reflected.

In equating “closed-circuit”, “geschlossenem Kreislauf” (= “closed-circuit”) and closed loop with the term “feedback”, one risks giving the misleading impression, that the term applies only to those cc-video installations, which generate a fed back image:

 

“Closed-circuit or feedback – term for an installation, in which the result of its production is simultaneously its point of departure, for instance, a camera, whose video image is filmed by a monitor” (Schwarz 1997, p. 187 (Glossary))1

 

and:

 

“[…] Closed-Circuit – feedback, “geschlossener Kreislauf”. Usually understood today as the feeding back of visual signals, particularly in video installations; term employed for the process of recording a monitor image with a camera, which has just produced that monitor image.  The first artistic closed-circuit video installation was produced in 1968 by Les Levine with his work, “Iris”.” (Donga 1998, p. 227)2

 

In fact, video feedback is determined by the input-output relationship between input and output devices, which are the technical prerequisites for a live video image, and the constituent elements for a cc-video installation.  It is insignificant whether a fed back image is thus produced or not.

 

Gene Youngblood dedicated a chapter of his book, “Expanded Cinema“ (1970), to this theme, entitling it, “Closed-Circuit Television and Teledynamic Environments“. Youngblood defined cc-video installation as  a “teledynamic environment“ and even termed it the “only pure television art”: 

 

“The self-feeding, self-imaging, and environmental surveillance capabilities of closed-circuit television provide for some artists a means of engaging the phenomenon of communication and perception in a truly empirical fashion similar to scientific experimentation.

This approach to the medium may in fact constitute the only pure television art, since the teleportation of encoded electronic-signal information is central to its aesthetics. The actual transmission of information across space/time is not an issue when video equipment is used only for aesthetic manipulation of graphic images as in synaesthetic videotapes and videographic film. I use the term teledynamic environment to indicate that the artist works directly with the dynamic of the movement of information within physical and temporal parameters. The physical environment is determined […] by the characteristics of the closed-circuit video system. The artist is concerned not so much with what is being communicated as with how it’s communicated and the awareness of this process. Thus television becomes the world’s inherently objective art form.” (Youngblood 1970, pp. 337/339).

 

Jud Yalkut has adopted Youngblood’s definition of cc-video installation as “teledynamic“ video space and has highlighted “self-visibility“, instantaneousness and a televisually deconstructive aesthetic as its most important characteristics and as being indicative of its artistic potential:

 

“Video, unlike its pre-packaged older brother, television, which is controlled by economic and political exigencies, is accessible to all.  It can be related most directly to the human condition by means of its self-visibility.  It offers opportunities as an alternate information source, free of particular external determining motives; and is able to convey in real-time an instantaneous simultaneity of events, which can merge man’s inner and outer perceptions in a total Gestalt experience.

Artists, engaged in a revitalisation of television in its incarnation as the new video medium, have explored closed-circuit TV systems. They have modified and totally distorted the network’s flood of clichéd iconography, and have turned towards portable video equipment, and the creation of environmental tele-dynamic video spaces.” (Yalkut 1974, p. 3).   

 

The concept of an artwork as an “environment”, as was developed in the sixties, incorporated the idea of a viewer, who was supposed to “inhabit” the “work”, instead of confronting it in a passive manner. It relates to the visual arrangement of space, as was the case, for instance, in the site-specific works of Robert Smithson. It can, however, equally imply acoustic “environments”, as had already been developed by John Cage or Robert Rauschenberg (see Oxley 1994, p. 33).  In 1973 in a critical evaluation of videotapes, Allan Kaprow described tapeless cc-video installation as the “only interesting video art”:

 

“[…] But in contrast, the closed-circuit, environmental videographers are trying to make use of what in the medium is not like film or other art. Their most experimental feature, it seems to me, is the emphasis upon situational processes, that than upon some act canned as a product for later review […] In the last analysis, environmental (tapeless) video, the kind whose only product is the heightening of consciousness and the enlargement of useful experience, seems to me the only interesting video art. Yet, at this time, it is still a lavish form of kitsch. Like so much arttech of recent years, video environments resemble world´s fair "futurama" displays with their familiar 19th century push-button optimism and didacticism. They are part fun house, part psychology lab [...].” (sic) (Kaprow 1974, p. 95). 

