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Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installation art viewed in galleries or museums; works either streamed online, or distributed as , or on ; and performances which may incorporate one or more , , and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.Hartney, Mick. "Video art" , MoMA, accessed January 31, 2011
Video art is named for the original analog video tape, which was the most commonly used recording technology in much of the form's history into the 1990s. With the advent of digital recording equipment, many artists began to explore digital technology as a new way of expression. Video art does not necessarily rely on the conventions that define theatrical cinema. It may not use , may contain no dialogue, and may have no discernible narrative or plot. Video art also differs from cinema subcategories such as avant garde cinema, short films, and experimental film.
Video art is often said to have begun when Paik used his new Sony Portapak to shoot footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York City in the autumn of 1965Laura Cumming (December 19, 2010), Nam June Paik – review Nam June Paik The Guardian. Later that same day, across town in a Greenwich Village cafe, Paik played the tapes and video art was born.
Prior to the introduction of consumer video equipment, moving image production was only available non-commercially via 8mm film and 16mm film. After the Portapak's introduction and its subsequent update every few years, many artists began exploring the new technology.
Many of the early prominent video artists were those involved with concurrent movements in conceptual art, performance, and experimental film. These include Americans Vito Acconci, Valie Export, John Baldessari, Peter Campus, Doris Totten Chase, Maureen Connor, Norman Cowie, Dimitri Devyatkin, Frank Gillette, Dan Graham, Gary Hill, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, Shigeko Kubota, Martha Rosler, William Wegman, and many others. There were also those such as Steina and Woody Vasulka who were interested in the formal qualities of video and employed video synthesizers to create abstract works. Kate Craig,James H Marsh (1985). 088830269X, Hurtig Publishers. 088830269X Vera Frenkel and Michael Snow were important to the development of video art in Canada.
Much video art in the United States was produced in New York City, with The Kitchen, founded in 1972 by Steina and Woody Vasulka (and assisted by video director Dimitri Devyatkin and Shridhar Bapat), serving as a nexus for many young artists. An early multi-channel video artwork (using several monitors or screens) was Wipe Cycle by Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969 as part of an exhibition titled "TV as a Creative Medium". An installation of nine television screens, Wipe Cycle combined live images of gallery visitors, found footage from commercial television, and shots from pre-recorded tapes. The material was alternated from one monitor to the next in an elaborate choreography.
On the West coast, the San Jose State television studios in 1970, Willoughby Sharp began the "Videoviews" series of videotaped dialogues with artists. The "Videoviews" series consists of Sharps' dialogues with Bruce Nauman (1970), Joseph Beuys (1972), Vito Acconci (1973), Chris Burden (1973), Lowell Darling (1974), and Dennis Oppenheim (1974). Also in 1970, Sharp curated "Body Works", an exhibition of video works by Vito Acconci, Terry Fox, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier, Dennis Oppenheim and William Wegman which was presented at Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, California.
In Europe, Valie Export's groundbreaking video piece, "Facing a Family" (1971) was one of the first instances of television intervention and broadcasting video art. The video, originally broadcast on the Austrian television program "Kontakte" February 2, 1971,11 shows a bourgeois Austrian family watching TV while eating dinner, creating a mirroring effect for many members of the audience who were doing the same thing. Export believed the television could complicate the relationship between subject, spectator, and television. In the United Kingdom David Hall's "TV Interruptions" (1971) were transmitted intentionally unannounced and uncredited on Scottish TV, the first artist interventions on British television.
From the beginning of the 90's, contemporary art exhibitions integrate artists' videos among other works and installations. This is the case of the Venice Biennale (Aperto 93) and of NowHere at the Louisiana Museum, but also of art galleries where a new generation of artists for whom the arrival of lighter equipment such as favored a more direct expression. Artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Tony Oursler, Carsten Höller, Cheryl Donegan, Nelson Sullivan were able, as others in the 1960s, to leave their studios easily to film by hand without sophistication, sometimes mixing found images with their own (Douglas Gordon, Pierre Bismuth, Sylvie Fleury, Johan Grimonprez, Claude Closky) and using a present but simple post-production. The presentation of the works was also simplified with the arrival of monitors in the exhibition rooms and distribution in VHS. The arrival of this younger generation announced the feminist and gender issues to come, but also the increasingly hybrid use of different media (transferred super 8 films, 16mm, digital editing, TV show excerpts, sounds from different sources, etc).
