Videor
Born to be alive
Ian Haig
 
    Video as a cultural form is a fragmented and multilayerd beast, these days the most interesting and radical things happening in video culture aren’t necessarily always occurring in the art world. Like anything, its the space outside of the gallery that can potentially inform an artistic practice.

Today the impact of video has produced a new set of cultural effects across a whole range of mediums and locations; from the web, the cinema, Televsion, to gallery installations. It’s only through this expanded and lateral reading of video as a ‘fragmented cultural form’ that we can begin to understand it in a broader and wider context. The material, technological apparatus and texture of video are all used in a variety of screen based mediums, including video art. However the definition of video as a form is exploding and imploding in quite radical ways, where the properties of video are being addressd, in mediums other than purely ‘video art’.

I want to talk of the cultural use of video, which these days can mean anything from the video library, a cd rom, a music video, a talk show on cable tv or a video art installation; to talk about video, one has to talk about culture. With this

in mind I want to talk about different areas of culture where video is being engaged in dynamic and interesting ways and somewhat at a distance to notions of ‘video art’; from unpredictable amatuer video footage of Australia funniest home videos, to degraded video porn on the web, to weird dimensional shifts of reality of the video paranormal in certain sci-fi horror movies...

One of my earliest engagements with video, was sometime in the video boom of the early eighties; walking down Bourke street and noticing myself on a monitor in a store window. Remember this was at a time when video and video cameras where somewhat of a novelty and the impact of seeing oneself on the box, really brought home to me the enormous potential of video as a ‘live’, real time system. Prior to this television was simply something that sat in the corner of the loungeroom.

A million camcorders at a million family gatherings: Australians have been documenting accidents and mishaps for the bottomless archive of Australia’s funniest home video’s; Babies falling on their faces, babies pulling on dog’s tongues, TV’s falling on dogs, Christmas trees falling on kids and mums falling down mudslides. To Real Life TV specials of car chases and fumbling criminals captured on 7-ll security cameras. To homeowners with their cam corders getting some close up action of a Twister as it just about engulfs their house, on and on it goes.

Welcome to Real life - where video is the recorder of real time destruction and everyday mayhem. Video has always had a special relationship with "Real life", it’s real time and ‘live’ capabilities, have always defined it as a medium connected with "real events" and "real people". Today the grain of video noise, failing video tracking and tinny sound always tell us that the material is authentic, like it was actually shot with a cheap camcorder and dubbed 20 times. In the age of digital reproduction, dirt, grain, and distortion are the evidence of the "real".

In a strange way shows like ‘Australia’s Funniest Home Videos’ embody the 60’s promise of video and the portapak as the ultimate medium of technological empowerment (which today we are re-living with the supposed empowerment of interactive media) such a notion for video reaches its logical conclusion in the suburban backyards of Australia’s Funniest Home Video makers, where the idea of empowerment is replaced with the idea of some serious prize money.

While the enormous popularity of shows like ‘Australia’s funniest Home videos’ seems to tap into some common human desire to see other people hurting and humilitiating themselves on camera. But the real lure of watching such shows is in the simple unpredictability of the video medium and what can happen when you have a video camera running. Shows like TV Bloopers and Blunders, Candid Camera, Real TV, and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos offer a glimpse into one of the true and unique elements of the video medium; as an unpredictable system of chance, and spontaneous action.

It’s not enough these days to recreate a scene, I want real video footage, complete with camcorder dates flickering in the corner of the TV screen, picture dropouts and distorted screams on the soundtrack. Shows like Austrlaia Funniest Home videos have popularised the look of ‘amatuer video’, a look that instanly connects it to the ‘domestic’, the ‘normal’ , the moment we see amatuer video in the News, Current Affairs, or in the cinema, its grain, its shakey camera work overpowers its content, as material that is plugged into the ‘real world’

It’s no mistake that computer software like Adobe Premiere, has as one of its filters - a fake camcorder viewfinder, complete with flashing dates, for that authentic ‘Amatuer Video’ and ‘Real TV’ look. Computers might do a bad job of simulating realism, but at least now they can simulate the ‘look’ of realism,

with your own fake camcorder.