 

In a résumé dating from the beginning of the nineties, Wulf Herzogenrath drew attention to the fact, that, since the seventies, cc-video installations had also become a dominant feature of everyday life, whether as a means of surveillance in banks and public places or in the electronics trade.  The unity of time and space, and of reality and image contributed to the viewer’s metamorphosis into a “Doppelgänger”, and demonstrated,

 

“that this direct involvement of an individual viewer can lead, in the complex technology of mass communication, to an individualisation in these art works of a single person. The structure determined by the artist is only completed on the entry into the proceedings, and in the complicity, of the individual viewer.  His own experience, existential questions about his own image, about the “true” reality of the image and of the shadow become the theme here.” (Herzogenrath 1994, p. 11).3

 

In her description of the characteristics of cc-video installation, Edith Decker limited herself to thematically rather neutral, television-like real-time productions and compared them with “thematically variable” multi-monitor installations.i Nonetheless, there is consensus to date about the “primacy” of cc-video installation and performance as far as the artistic application of the video medium is concerned:

 

 

 “The camera and monitor, as […] employed in closed-circuit installation and performance, are considered to be the first (and thus emphatically the original) video-specific tools, […] only in second place comes their narrative relationship to film or television.” (Frieling 1999, p. 12)4

 

M. Rush also laid stress, in reference to early video practice, on the difference between the “immediacy” of cc-video installation and the application of pre-produced videotape: 

 

“[…] For [...] early practitioners of video art [...] [it] was video’s capacity for instantaneous transmission of image that […] was most appealing, in addition to its relative affordability [...] the spontaneity and instantaneity of video were crucial. Video recorded and revealed instant time, whereas film had to be treated and processed. According to Graham, "Video feeds back indigenous data in the immediate, present-time environment. Film is contemplative and "distanced".” (Rush 1999, pp. 83/84).

 

An emphasis on methods of video application appropriate to the medium in the sense of real-time transmission is also found in the writing of Wolf Kahlen:

 

 “Only here in the face of the cult of the instant experience, which one wants to relate to us, does this process as such become clearer.  This cult can only be justified, when we speak of video experience, which has been processed physically or mentally in closed circuit, and has been conveyed via that medium, the transmission of which has been reacted to by a participating individual.  Thus a video performance or installation is appropriate to the medium only when it makes sensible use of the effects of perception.  All other uses are just superimposed additions or recordings, unless they fulfil other narrative or formal functions […]” (Kahlen 1980, p. 11).5

 

David Ross, the first head of a museum video department and curator of several important early video exhibitions in the USA, depicted the early appearance of “video art” as:

 

“the perfect manifestation of the myth of avant-garde artistic practice […] de-materialized artmaking was an explicit challenge to the hegemony of the modern museum […]“ (Ross 1995, p. 433). 

 

In reference to the antagonism between B. Nauman and N.J. Paik, Ross went on to describe the polarisation, which also characterised the early “video community” from the start:

 

“Those seeking an electronic palette for the creation of a glowing, digitalized painting technique were sadly mistaking the name of the thing for the thing itself, and were clearly blinded to the critically distinctive properties of the medium: immediacy, the ability to reconstruct the notion of a time-based audience, and the ability to faithfully create fully credible representations of real time.” (ibid, p. 437)

Cc-video installation proved to be a field of activity highly interesting for artists not only because of its capability of conveying time-related and space-occupying effects – which included, above all, instantaneousness and site-specificity. 

In a text entitled “Video, Art of the Cultural Difference”, Juan Downey describes the impact of an experience of cc-video, which he witnessed among the Yanomami Indians, who live in a remote area of the Amazon, completely cut off from the rest of the world:

 

“Video, as process or as instrument, impresses the Yanomami no more that an outboard motor, a shotgun, or a flashlight. From the point of view of the Indians, television is simply yet another thing that the “strangers” make, as desirable as any other consumer goods […] Closed-circuit or live television appeared to them no more surprising than a mirror, and the fact that the videotape requires no developing did not interest them, for the simple reason that they do not know about the cinema and its slow laboratory processing. The closed circuit and the freedom from processing, then, are advantages not inherent in video but rather in comparison with cinema; a catalyzing process in our culture, but not in the Yanomami´s [...]. (Downey 1980, p. 5).

