For channel surfers, an exhibit of art in motion

On the fourth floor of the Yale Art Gallery there is a dirty, multi-colored, shoeless man reclining in a La-Z-Boy with a beer in hand. He spends the better part of each day watching TV, and you can join him. It's all part of an exhibition of video art, a medium which came into existence after 1965 with the release of the Sony video camera. The works of 14 artists are displayed on the TV throughout each day, progressing according to a set schedule. The videos explore the unique qualities of the video medium which allow the artist to produce an integrated assault of aural and visual stimuli, bombarding the viewer for an extended period of time.

Thus video art utilizes for creative purposes the powerful medium which has turned so many people into couch potatoes; people who, like the polychrome man with the beer, spend countless hours enthralled by stimuli streaming forth from their television sets. While most of the video art segments on display present interesting concepts and explore the creative capacity of this new medium, some of the videos are clearly more entertaining than others.

Among the more attractive and exciting of the videos on display is Nam June Paik's Global Groove of 1973, which is a fast-moving collage of short segments in which bright colors and superposition of images dominate the screen. His work reflects the impatient and self-indulgent nature of modern pop culture through his video's fast pace, overstimulation, and abrupt transitions.

The video progresses in a totally free manner and Paik's constantly changing visual images and musical accompaniment give it the quality of anxious channel surfing in which no particular segment seems to be the focus. For example, he shows a Japanese Pepsi commercial in which babies play with Pepsi bottles on the beach, only to shift within seconds to a colorful multifacted display of a woman playing Saint-Saens on the cello. The viewer can well appreciate how Paik's synthesis of bright colors, movement and music, which anticipated MTV by a decade, accord him the status of "father" of video art.

Many of the other videos attempt to explore the creative potential of the video camera as an optical instrument. Bill Viola's Chott el-Djerid captures visual images of the climatically harsh Sahara desert and the frozen tundra in Saskatchewan, in which the diffractions and movement of the atmosphere surrounding objects almost completely distort and obscure them.

In a more abstract usage of optical phenomena, Mary Lucier's Bird's Eye shows an image which appears to be a dark, enclosed space, which she created by burning the camera lens with a laser.

While these types of images might be interesting and significant as exploratory or experimental techniques, they are pretty dull to watch for an extended period of time. Likewise, some of the artists made videos of their own bodies performing menial tasks which were not exactly thrilling to watch. Vito Acconci's Open Book shows a full-screen view of the artist's open mouth for a full ten minutes.

It purports to show some thematic significance about the openness of human relationships; however, this point may well be lost on a bored viewer. Equally intolerable was John Baldessari's I am Making Art in which the artist moves his limbs in different positions while droning repeatedly, "I am making art." Anyone in the exhibit during this video will find themselves asking the man with the beer can to please change the channel.

Some of the videos had more interesting content, treating issues such as mass media culture. Ant Farm's Cadillac Ranch Show and Media Burn shows the outrageous spectacles and sculptures produced by this group of sculptors and architects. From half-buried Cadillacs to burning TV sets, this video is full of shocking, entertaining commentary on modern consumer culture.

Richard Serra's Television Delivers People is a hypnotic, satirical piece in which short blurbs and phrases scroll up the screen with elevator Muzak playing in the background. The monotony of this video mocks the power of modern mass media, especially television, to dominate and numb its helplessly devoted viewers.

The videos in this exhibit are all early attempts to define the capabilities and potentials for the evolving medium of video in the realm of art, and some are more successful than others in this endeavor.

Viewers should pick and choose from the inconveniently long schedule of showtimes. Paik's Global Groove is the most worth seeing for all those who appreciate the genre of music video. The La-Z-Boy next to the man with a beer is a comfortable seat, tempting exhibit-goers to indulge in the passive existence of a couch potato, but ultimately engaging them in an active, aesthetic challenge.

Graphic by Fabian E. Rosado.

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