Collaborative Disruption: Video vs Object vs Video

Keywords: Video Sculpture, Physicalizing the Image, Chinese shi, African aale, Memory Work, Vigilant Things, Vibrant Matter.

Video sculpture is disruptive, both to the behavior of an object, and to the linear sequence of the video imagery. Objects have a vital impetus that acts upon the video as it permeates the object. This is an assemblage of unlike material and ephemeral forces combined in an interactive collaboration. Artists like Tony Ourlser, Joan Jonas, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Bill Viola have inspired this artwork. Confronted with an emotionally distressed facial image peering out from under an overturned chair is a highly charged experience for the viewer in a art gallery. Tony Oursler’s installation Stone Blue projects this distressing video imagery with a confrontational dialogue, into a large ordinary pillow shaped like a body, disrupting the neutrality and passive character of the white pillow. Krzysztof Wodiczko projects facial imagery on to exterior of the dome on the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, disrupting the role of the building or architecture. Other artists including Ann Hamilton, Susan Collins and Anti VJ in the architectural projection “Desherence” have incorporated video projections to disrupt the flow or narrative in their installations.