 

Eugeni Bonet has provided a narrower definition of cc-video installation in reference to live signal transmission channels:

 

“The case of the closed circuit installation presents certain peculiarities which differentiate it from other types of installations/objects. Firstly, in the closed circuit as such, the process of video-recording does not necessarily intervene, and for this reason its inclusion in the specific category of video work is relatively problematical and contradictory […] In addition, we must not forget the full form of the term: closed circuit TV. This means that the signal recorded by the camera is not emitted by the air, but remains “closed” in the cable which transports it to the terminal-screen […] it is logical that the use of the closed circuit began with mirroring and visual control operations […].“ (Bonet 1980, p. 29).

 

Bonet also correctly portrayed the analogous time delay as one of the most important achievements of early cc-video installation.ii 

As far as the definition of cc-video installation presented here is concerned, it is not seen as definitive whether video signals and data are transmitted via cable or microwave emission, or, indeed, via other means of broadcasting.  What is key is whether it is a question of “point-to-point” transmission, that is, and not merely of a one-way “broadcasting” to many transmission points or households from a central point (see above the excursus on “Broadcasting” in the section “Immediacy”.)

This definition is based on “closed-circuit television’s” original 1950’s technical and institutional context dating.  In the glossary of a book, which describes the history of the electronic camera of this period, the following definition is given:

 

“CLOSED CIRCUIT. A television program not broadcast but confined to the studio. May be recorded if need be.” (Abramson 1974 (1955), p. 200)

 

By contrast Douglas Davis represented a standpoint, which distinguished itself in its comparatively critical attitude towards (technically more narrowly conceived) cc-video installations:

 

“Although […] opportunities exist to broadcast, most artists […] prefer to act only in terms of closed-circuit or installation space […] The proper revolutionary function of a videotape is in broadcast, where it reacts [on] an audience in one instant many times larger […] I ask for a closer correlation between personal ethics and public rhetoric, based on the simple fact that we can change the world only in the present tense.” (Davis 1977, pp. 21/22).

 

The critical moment in the field of cc-video installations, around which theoretical discourse and artistic practice in and about the medium diverge, was analysed by Stuart Marshall as early as 1976:

 

“If the elementary artist/video equipment confrontation results in the medium acting as its own object, the most obvious re-deployment takes the form of the medium acting as a feedback system enabling the artist to become an object of his/her own consciousness […] The artist´s theory of video has therefore frequently developed into an examination of the notions of consciousness and selfhood, an area readily associable with psychoanalytic theory. From the viewpoint of this theory, the work suffers from being at the same time the discourse of the medium and discourse about the medium. This is not necessarily to criticise the works as art works but rather as theoretical bases. The confusion of logical typing or meta-levels that this work displays gives rise to a neuroticism in the works as theory, in that the theory serves to disavow […] aspects of the art works.” (Marshall  1976, p. 243).

 

At the beginning of the nineties the concrete achievements and the developmental potential of cc-video installation were interpreted afresh with the aim of finding the common denominator it may have shared with the new media art: 

 

“The sixties and seventies turned into the high school of artistic self-neutralisation.  In unremitting flights of fantasy, the Fluxus, happening and closed-circuit movement developed fluid transitions between chance and art forms, artists and non-artists […] in order to break out of the art-world cage by means of an interplay between iconoclasm and boundary dissolution.  […] If so-called interactive art and closed-circuit installation can be said to have a common denominator, then it is that they constantly question the other bodily senses in an ecstasy of the virtual and in televisual pixel storms. With varying aims in mind, a profusion of “interactive” artworks have dedicated themselves to the disjuncture between visual representation and the loss of the body. (Bredekamp 1995, pp. 7/8).6

 

In the initial search for an interactive media art, as propounded by Söke Dinkla in the second half of the nineties, cc-video installation proved to be the stumbling block on the way to a strict division of new computer-aided artworks from their respective precedents. The hidden presence and structural meaning of cc-video cameras in computer-led installations – in other words, the survival of cc-video installation within “interactive media art” – had to be conceded, despite questionable classification:

 

“In what follows, a distinction is made within interactive art between two forms: installation and environment.  Interactive environments take greater account of surrounding space than do interactive installations.  Whilst in the latter, access is achieved to audio-visual occurrences via instruments, such as the joystick, the mouse, touch-sensitive monitors, etc., collaborators in environments are generally involved in a hidden manner via video cameras or sensors.” (Dinkla 1997, p. 10).7

 

 

In this context a demarcation between earlier cc-video installation and its digital counterparts from the nineties could only be finally ensured by means of an inadmissible reduction of the former to its “self-reflective” variants: 

 “The cybernetic circle, in which the user involuntarily finds himself, permits reflection on his own role, going beyond the mere self-mirroring of closed-circuit installations of the seventies.” (Dinkla 2001, p. 87).8

 

Despite this, computer-aided cc-video installations by M. Krueger , D. Rokeby and L. Herschmann are repeatedly invoked as key examples of “interactive media art”.