Today the grain of video noise, failing video tracking and tinny sound always tell us that the material is authentic, like it was actually shot with a cheap camcorder and dubbed 20 times. In the age of digital reproduction, dirt, grain, and distortion are the evidence of the "real". The entire amateur video porn industry, works totally on the psychology of ‘degraded video’; if it’s grainy, crappy and boring, with shaky camera work: it must be the real thing. The immense popularity of porn on the web offering amateur video to download, gets around the bandwidth limitation of video online, by offering the crappiest video quality possible in the name of absolute authenticity.

One of the most popular examples of "real time - live video", is porn and cu see me strip shows on the web. Pornography has always driven the application of technology, but nowhere is this more apparent then on the web, which would have to be the ultimate "wanna be real time video system"; where the promise of faster delivery and wider network bandwidths is all about harder bodies and deeper penetration and where real time equals real experience, real people, with the latest in web- video technolgy - "Real Video"

For me however it is in particular movies, and how they have depicted video, TV and Test Transmissions that offer another understanding of the lure of the video signal and the properties of the medium.

These days often when we see video in contemporary Hollywood movies the video signal is breaking up, or we are loosing the picture to TV noise or some form of weird interference; We may think real life is constant, stable, predictable, but video in the cinema reminds us that technology, like life and like ‘Australia’s funniest home videos’ is totally unpredictable, unstable and prone to error -Video as distorted, grainy interference are the signs of life for video, the visual decay of it breaking down at a molecular level, TV noise is the living death of the life cycle of the video signal.

In the cinema we are often presented with some vital video footage, a piece of video evidence that has come to hand or satellite link which is often scrambled, unrecognisable and hard to decipher. Typically a piece of video material may be uncovered, but is mostly ‘illegible’ offering us only scarce clues as to its real content, which keeps us guessing. Degraded Video is quite ingeniously used in all sorts of films, as a way of visually giving the viewer narrative information, which simply cannot be trusted, for it is literally breaking up as we try and make out its content.

This degraded "look" of video has emerged 15 years after we have seen and become accustemed to grungy video in everything from CNN satellite links, UFO footage, crappy dubs from video libraries, Australia’s Funny home videos, Video Porn, to Security cameras and The Web...Video degradation is everywhere literally eating itself away as we watch it. For the high production values of Hollywood, video degradation and the TV-video aesthetic of noise and close ups of video scan lines, can carry all sorts of cultural references simultaneously.

There is a whole history of sci-fi horror-movies over the last fifteen years that have employed video degradation and video - TV noise as a particular effect within the narrative to signify ‘illegibility’; something which cannot be explained, cannot be rationalised, something supernatural at work....Typically Alien presence of anykind in the cinema is depicted by watches stopping, and secondly by TV’s de-tunning.

Certian films, often of the ‘technological horror genre’ have depicted video and TV as something which is indeed ‘Alive’ , We have seen the video horror of TV’s pulsating and breathing, video signals being received in dreams, and video and TV as the receptor and transmitter of the disembodied. In a way certain Sci-Fi horror scenarios in movies have been incredibly in touch with the notion of video and Televsion as a ‘live’ system, to the point where something lives beyond the screen; Films such as Poltergeist, Halloween 3, Videodrome, The Prince of Darkness, Shocker, Reborn, Fallen, and many others have all utilised Video Degradation and played with the ideas of the lifeforce of the video image and the TV tube in fascinating ways, often depicting a technological otherness, of something or someone attempting to communicate through the TV noise; TV and video as a vessel, a kind of transportation device to move from one point in the narrative to the next, a channel for bodies, objects, thoughts, to pass through and an entry point for the disembodied to enter and exit this world and the world of the film.

The familar object of TV and the electronic grain of the video image can be transformed by certain films into a kind of video ectoplasm, an entity of pure energy; parallel universes, weird dimensions and video twilight zones are all part of the cultural history of certain horror sci-fi films that know the full potential of video as an errie televisual aura.

Noisy signals emanating from video culture are utilised and explored in the cinema, connecting fantastic storylines and weird dimensional shifts to that which is grounded in reality: video and the look of video; which seems to add to the darker consequences and urgency of plotlines: what you are seeing is really happening.

These Distorted TV and video signals found in certain movies, along with the general omnipresence of ‘amatuer’ video footage in everything these days, from porno web sites to home videos, seem to encapsulate something about the current state of video as a ‘cultural form’ - perhaps its the temporality of the medium, something in the degraded material of video which is always just on the verge of loosing transmission and breaking up completely, about to transform itself into something completely different yet again.

Ian Haig
1998

© and the author.
Courtesy of CCP and 200
Gertrude Street.