At the same time, museums and institutions more specialized in video art were integrating digital technology, such as the ZKM in Karlsruhe, directed by Peter Weibel, with numerous thematic exhibitions, or the Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine with its biennial Version (1994-2004) directed by Simon Lamunière.
With the arrival of digital technology and the Internet, some museums have federated their databases such as New Media Art produced by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine (Center for Contemporary Images) in Geneva.
By the end of the century, institutions and artists worked on the expanding spectrum of the media, 3d imagery, interactivity, cd-roms, Internet, digital post production etc. Different themes emerged such as interactivity and nonlinearity. Some artists combined physical and digital techniques, such as Jeffrey Shaw's "Legible City" (1988–91). Others by using Low-Tech interactivity such as Claude Closky's online "+1" or "Do you want Love or Lust" in 1996 coproduced by the Dia Art Foundation. But these steps start to move away from the so called video art towards the New media art and Internet art.
More generally, during the first decade, one of the most significant steps in the video art domain, was achieved with its strong presence in contemporary art exhibitions at the international level. During this period, it was common to see artist videos in group shows, on monitors or as projections. More than a third of the works presented at Art Unlimited (the section of Art Basel dedicated to large-scale works) were video installations between 2000 and 2015. The same is true for most biennials. A new generation of artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Francis Alys, Kim Sooja, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Omer Fast, David Claerbout, Sarah Morris, Matthew Barney, were presented alongside the previous generations (Roman Signer, Bruce Nauman, Bill Viola, Joan Jonas, John Baldessari).
Some artists have also widened their audience by making movies (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the 2010 Cannes Film Festival "Palm d'or") or by curating large public events (Pipilotti Rist's Swiss National Expo02).
In 2003, Kalup Linzy created Conversations Wit De Churen II: All My Churen, a soap opera satire that has been credited as creating the video and performance sub-genre 'Theatre of the Self, Performing who you are'. Although Linzy's work is genre defying his work has been a major contribution to the medium. Ryan Trecartin, an experimental young video-artist, uses color, editing techniques and bizarre acting to portray what The New Yorker calls "a cultural watershed".
Other artists who combined Video art with Performance art used the camera as the audience. Kate Gilmore experimented with the positioning of the camera. In her video “Anything” (2006) she films her performance piece as she is constantly trying the reach the camera which is staring down at her. As the 13-minute video goes on, she continues to tie together pieces of furniture while constantly attempting to reach the camera. Gilmore added an element of struggle to her art which is sometimes self-imposed, in her video “My love is an anchor” (2004) she lets her foot dry in cement before attempting to break free on camera. Gilmore has said to have mimicked expression styles from the 1960s and 1970s with inspirations like Marina Abramovic as she adds extremism and struggle to her work.
Some artists experimented with space when combining Video art and Performance art. Ragnar Kjartannson, an Icelandic artist, filmed an entire music video with 9 different artists, including himself, being filmed in different rooms. All the artists could hear each other through a pair of headphones so that they could play the song together, the piece was titled "The visitors" (2012).
Some artists, such as Jaki Irvine and Victoria Fu have experimented with combining 16 mm film, 8 mm film and video to make use of the potential discontinuity between moving image, musical score and narrator to undermine any sense of linear narrative.
As the industry continues to evolve, video arts programs are also incorporating elements of interactive media, virtual production, and immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality. Many institutions are expanding their curricula to include courses on real-time rendering, AI-assisted content creation, and multi-platform storytelling, reflecting the growing demand for versatile digital artists. Additionally, collaborations with game design, digital marketing, and media studies departments are fostering interdisciplinary approaches that prepare students for diverse career opportunities beyond traditional film and television.
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