The role and significance of cc-video installation in/for “interactive media art” is also occasionally highlighted: 

 

“A further factor is decisive […] in the development of interactive art: the principle of the visual closed-circuit installation, which was also introduced to the exhibition context […] at the end of the sixties. […]  The technical constellation of closed-circuit structural organisation, in which the camera is trained on to the visitor, fulfils one of the most important aims in the striving for participation of Cage and Kaprow, which they themselves could never entirely achieve.  Without any introduction, it allows the unprepared visitor to become a protagonist.  The viewer is spectator and actor at one and the same time […].” (Dinkla 1997, pp. 38/40).9

 

A. Hünnekens also wrote about the “principle of closed-circuit installation”, which, interestingly, he discussed in the same breath as “database” work on videodisc. (see Hünnekens 1997, p. 22).

 

 

In discussions about the genealogy of today’s (interactive) media art, however, the majority clearly emphasises the crucial role of cc-video installation.  Heinrich Klotz states:

 

“Attached to the history of video art is the parallel history of technical invention, such as, for instance, closed-circuit installation, with which it became possible to incorporate the approaching viewer into the video image – at first with a slight delay, but before long in real time as well – such that the world of the art work could apparently be identified with the real space of the viewer. (Klotz 1997, p. 22).10

 

In the course of the eighties, a merging of the electronic “eye” and “brain” took place, as video and the computer increasingly began to demonstrate combined possibilities until then barely researched.iii The significance of cc-video technology for the construction of later VR immersion rooms meanwhile had not been forgotten:

 

“It is television that first raises the problem of constructing full-fledged parallel visible worlds and the linking them with our own […] More completely interactive and immersive technologies are not different in kind – they are simply better informed about where you physically are in material space and, we might add, social space [...] Ongoing surveillance by machines is then a corollary of the feedback of data from interaction with machines […].” (Morse 1998, pp. 6/7).

 

In this one can see an anticipation of later strategies aimed at examining those aspects of (re)-presentation which relate to cognition theory, such as those which are a feature of new developments in media art and result from the disintegration of artistic and media “genre boundaries”. (see Hanhardt 1997, p. 15).

K.R. Huffman was even firmer in her according to cc-video technology the pioneering role in the history of today’s interactive multi-media art: 

 

“Video was a rejection of the frozen moments in time most familiar to artists […] In the earliest actual practice, video was used in the same way as surveillance devices are today, it was employed to keep watch over and to observe reality […] video’s ability to document experience in real time. Towards these goals, many artists created sophisticated settings in which a prepared physical environment was integral to the understanding of the electronic space being created with video technology. This act – creating electronic territory and involving the viewer in it as a physical entity – is a direct predecessor to contemporary, interactive multimedia art, and immersive technology. Installation artists introduced strong concepts of both psychological and physiological territory, and advanced an awareness of extended boundaries, and an electronic ability to define space, time, and energy.” (Huffman 1996, pp. 203/204).

 

Even a great champion of digital media art, Itsuo Sakane, in the catalogue to the first exhibition, organised by him, on “interactive media art”, “Wonderland of Science Art – Invitation to Interactive Art” (Kanagawa, Japan 1989), deemed early cc-video installation to be the first generation of “interactive” media art:

 

“There are a number of reasons why interactive art is gaining popularity. There is, first of all, an essence of reconsideration on art itself in the background. This reconsideration is directed on the loss of simple and original interaction in art caused by authoritarianism. In line with this, we must not neglect the fact that, due to the rapid progress of electronics in the last 40 years or so, feedback from viewers can be easily blended into expressions of art. It has become possible to instantaneously feedback the response from the viewers to the works thanks to video cameras, sound and optical sensors (detecting devices), interfaces giving access to information, and mostly to computers which enable high-speed data processing. The use of information engineering terms, such as “feedback” and “cybernetics”, in the first-generation interactive art emphases the inclination of the artists in those days towards new technology […].” (sic) (Sakane 1989, p. 4).

 

In her plea for an art of intense bodily experience, M. L. Angerer also makes reference to early cc-video installation: 

 

“A review of the recent history of media art demonstrates, that especially in the field of video art […] – even at the end of the 70s – a focus was placed on the body in space, the body as space, the body and its ego lost in space.” (Angerer 2001, p. 177)11

 

and

 

11 “Ein Blick zurück auf die jüngere Geschichte der Medienkunst zeigt, dass insbesondere im Bereich der Videokunst [...] bereits Ende der 70er Jahre – auf den Körper im Raum, den Körper als Raum, den Körper und damit sein Ich lost in space fokussiert wird.“

“ […] I would suggest speaking about a new intensity in the experience of the body and beginning with the numerous examples in video and installation art, so that one can see the continuities and the new elements within this experience in the field of New Media Art.” (ibid., p. 182).12

 

In the example relating to screen development given in a genealogy of the “new media” by L. Manovich, it is particularly apparent that there had been no radical break with the past: 

“In my genealogy, the computer screen represents an interactive type, a subtype of the real-time type, which is [a] subtype of the dynamic type, which is a subtype of the classical type.” (Manovich 2001, p. 103).

 

The “real-time screen” should be seen in this context as the output-side of the cc-video system, whereby screen technology is explicitly introduced as a pre-requisite for VR, “telepresence” and “interactivity”. (ibid., p. 94). Above all, it is its manipulation of real time, which makes this technology so remarkable for Manovich: 

 

“What is new about such a screen is that its image can change in real time, reflecting changes in the referent, whether the position of an object in space (radar), any alternation in visible reality (live video) or changing data in the computer’s memory (computer screen). The image can be continually updated in real time. This is the third type of screen after classic and dynamic – the screen of real time […]” (Manovich 2001, p. 99)

 

If it is rounded out with its input component - the cc-video camera - this genealogy indeed describes the achievement of visual interface technology as an indispensable element of many of today’s computer-aided media installations. 

The definitions and remarks quoted here with regard to the role and significance of cc-video installation should not be taken as an attempt at an historical reduction of media art to the field of “video art”.  Likewise, the following definition does not seek to create a lineage for today’s digital media installations from cc-video installation.

 

 

 

Suggestion for a Definition

 

All media installations can be classified according to their referencing of space either in the category of “sculpture”, or “architecture” or “environment”. The key difference between them lies in their physical accessibility. Characteristic examples of the first category are represented by the numerous “video-sculptures” by the Korean artist, Nam June Paik, which he has created since 1974 under the title of “TV-Buddha”: in principle none of them is physically accessible. A typical example of the second category is the architectonic environment “Live/Taped Video Corridor” (1970) by the American artist, Bruce Nauman, which is conceived around its accessibility. Media installations can also be assigned to one of two categories according to their referencing of time.  The first includes all of those installations, which use audio-visual material recorded earlier; the second includes “live” installations, as represented by both of the previously mentioned examples by Nauman and Paik. The subject of the present book is limited to closed-circuit video installation (cc-video installation).  The term “closed-circuit” describes a live transmission of audio-visual signals, such as was originally permitted by the media of radio and television. A direct – “closed-circuit” – connection between recording and transmission equipment (microphone-loudspeaker or video camera-monitor) is achieved by means of audio or visual feedback, which in turn is the basis of an intensification of the signal. By these means live transmission and the manipulation of audio-visual signals even between varying places and moments in time are made possible. 

The cybernetic terms ”input“ and “output“ are best suited to the description of feedback and the closed-circuit relationship: they unequivocally characterise the recording device (microphone or video camera = “input“) and the transmitting device (loudspeaker or television monitor or video projector = “output“). An audio or visual recording device can be allied to a suitable transmitting device, so that not only can a live image or sound be broadcast, but the current footage of a video camera can also be employed merely as a noise or as music.  Conversely, the recording of a microphone can be used to produce or influence a current television image.

The crucial element in our definition of CCI within the context of audio-visual art is the decision to exclude the latter possibilityiv.  Equally, pure audio installations (with audio “inputs” and “outputs” alone) cannot be given consideration here. With this focus in mind, the following table demonstrates the options:

 

Input	Output
AUDIO	AUDIO
AUDIO	VISUAL
VISUAL	AUDIO
VISUAL	VISUAL

 

 

Both of the chosen terminological pairings delineate the combinations characteristic of cc-video installation. From these is drawn the only necessary and sufficient pre-requisite for cc-video installation (one that is neither trivial nor metaphorical, but rather media-generic in the narrowest sense) – that is, the inclusion of a visual “input”, of a functioning electronic camera.

 

In order to complete this “cumulative” outlining of the present subject of research, it will be necessary to explain the already often used, but not explicitly defined term: “installation”.

The spatial and temporal division of the media installation into “sculptural” and “architectonic” categories, as well as into those in which “live” or previously recorded material is exclusively used, turns in each case on the relative, and potential, parameter of the “viewer” and on his spatial or temporal positioning within/outside the time-span of the installation.   If one follows the same principle with reference to relative size, installations can only be determined in relation to their spatial or temporal scope; otherwise they may be defined in reference to the accretion of any kind of material elements. Every individual case is measurable in terms of space, but the installation(s) or its/their positioning cannot be accorded absolute size a priori. It is equally the case that an installation cannot be “understood” in terms of its absolute duration. Sometimes it is a question of a permanent installation. Installations in a gallery context today generally last between one and four weeks, whilst in the seventies, for instance, the duration of an installation was often confined to a few hours – and thus was reduced to a kind of demonstration. For this reason a general definition of the term “installation” within an artistic context has to be based on the unique, particular configuration of any given installation and its relative duration. Because in most cases the presence of the public is irrelevant for an installation, or cannot be ascertained in advance, its duration has to be determined from its performative component.  It is thus that an “installation in an artistic context” can be more precisely distinguished from related artistic forms, as long as one does not overlook transitional manifestations or “borderline cases”. If the performative component (which includes amongst other things performances by performance artists, theatre performers, participants in happenings, actions or events, dancers, etc..) of a situation or “installation” as a whole only features during part of the period of time that the live camera(s) is/are switched on, then this should be classified as an “installation” (in the broadest sense, with performative elements). 

If the performative, as described above, lasts longer than the “performance” of the live camera or is congruent with it, then this should be classified as a performance in the broadest sense, such as, for instance, those, which are employed in the English language for theatrical or dance performances. Examples from this latter category as a general principle will not be considered here in conjunction with cc-video installation; the relevance of each performance may be ascertained from each individual artistic contribution. It is apparent from many historical examples, that only the particular relative duration of a performance, as defined by the relative proportion of the performative element, can determine the “status” of a processional work. Performances in the broadest sense, for example, can last considerably longer than installations, especially than those of a “demonstrative” nature. An example: video-theatre performances by the German artist, Kain Karawahn, in which the live camera is often put into an extreme environment or extreme circumstances, as a rule last longer (being in part made up of several acts) than his cc-video installations.  Thus the “installation” itself (in which no further performative interventions by the artist are undertaken) lasts only as long as the camera is able to transmit live pictures to the cc-connected monitor/projector. 

 

The final introductory terminological explanation concerns the relative temporal and spatial range of the live signal. The “live” element of the video signal accords temporally with our conception and reception of “synchronism”.  Here it is admittedly a question of “subjective values”, which, nonetheless, go to describe the sphere of the “present continuous” which is of approximately 3 – 8 seconds duration (in the theoretical section of this book a more detailed report on the physical, neurological and philosophical aspects of this problem is given). As was the case with the above-mentioned attempts at clarification and delimitation, the spatial range of the live signal will not be accorded absolute limits within the context of a definition of cc-video installation.  Following this conclusive decision, such a definition becomes almost “semiotic” or arbitrary in nature, since relative size in the case of the range of the signal or of the cc-“radius” as an electronic closed circle (circuit) can only then be determined from the method of employment of the medium. Television and video as media can, for instance, only be distinguished arbitrarily one from another by means of an extra-media (political) consensus about their methods of employment.  Television as a medium can be interpreted as a disseminating medium in the sense of one-way broadcasting; this is predominantly the case world-wide.  In contrast to a so-called “open circuit”, the same technology can be used for a bilateral or multilateral exchange of information, such as is the case in the “closed-circuit” relationship between “input” information and “output” information. Both technical terms respectively encompass the antithesis of their actual usage of the interactive potential of the medium: whilst the technological “open circuit” implies a closed, non-interactive system, the technologically self-contained “closed circuit” makes reference to the open, interactive system resulting from the feedback between participating elements. Between the two extremes there exist several hybrids, such as “site-casting“ – which is actually cc, although usually disposed over shorter distances within a community – or “narrowcasting“/”cablecasting“, which equally involves a not very extensive distribution network, that nonetheless also demonstrates indisputable “broadcasting” characteristics (see above).

 

There are considerable parallels between the ambivalent nature of the media of television and video and that of the Internet. The opportunity of also using this world-wide network for the purposes of communication does exist, even if the largest proportion of the world-wide web in fact functions as a commercial marketplace and as the site of information and ideological dissemination. For this reason all art projects, which exist exclusively within the parameters of the Internet, will not be under consideration here in this history of live installations, despite their use of live cameras (web-cams).  Such is also the case for artistic projects, which involve a live transmission by a television broadcasting station. 

 

Hybrid and relevant parallel forms in the work of individual artists or artist groupings will, on the other hand, of course be considered here. 

The use of pre-produced videotape and the possibility of live transmission of the video image are given in the previous chapter as the main criteria for all manifestations of video-based media art. The temporal components, which are the basis of these main criteria, will be extended to include corresponding spatial aspects in the case of most of the space-referencing work, with the result that the criteria for a classification of a video installation must be sought in the structuring of its temporal elements. Video installations can be sub-divided into single channel and multi-channel installations and they take the form of the single or multi-monitor type and/or the single or multi-projection type. (A multi-monitor/projection video installation can also take the form of a single channel installation.) When one brings the second criterion – the “partial category” – (the spatial component) to bear, a distinction can be made amongst multi-channel installations between “video-sculptural form” and “video-architectural form”. The first is characterised by its fundamental non-accessibility in physical terms to the visitor.  Conversely the second is accessible, and the gap between them has an organising and substantial role to play. (see Bonet 1986, p. 102.)  

 

When one brings the first criterion (the time component) to bear, all video installations, which incorporate pre-produced images or sound information transmitted live, can be sub-divided into “live/feedback” or “taped” installations (or a combination of the two.) 

 

 

 

On Structure and Groupings

 

The above geo-historical view is founded on an attempt to record individual works as precisely as possible, in order to analyse better the achievement and significance of artists and groups of artists within their respective contexts.  The precision of the - explicit and implicit – appraisal is a result of the multiplicity of known horizontal (geographical: local, national, regional and international) and vertical (historical/chronological) inter-relationships. It does not yet permit – as indicated in the introduction – any definite, qualitative individual statements. It does, however, provide a temporary classification from the viewpoint of the inter-connecting complex of art and media theory-related problems, which result: “subject”-“object” relationships; constructions of reality; systems models and behavioural blueprints; game concepts and learning processes; data collation and checking; and telecommunication. 

 

These related “substantive” problem areas arise from the discursive history of media art – and are comparable to the historical media context.  They do come up for implicit discussion occasionally in the rest of this text, but in the immediately following passage they are employed explicitly to clarify interconnections which have become evident in the course of this enquiry.

The vertical/chronological division into three “decades” (from c. 1966 to c. 1976; c. 1977 to c. 1989; and c. 1990 to 2002) is structured around the many socio-political, scientific, technological, theoretical, artistic and other ruptures, which are perceived as stations along the path of continuous, historical continuity. 

 

This vertical structuring is made relative or confirmed by the horizontal/geographical division into the three politically, economically and culturally related areas of the United States of America, Europe and the Pacific. They are intended to reflect the opportunities and limits of their respective artistic production, reception and dissemination practices. 

Based on the notion of an evident interdependency between chronology and topology, potential national and regional implications are in their turn only given credence in relation to the historical “axis of time”. This general task of disclosing continuities and interactions in technological and artistic developments will be the focus in what follows, particularly in reference to cc-video installation.

 

Carrying out this general task requires that certain methodological steps be taken. Firstly, there should be a recognition of the positions of the “spectator” and the “interpreter” within the context of reception theory and art history. Secondly, there should be a consideration of the media-determined production standards for works to be investigated within their respective historical and technological contexts. Thirdly, an attempt should be made to comprehensively describe relevant phenomena, and where possible to “reduce” findings to a simple “formula”. This attempt is founded on the aim of fully dissecting highly complex phenomena in order to contrast an incalculably large amount of illegible data with an extremely vivid, even if at times “poorly defined” or “inconsistent”, record of possible viewpoints.